John T. Shanklin was born in East May's Lick precinct, Mason county, Kentucky, on August 12, 1846, and is the son of James Hopkins and Agnes (Poage) Shanklin. The father was born on the old homestead of the Shanklin family, situated in East May's Lick precinct, in the year 1820, and he passed a life of usefulness among those scenes until his death here in 1886. He was a farmer and a well read man who kept in touch with the progress of the times, and he gave his allegiance to the Presbyterian church, which has been the faith of the family for many generations. He was for years a deacon and the possessor of much musical ability; he gave also of this to the cause, leading the music in the church. His father, John Hopkins Shanklin, was born in 1796, at the same place, and there resided until his death, which occurred in 1874, at the age of seventy-eight years. His father, James Shanklin (Mr. Shanklin's great-grandfather), was the first of the family to locate in Kentucky, coming to Mason county in 1794 and possessing himself of the homestead of the Shanklins. There is still remaining in the Shanklin name a part of the first one hundred acres purchased by this ancestor. In short, for one hundred and sixteen years this tract has passed from father to son with unbroken title and is the only tract in this locality thus handed down.
This James Shanklin was born in Rockingham county, Virginia, in 1766, and died in Mason county in 1861, in his ninety-fourth year. He married Hannah Hopkins and with her, a plucky pioneer helpmeet, emigrated to Kentucky in 1794. He was a descendant of Thomas Shanklin who came to America from the north of Ireland many years previous to the Revolutionary war. He first located in Pennsylvania but afterward went to Rockingham county, Virginia. Thomas, the father of James Shanklin, the founder of the family in Kentucky, and the subject's great-greatgrandfather, was one of the founders of the Cook's Creek (Virginia) church, this having been established in 1759, and the edifice in which worship was held in those far-away days is still standing. The mother of James Shanklin was a Miss Gordon, a sister of the wife of John Hopkins, whose sister in turn married the subject's great-grandmother's brother, Archibald Hopkins. The Hopkins brothers were all Revolutionary soldiers.
