Compiled by Teresa
Martin Klaiber 2023
James
Matthew Klaiber, the son of John Andrew and Mary Ann McBrayer Klaiber was born 21 June 1857 in Catlettsburg, then Greenup County, Kentucky. He died 22 December 1949 on Garner in Boyd
County, Kentucky and is buried in Klaiber Cemetery. This compiler’s husband was two years old and
watched the casket being carried by horse and sled runner wagon, in the snow,
up the hill to the cemetery.
I
wrote a more detailed description, which you can read, and posted his Blacksmith journal in 1999. Just hover
over the word Blacksmith and click to go to the link. My husband and I cherish his blacksmith journal
as well as his desk which was nailed on the wall of his tiny shop on the side
of the hill.
In
June 1947, just three months after the birth of James David Klaiber, the family
had a dinner for the entire family to honor James Matthew Klaiber’s 90th
birthday. At the age of 92, in 1949, James
Matthew Klaiber appeared in Ripley’s Believe
It or Not. The art work, taken from
a submitted photograph, was said to be one of the last, if not the last done by
Ripley himself.
