William Hamilton Stepp was born at Proctor, Lee County, Kentucky in 1875, and removed shortly after 1900 to Magoffin County, settling near Salyersville. At this time, Magoffin had several outstanding fiddlers of the old style and it is possible that Stepp learned from this tradition rather than from his native county's. The oldest known fiddler of the area was Patrick Risner, born in Magoffin County in 1857. Risner was the mentor of Willie Fletcher and John Salyer, contemporaries of Stepp who also shared very similar repertoires. As Stepp and Salyer were good friends, it is natural to assume that they would have learned from one another. In later years, Stepp left his family and died in 1947, in Knox County, Indiana.
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