Bell County, Kentucky: A Brief History

By Tim Cornett

Site of the Gateway to the West, the Cumberland Gap, the history of Kentucky begins right here in Bell County. Early pioneers like Thomas Walker and Daniel Boone endured the untamed wilderness and opened the door to the Bluegrass for civilizations to follow. Those who subsequently made their homes here who eked a living out of the rocky soil, survived civil war, world war, labor war and the booms and busts of timber and coal have preserved this pioneering spirit. Lifelong resident Tim Cornett presents the history of his homeland from its first known inhabitants through the twentieth century, drawing on old letters, memoirs and personal interviews from the men and women who explored the land, exploited the land and shaped it into the Bell County we know today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781625843227

Tim Cornett

Tim Cornett is the former news editor of the Pineville Sun and the Barbourville Mountain Advocate. He has also lent his hand to preservation, serving as the director for Main Street Pineville. He is a lifelong resident of the county and has published a pictorial history of Bell County with Arcadia Publishing and self-published a history of Black Star, Kentucky, one of many now-extinct coal mining towns in the state�s Appalachian Plateau. Mr. Cornett is a long-time member of the Bell County Historical Society, and as he puts it, �if I don�t know �em, they�re not really from Bell County.�

Book preview

2005

INTRODUCTION

Bell County is a place of history.

Long touted as the Gateway to the West is the Cumberland Gap in…Bell County. Known to every schoolboy is Daniel Boone, who first entered Kentucky by way of…Bell County. Forever revered as the path of the pioneers is the Wilderness Road, which begins in Kentucky, in…Bell County.

Bell County’s story lies in the lives of the countless thousands who have made their homes here, who have eked a living out of the rocky soil, who have survived booms and busts as the fortunes of a black mineral called coal have fluctuated on the world market.

But for the works of Judge William A. Ayers and H.H. Fuson, little has been written about the full scope of the history of Bell County—the last of these almost seventy years ago. Both works have their merits, but nothing was written that came from the everyday Bell Countians’ lives.

In this volume I have attempted to do that. Included are materials drawn from letters, privately printed memoirs and personal interviews that will show the story of the men and women who made up Bell County.

This book does not pretend to be a complete history or an up-to-date history; both of those are misnomers. The best chroniclers of complete histories are the daily and weekly newspapers, but they too come short for they can report on only what is learned at the time and not on the actions behind the scenes.

Readers will note that this volume is bare of footnotes. I realize that most books of this ilk are usually very heavily footnoted, but I personally don’t like footnotes—they distract one from the text. With that in mind, I have given credit in the main text wherever it was necessary and have also included a fairly extensive bibliography.

History is very much like biography—the biography of a place rather than a person—and in a biography, one must include things that some readers would rather see omitted. To those readers I offer these words: in a true biography all things must be used, the bad as well as the good.

I wish here to thank those who have been patient with me during twenty-five-plus years of research, who listened patiently to my questions and even more patiently when—my questions answered—I rambled on about what I had found. Thanks also to those who have allowed me to interview them or who have just talked history with me; thanks to those whose work I have used in my research. Thanks to Dr. Billy T. Dye for the old beige; I couldn’t have made it without it. Thanks also to Ron Day for making the required cuts in what was originally a very lengthy manuscript.

CHAPTER 1

EARLY RESIDENTS

Long before settlers from Virginia and North Carolina made their way into the land of Kentucky in a westward push of expansion, there was myriad life and movement in and out of the area. Known to the Cherokee, the Shawnee and, occasionally, the Seminole, the mountainous terrain that was to eventually become the Gateway to the West was used mostly as a hunting ground and as a path for war parties to and from the southern and northern sections of the country.

Eons ago, when the first deep rumblings in the earth began to form the mountains we have come to call the Cumberland and Pine Mountain Ranges, there was wildlife in abundance in what is now Bell County, Kentucky. The area teemed with game—large and small—making it a natural hunting spot for those races of men who were to follow.

It is known that a pre-Mississippian and a Mississippian society flourished in the area; when Dr. Walker ventured into the Cumberland Gap area in the 1700s, he found traces of these people. Yet, by the time of mass immigration into Kaintuck, virtually all signs of these people had vanished—ravaged by time, the elements and civilization.

Several years ago, Dr. James S. Golden Jr. of Pineville told an interesting story of the discovery of skeletons on the mountain just outside of Pineville. According to Golden, a local hunter stopped to rest just before dawn. Sitting down on what he thought was a pile of brush and branches at the bottom of a tree, the hunter discovered that he was seated on a pile of what looked to be human bones.

These bones were taken to Golden, who was able to assemble four almost complete skeletons—complete except for the skulls. Golden said that the skeletons appeared to be from a race of people who were short and stocky. The femurs were twice the diameter of a modern man’s, and shorter. He estimated that the people would have weighed between two and three hundred pounds, based on their skeletal structure.

Artist’s view of the Yellow Creek Valley from Cumberland Gap, circa 1888. This is much the way the area would have appeared to Dr. Thomas Walker when he first entered Kentucky. From The Bell County Story: The Unfolding of a Century.

Without the skulls there was no way of determining more about these people. Theorizing that the bones had come from some ancient burial site on Pine Mountain, Golden, the hunter and others scoured the mountainside for more bones and, hopefully, the skulls. Dr. Golden’s best theory was that the bones had washed out of their resting place during heavy rains over many years and lodged against the tree where they were found. He guessed that the skulls, being round, would have rolled on down the mountainside and possibly entered the Cumberland River just south of Pineville, where U.S. 119 meets U.S. 25E.

The skulls were never located, and Golden, unable to glean any more information from the skeletons, sent them on to the Smithsonian Institution, where presumably they rest today. (Efforts by the author to locate these skeletons have been unsuccessful; Golden forwarded them to the museum, but calls to the Smithsonian have proved fruitless in finding their exact whereabouts.)

Kentucky and Bell County have proven to be a mixed bag for historians. We know that the area was used for hunting by various tribes of Native Americans. We know that the earliest visitors to the area found traces of early civilizations. We know that Dr. Walker, Daniel Boone and others had a vested interest in seeing the land opened to exploration. All of this we know from the traditional history books and documents that have been touted and rehashed for more than two centuries.

But what do we know of the people—the common man who faced the hardship of travel along what eventually became the Wilderness Road? It was these hardy men, women and children who—having left the relative comfort of their homes in settlements in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and other states—came into the wilderness of the new land of Kentucky to seek their own way of life that make up our history.

In the pages to come, we will take a look at the early ventures into what eventually became Bell County and at the settlers and civilization that followed. These hardy souls settled a wild frontier and they are our legacy; they are our history.

CHAPTER 2

WALKER ENTERS KENTUCKY

One of the earliest recorded entries into Bell County was by Dr. Thomas Walker, a Virginia physician employed by the Loyal Land Company to locate a place for a settlement in Kentucky, which at that time was a county of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Loyal Land Company had a grant of 800,000 acres of land north of the border between Virginia and North Carolina, the area that now encompasses Kentucky, and it hired Dr. Walker to take a party into this uncharted territory to scout for suitable places for establishing settlements and to survey the land. Walker was chosen by the Loyal Land Company for his skill as a surveyor and his penchant for exploring some of the other rugged terrain throughout the area. He had, in 1748, made a similar expedition through southwest Virginia into the Cherokee lands near the Holston River that played a large role in the white settlement of this area.

Because of this, Walker was contracted to explore Kentucky. In March 1750, Walker set off from his home in Virginia in the company of Ambrose Powell, Colby Shew, William Tomilson, Henry Lawless and John Hughs. Each man was outfitted with a horse and there were two extra that served as pack animals.

From March 6 through April 12, Walker and his companions made their way through southwest Virginia and into the Holston Valley of Tennessee. By April 13, they had arrived at the site of what would later be one of the most significant locations in the opening of the West. At the time, to them, it was just a gap in a formidable mountain range, allowing fairly easy passage into Kentucky.

A look at the journal Walker kept reveals his thoughts on crossing the gap into Kentucky:

On the North side of the Gap is a large Spring, which falls very fast and just above the Spring is a small Entrance to a Large Cave, which the Spring runs through…On the South side is a plain Indian Road…This Gap may be seen at a considerable distance, and there is no other, that I know of, except one about two miles to the North of it, which does not appear to be So low as the other. The Mountain on the North Side of the Gap is very Steep and Rocky, but on the South side it is not So.

Walker’s journal reveals that the party traveled across the gap into what they named Flat Creek, the area we now call Yellow Creek, where they camped along the banks of the creek. This area would later become the city of Middlesborough. His journal notes the fact that he found coal along the creek bank, significant because mining would become a major industry in the area and the reason for many future booms and busts.

The next day the party traveled another five miles down the creek, following the Indian Road. The following day was Easter Sunday, April 15, 1750. Walker and his party normally did not travel on the Sabbath, but on this occasion they traveled farther downstream to find a more suitable campsite for their horses. They covered seven more miles along the Indian Road, coming to what Walker named Clover Creek.

This creek we now know as Clear Creek, situated near where the Cumberland River breaks through the Pine Mountain range at Wasioto Gap. Walker and his party camped on the site of what is now Wasioto Winds Golf Course on a small knoll known locally as Devil’s Backbone. For the next two days they remained at this campsite, rains delaying their journey.

On Tuesday, April 17, still delayed by rain, Walker explored the area around Clover (Clear) Creek. He went down the creek hunting and discovered that the creek emptied into a river about a mile below his campsite. Deciding that this river was created by other creeks in the area, he noted, This, which is Flat [Yellow] Creek and Some others join’d, I called Cumberland River.

Walker named the river after the Duke of Cumberland, not knowing that the Indians called it the Shawnee River, after the last permanent Native American residents of the area. Walker chose to honor the Bloody Duke, considered a national hero due to his recent victory at Culloden. Later, hunters would give the name of Cumberland to the great mountain range that Walker had crossed to enter into Kentucky.

April 18 dawned cloudy but without rain, so Walker’s party moved on, traveling down the creek to the river and along the Indian Road to where it crossed the river. This crossing was made at the present-day site of Pineville, just across the river from the intersection of Pine Street and U.S. 25E. This (the Cumberland Ford) and the Cumberland Gap are two of the most significant natural occurrences along the Wilderness Road, enabling travel into the frontier.

This photo, claimed to be the first taken of the Cumberland Ford, shows the river crossing at Pineville, Kentucky. From The Bell County Story: The Unfolding of a Century.

Walker notes in his journal that Indians have lived about this Ford Some years ago. This observation was no doubt based on the nearby Indian Burial Mound, which was a prominent site in Pineville until the 1970s, when it was razed to make way for a commercial building.

After crossing the river at the ford, Walker’s party trekked along the south side of the river for about five miles. Due to rough terrain and some un-fordable streams, they left the river and headed across country for about three miles, when they again came upon the river, it being very crooked and crossing back along their path. They camped that night after having covered about eight miles, which put them into what is now Knox County.

The burial mound noted by Walker again played a role in early development of the area twelve years after Walker’s sighting. James Renfro, an early explorer of Kentucky and later a prominent citizen of the settlement of Cumberland Ford, noted that when he was exploring in 1762 he was forced to conceal himself from savages. He hid in cliffs along Breastwork Hill, opposite what is now Pineville, and from this vantage point he witnessed an Indian battle. He also saw the Indians carrying stones to construct a mound.

This mound was disturbed several times over the years as white men settled the area. The first disturbance came when Dr. William J. Hodge built a house on the site about 1890. Eighty years later, in 1970, the house was torn down and the mound razed to erect a building supply house.

At this time, the mound was studied by the University of Kentucky Anthropology Department. This study supports Dr. Walker’s statement that Indians had lived there some years ago and Renfro’s observation of construction of the mound some twelve