The Safeway Skaggs: Where did they come from?

A branch of the Skaggs family founded the Safeway family of stores, with names like Osco, Albertsons and Longs Drugs.  Sam Skaggs donated $100 million to the Scripps Research Institute. You can read about the family here and their genealogy here.  M. B. Skaggs was the first President of Skaggs United Stores.  It has been thought by many genealogists that the Safeway Skaggs family goes back to a James C. Skaggs who served during the Revolutionary War.  Could be, but I'm not so sure.

Famous Skaggs: Boz Scaggs

If you followed rock music back in the 1970s you will remember Boz Scaggs, with songs like Lido Shuffle and Lowdown.  He was born William Royce Scaggs in 1944.  

Here is his genealogical pedigree:

Famous Skaggs: Ricky Skaggs

Anybody who has followed Bluegrass music or the Grand Ole Opry in the last 40 years knows about Ricky Skaggs.  His production company is Skaggs Family Records.  Here is his pedigree back to Old Peter Scaggs:

Busel Skaggs: Just a Rabbit Pulled from a Hat?

I've blogged before about genealogical myths that surround the Skaggs family, for example the famous Mary Thear myth.  Thanks to Wilene Smith (alias Chloe Q Cumber) we stuck a pin in that balloon back in 2007, however, I still see Mary Thear in family trees all over the place sending our fellow family historians on useless wild goose chases.

We may have been snookered by another one of these Skaggs myths, the elusive Busel Skaggs.  This slippery fellow was supposed to be the father of the American Skaggs family, an Irishman, a Virginian, basically all things to all people.  However, I am unaware of any evidence that he ever existed.  No one I have ever communicated with has been successful in finding any evidence of the existence of Busel Skaggs either.  Yet this ghost appears on Skaggs family trees everywhere!  And it's not just me, even the great Skaggs genealogist Ida Lancaster was exasperated with the modern day snipe hunt for Busel Skaggs.

"I think someone pulled a rabbit out of a hat and called him Busel." - Ida Lancaster

The 1820 Census and Old Peter Scaggs

The 1820 census has some interesting information for Scaggs family historians.  The relevant county in Kentucky in 1820 is Floyd since, at the time, it included some or all of the future counties of Lawrence, Pike, Morgan, Carter, Johnson, Magoffin, Boyd and Elliott.  The KYKinfolk website has a good transcription of the 1820 Floyd County census.