Post Offices, Logan County, West Virginia

POST OFFICES – LOGAN COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

A DIGEST OF U.S. POSTAL DAILY BULLETINS

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTARY

Did you know there is a Logan County in 10 different states in this country?

Did you know there are 25 towns named Logan in this country?

Recently, I began doing some research as to when the railroads reached certain points in Logan County, especially so in regard as to when coal mining began in various areas of it. I happened to discover that a post office named OJAY was opened on Rum Creek in August-1917. Although being generally familiar with Rum Creek, I had never heard of a place named OJAY. Upon inquiry on the Logan County, WV History and Memories Facebook site, it was indicated by a lady that the name was “OKAY” instead of OJAY. Since the name OJAY appears in numerous postal records and railroad maps, I assume that locals used the name of Okay colloquially in their own vernacular. I note that the “palm diagram” map of Logan County railroads shown as image 99 on page 3 of the 1925 Directory of Logan topic on the Logan, WV History and Nostalgia website shows Ojay between Orville and Argyle. The OJAY office was closed in 1924.

In further research about the OJAY post office, I was surprised to learn that in September-1919, a post office named FORBLUE was also opened on Rum Creek. I had never heard of a place named FORBLUE.

My “post office” research consisted mostly of reviewing information available from postal historian Mr. Jim Forte’s website of www.postalhistory.com. Mr. Forte has a listing by state and county of post offices that includes establishment and discontinuance dates of the offices. His list has 170 offices for Logan County. The list does not include the OJAY office or the VERNER office as described hereinafter. Of course, Mingo County didn’t exist in 1880 and was part of Logan County until 1895. Accordingly, I found some 30-or-so post offices listed up until 1895 as Logan County on Mr. Forte’s list were in what we now call Mingo County. You may find other “Mingo County” offices on the list. Including those Mingo offices, I accounted for 172 post offices having been in Logan County. (A September 24, 1926 newspaper article listed 65 Logan County post offices at that time.) In several instances, offices were terminated and later on, they were re-established.

POSTAL BULLETINS

Mr. Forte’s information includes U.S. Postal Daily Bulletins, which are (were?) a daily bulletin circulated by the U.S. Postal service. Starting with the 1880 issues, these postal bulletins have been digitally scanned and are available on the internet for public viewing. The bulletins are searchable to some degree using search key words. Using the search key word of Logan in the bulletins, I reviewed the bulletins from 1880 through 1963. It is worth noting that not all of Logan information can be found using “Logan” as the search word. In some instances, an entry may just include the name of the post office and a “W. Va.” Location. This often occurs in the listings of postmasters. Searches can be made using other key words and I did a few using names of specific post office names. Those searches will sometimes bring up different bulletins than the Logan key word search does. I cannot over emphasize that a search by a specific key word may not reveal sought information. Numerous times, I discovered information scanning through seemingly unrelated notices. This is especially so in the postmaster data.

The bulletins are difficult to read because they are often jumbled up in that the typesetters fitted the items to the page, breaking up columns and paragraphs and creating small obscure paragraphs and lines. There are typographical errors and, several times, I encountered instances where items in an alphabetical list were not in order. Unfortunately, it appears that there are many missing issues and incomplete records. I will note that much of the printing on the bulletins is very small and difficult to read. Accordingly, many times I saw the name Logan and came to find out it was not my state or my town.

The postal bulletins are arranged in several categories and cover many items but I concentrated on the categories of post offices, postmasters, railroad service, location changes, mail messenger services, special services and “star services”. I am not familiar with post office terminology and nomenclature. There are “classes” of post offices and “classes” of post masters. Services such as money orders were not available at all post offices. Obviously, early post offices may not have consisted of being nothing more than a “dropping off” point in a community, often at the mouths of creeks and junctions of travel ways. They may have been at the residences of prominent persons, at stores, schools and churches.

I listed the information I found in the postal bulletins from 1880 through 1963 on an Excel spreadsheet. It is data from viewing 3,467 postal bulletins that showed up using Logan as a search word. There were dozens of other bulletins that showed up using other search words. My research involved reviewing well over 4,000 pages. My spreadsheet, with single spaced rows, is about 1,650 rows long with 39 columns arranged in categories. This amounts to being some 825 lines of data.

I have abridged and sorted the spreadsheet down to three (3) columns listing: year, date and post office name. This list is attached as an appendix below. Using the list, the month/date/year shown is the date of the bulletin in which Logan County post office event data can be found by going to the www.postalhistory.com. website listing of the bulletins.

CIRCUIT RIDERS

Until the railroad came into Logan County in 1904, mail was carried by horse (and wagons?) on routes that apparently came from railroad service at Saint Albans in the Kanawha Valley, where the Coal River joins the Kanawha River. Going south up the Coal River and its tributaries into Logan County, they established routes along the Guyandotte River and its tributaries, following old paths and trails, crossing mountains into other watershed areas like Little Coal River in Boone County and Pigeon Creek (now Mingo County). These routes were assigned numbers and a typical bulletin notice under the category of “STAR SERVICES” may read as in a June 11, 1883 bulletin of: “ROUTE 12140. MADISON TO LOGAN C.H., FROM JULY 1, 1883, OMIT HEWITT AND LAKE (ON ROUTE 12386), DECREASE DISTANCE 8 MS”. Likewise, a May 7, 1884 bulletin reads: “ROUTE 12140, MADISON TO LOGAN C.H., LEAVE MADISON DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAYS AT 6AM, ARRIVE AT LOGAN C.H. BY 5PM: LEAVE LOGAN C.H. DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAYS AT 7AM”.

Later on, a “STAR SERVICES” notice may have included the name of the courier, his address and his pay. The July 15, 1904 bulletin notice was: “HOLDEN TO DINGESS, 8.5 MS AND BACK, 7 T A W, FROM JULY 18, 1904 TO JUNE 30, 1905, E.P. MERRILL, HOLDEN $500”. (This was 17 miles of riding horse (and buggy?) 7 times a week Holden to Dingess). Swain’s book (page 85) mentions that, at that time, wagon freight from Dingess to Logan cost seventy-five cents ($0.75) per hundred pounds.

I seem to recall reading that the first paved highway in Logan County was built in the early 1920’s although automobiles came in the teens. A map of Logan County roads shown as image 8 on page 99 of the 1925 Directory of Logan topic on this website indicates there were very few substantial roads at that time.

The March 29, 1928 bulletin had this Star Service notice: “HUNTINGTON TO OMAR, 16704; LEAVE HUNTINGTON DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAY 4AM., ARRIVE LOGAN BY 7AM, LEAVE LOGAN DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAY 8AM, ARRIVE OMAR BY 8:30AM, LEAVE OMAR DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAY 5:30PM, ARRIVE HUNTINGTON BY 9PM, EFFECTIVE APRIL 9, 1928”. Obviously, there was a paved road to Huntington in 1928.

However, the April 9, 1929 bulletin had this Star Service notice: “WHEN MOTOR VEHICLE CAN BE USED: LEAVE CHAPMANVILLE DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAY 10AM, ARRIVE LAKE BY 11:20AM., LEAVE LAKE DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAY 11:30AM, ARRIVE CHAPMANVILLE BY 4:30PM., EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 1929.—- WHEN MOTOR VEHICLE CANNOT BE USED: LEAVE CHAPMANVILLE DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAY 10AM, ARRIVE LAKE BY 12:45AM., LEAVE LAKE DAILY EXCEPT SUNDAY 1PM , ARRIVE CHAPMANVILLE BY 4:30PM., EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 1929”.

RAILROADS, COAL TOWNS, GROWTH

The Norfolk & Western Railroad (N&W) had come to the “Mingo County” region in 1892, with depots at Lenore and Dingess. This was some 12 years before the C&O Railroad came to Logan. It was important for the Logan County “horse and buggy” mail system to be connected with the N&W railroad mail system through the Star Service programs. Presumably, mail could have come from Huntington on the N&W railroad to Dingess or Lenore and then overland to Logan by horse.

With the coming of the railroad to Logan in 1904 and the rapid expansion of railroads as coal mining developed, the mail came to be carried by trains to various Logan County communities with some mails distributed from central offices to remote offices by “horse and buggy” system until motor vehicles came into play.

In 1904, Island Creek Coal Company built their own ISLAND CREEK RAILROAD CO. that ran from Logan to Holden with a spur that ran to the Monitor/Yuma area where the COALMER post office was established in 1912, lasting until 1917. Within the next few years after 1904, the rapid expansion of the C&O Railroad system facilitated coal mining development on Dingess Run creek leading to establishment of the FOLEY, FORT BRANCH and ETHEL post offices in the 1905-06 period and ROLFE at Rum Creek in the same period. Within a few more years, railroad was on Buffalo Creek with the post offices of ACCOVILLE, CRANECO, ROBINETTE and STOWE. Soon thereafter, the railroad on Main Island Creek was extended from Monitor to upper Main Island Creek leading ultimately to establishment of the WILKINSON, MONAVILLE, ROSSMORE, SWITZER, EILEEN (MICCO), CHAUNCEY, OMAR, BARNABUS, STIRRAT, SARAH ANN and PENCIL post offices. (The VANCEVILLE post office (1886-1897 had been at what is now Monaville. The OILVILLE post office established on Cow Creek in 1889 was discontinued in 1917.)

Just as the postal service assigned numbers (typically 5-digits) to their separate mail routes, route numbers (typically 6-digits) were assigned to the branches of the railroad. Some of those early routes and the post offices on them included:

116043–KITCHEN, STONE BRANCH, PEACH CREEK

116048–HUGHEY

116076–CORA, MOUNT GAY, HOLDEN

116078– FORT BRANCH

116089–ACCOVILLE, ROBINETTE, STOWE, CROWN, AMHERSTDALE, MAN BRAEHOLM

116104–ROSSMORE, EILEEN (MICCO), WILKINSON

116105—AENEID, LYBURN

116529—YOLYN, OJAY, KLEENKOAL, FORBLUE (MACBETH)

At some time around 1920, many of these numbers were combined into a number of 103771 which appears to have been a universal number for C&O accounts.

The November 26, 1906 postal bulletin had a notice of: “116076; LOGAN TO HOLDEN, ISLAND CREEK RAILROAD CO., 4.6 MS AND BACK, 6 T A W., OR AS MUCH OFTENER AS TRAINS MAY RUN; FROM DECEMBER 17, 1906”. In 1912, the ISLAND CREEK RAILROAD CO. was leased to the C&O RAILWAY CO. The June 12, 1912 postal bulletin had a notice of: “116076, LOGAN TO HOLDEN, ISLAND CREEK RR CO. FROM APRIL 12, 1912 RECOGNIZE THE C&O RY CO, FOR SERVICE ON THIS ROUTE”.

From the earliest days, numerous post offices changed locations, especially so after the railroad came and coal camp towns were built. Some moves were minor and some major. The May 10, 1881 bulletin notice was: “RICH CREEK, TO ORIGINAL LOCATION”. The August 9, 1881 bulletin notice was: “RICH CREEK, TO J.H. HINCHMANS”.

May 22, 1890 bulletin notice was: “MAN, 1/2 M W., ON ROUTES 12431, 12437, 12497”. The March 12, 1892 notice was: “MAN, 1/2M N.E. ON ROUTES 12431, 12437 AND 12497”. The October 12, 1909 notice was: “MAN, 1 M W. ON 16185, 16187 AND 16189”. The July 5, 1911 notice was: “MAN, 200 FT N., ON 16185, 16187 AND 16189”. The May 7, 1915 notice was: “150 FT NW ON 116089 AND 216066”. The November 17, 1933 notice was: “MAN, 100 FT WEST ON 103771 AND 216066 (1650 FT FROM DEPOT)”.

The June 25, 1909 notice was: “LOGAN, TO THE NORTH SIDE OF STRATTON STREET NEAR HUDGINS STREET; EFFECTIVE AUGUST 1, 1909”. The July 12, 1923 notice was: “LOGAN, TO MAIN STREET NEAR JEFFERSON AVENUE, NOT WITHIN 80 RODS OF RAILWAY STATION”. The July 9, 1937 notice was: “LOGAN, SOUTHEAST CORNER OF HUDGINS AND HINCHMAN STS., (RAILROAD ROUTE 103771 AND 103817; MAIL-MESSENGER ROUTE 216005)”.

The 1909 USGS topography map (Gilbert quadrangle) shows a village of “Calico” in the head of Main Island Creek in Logan County near where the intersection now is of Rte. 44 and US 52 highway. The March 1, 1905 postal bulletin lists the establishment there of the CALICO post office with Edmund M. Browning appointed postmaster. The March 4, 1910 bulletin notice was: “CALICO: MOVED 1M SE INTO MINGO COUNTY ON 16184”.

A post office named CYCLONE was established in February-1897 with reference that it was about 6 ½ miles from MAN. The 1909 USGS map (Gilbert quadrangle) shows a village of “Cyclone” about 4 ½ miles up Huff Creek in Logan County (about where Gilman Bottom now is). The 1910 USGS map (Pineville quadrangle 1:48000) does not show a village named “Cyclone” about 12 miles up Huff Creek in Wyoming County near a village named “Swope” (now Lacoma). However, another 1910 USGS map (Pineville quadrangle 1:62500) does show a village named “Cyclone” about 12 miles up Huff Creek in Wyoming County near a village called “Swope” (now Lacoma). The August 12, 1918 postal bulletin had a notice of: “CYCLONE, FORMERLY LISTED IN LOGAN COUNTY IS NOW IN WYOMING COUNTY”.

The November 5, 1917 postal bulletin announced that the VERNER post office was established in Logan County with Ora V. Christian appointed postmaster. The establishment of a mail messenger service for VERNER post office was announced in the February 16, 1922 postal bulletin thusly: “216305. VERNER, LOGAN COUNTY, TO 103771 AT SPICO RAILROAD STATION (NO AGENT) .08 M, AS OFTEN AS REQUIRED; FROM FEBRUARY 9, 1922”. The October 2, 1958 postal bulletin announced: “VERNER, POST OFFICE, IS NOW LOCATED IN MINGO COUNTY, INSTEAD OF LOGAN COUNTY”.

There were location changes for many of the offices. Some included:

OMAR- 1125 FT SE, ON 116104 –June 23, 1915

MONAVILLE- 1200 FT S ON 116104—September 11, 1916

ROSSMORE- 450 FT E, ON 116104, EFFECTIVE SEPT 13,1917

LYBURN- 800 YDS E. ON 116529–January 8, 1918

STOLLINGS- 75 FT. S. ON 116523 AND 116529–June 1, 1918

HENLAWSON- 1500 FT NW. ON 103771–February 10, 1921

KISTLER- 200 YDS W. ON 103771 AND 216373–September 28, 1925

MCCONNELL- 600 FT EAST ON 103771 (140 FT FROM DEPOT) — September 28, 1925

VERDUNVILLE- 1 M WEST ON ROUTES 103817 AND 216280—March 2, 1929

MACBETH- 467 YDS WEST ON ROUTE 16560—August 22, 1939

There is no inference that the current locations of any of these offices is as in this list.

It appears that perhaps the most widely traveled post office was POPLAR which was established pre-railroad in September-1884 on Buffalo Creek at the village of Poplar shown on the 1898 USGS map at a location of what is now Robinette. POPLAR post office location changes included:

POPLAR- TO 1 M N.E. ON ROUTE 12359—February 11, 1886

POPLAR- 2 MS E. ON 16189—April 8, 1910

POPLAR- .51 MS W., ON 116089 AND 216033—August 6, 1912

It appears that when it was discontinued in 1913, the POPLAR office was at or near where the CRITES office was established in 1922.

There are many names of post offices on the list that I didn’t recognize as being Logan County, WV addresses. Fortunately, there was sufficient information available to clarify some of these post office names. A few of those offices includes:

AENEID, ARIO, CHAFIN, CRANE, EILEEN, FORBLUE, GIN, HUFFCO, LAYETTE, MINESS, NEALIDA, PENCIL, SPRY, TRILLYVILLE, and WAY.

AENEID – established in March-1917 with indications it was 1-mile south of Stollings (this indicates it was at about where McConnell is). It was discontinued in November-1924.

ARIO- established in July-1922 with John B. Markham appointed as postmaster. Ario was a coal mining camp on Toney Fork of Buffalo Creek just above Pardee. ARIO post office was discontinued in April-1926.

CHAFIN – In February-1915 the post office named HOLT was changed to CHAFIN. In May-1916, the name CHAFIN was changed to MOUNT GAY. In March-1918, the MOUNT GAY post office was discontinued. By order dated January 19, 1919, MOUNT GAY post office was re-established with Harry Samuel Gay appointed as the postmaster.

CRANE- established by order dated March-1917. The name CRANE was changed to STIRRAT in October-1918.

EILEEN – established October-1915 with indications it was 1-mile from Switzer. The name Eileen was changed to MICCO in April-1916.

FORBLUE- established by order dated August-1919. The name FORBLUE was changed to MACBETH, effective MAY 4, 1922. Charles A. Breneman, formerly postmaster at KLEENKOAL, was appointed postmaster effective February 1, 1926. MACBETH post office was discontinued effective July 15, 1926. It was re-established February 2, 1927 with William W. Fitcher appointed postmaster. In July-1927, C.D. Hylton was appointed postmaster. The MACBETH post office name was changed to HUTCHINSON effective May 1, 1944.

GIN- established by order dated June-1884. The bulletin describes the post office as being located 13 miles south of HEWETT post office and 14 miles east of LOGAN COURT HOUSE post office. This appears to be an erroneous description because that would put GIN on Buffalo Creek. When GIN was discontinued by order dated June-1894, it was with directions to send mail to the SENG post office.)

HUFFCO- established in 1921. The name was changed to DAVIN in February-1924. (HUFFCO is misspelled as “HUFFOO” in some listings.)

LAYETTE- established June-1903. The post office name LAYETTE was changed to BIG CREEK in October-1904. It is worth noting that there was a Logan County post office named BIG CREEK from 1825 to 1836.

MINESS- established December-1919 with Allen Bryant appointed postmaster. Information is that it was located about 4 miles southeast of Whirlwind. This suggests it was at or near the head of Smokehouse Fork of Harts Creek. MINESS post office was discontinued in August-1920.

PENCIL- established April-1916 with Albert W. Browning from Barnabus appointed postmaster. PENCIL post office was discontinued May-1918. Indications are that PENCIL post office was located near the top of Horsepen Mountain.

SPRY- established January-1930 with Mrs. Cora L. Spry appointed postmaster. The description indicated it was located 1-mile from Mount Gay and 2-miles from Verdunville. This placed the SPRY location to be at about Thompson Town on Mud Fork. It is likely that this post office was located at the Jesse Spry large brick store building which was eliminated by the college parking lot construction. SPRY post office was discontinued in 1934.

Some other post offices that changed names included:

LOGAN COURTHOUSE changed to LOGAN, June-1892

SIDNEY changed to MATEWAN, April-1893

PECK changed to PECKS MILL, December-1905

BEND changed to SHARPLES. April-1912

SENG changed to BLAIR, JANUARY-1914

For the listings of the NEALIDA (1906-1907), TRILLYVILLE (1925-1925) and WAY (1917-1924) Logan County post offices, I have no information as to where they were. (They were, however, established after Mingo County was formed in 1895.)

As to post office names, the name STOLLINGS was used twice. The first time was in November-1910 when a post office was established at the village of Stollings at the mouth of Pit Branch of Crawley Creek. By order dated May 10, 1916, that post office’s name of STOLLINGS was changed to PITBRANCH. By order dated May 26, 1916, the post office named FOLEY at the town of Stollings a mile east of Logan, was re-named STOLLINGS.

Appointments of postmasters are fairly well listed in the bulletins except for the fact that you may not readily find them using a specific search word. Many that I found were while looking for other data. There were various types of appointments including: presidential, 4th class and “acting”. Some listings are lengthy, mostly alphabetic with various dates included in the list and attention must be paid because they are alphabetized in the various date groupings.

Especially so in the earlier postmaster appointments, you may recognize family names of prominent persons. It is to be determined if those persons were appointed because they were prominent persons, or did they become prominent because of their appointment.

I have no information on postmasters since 1942. Of earlier postmasters, I was astonished to see listed as postmasters three (3) men who were well known captains in the mining industry of Logan County. By order dated October 28, 1925, Mr. Raymond E. Salvati who later became president of Island Creek Coal Company, was appointed as postmaster of the SHEGON post office. By order dated February 26, 1919, Mr. Harry Samuel Gay of The Gay Coal & Coke Company was appointed postmaster of the MOUNT GAY post office. By order dated October 13, 1926 Mr. William T. Harvey, notable owner of various Logan County mining operations over a period of several decades, was appointed post master of KLEENKOAL post office. It appears that these postmasters were appointed at the re-establishment of post office that had recently been discontinued. It is probable that these appointments were temporary.

Some interesting things I found included that the bulletins listed the change of names of female postmasters when they got married. For some time, the bulletins listed the name of the mail clerk on U.S. Naval ships. I did not see any notices in the bulletins of the theft of money orders in Logan County although it was a common widespread occurrence elsewhere. There was (is?) a practice of having “summer post offices” in seasonal resort-vacation towns and, apparently, “winter post offices” (in Alaska).

EPILOGUE

Having been a Crites grade school child of the late 1940’s-early 1950’s while living in the Latrobe coal camp on Buffalo Creek, I am old enough to remember seeing steam engine coal trains at Latrobe. I recall the steam engine engineers blowing their whistle and waving at me. I flattened nails (and every now and then pennies) under the wheels of coal cars as the engines belched out acrid smoke filled with tiny bits of foul-tasting ashes that gritted in your teeth. I recall the mail man on the train reaching out to get the mail pouch hanging on a pole in front of the CRITES post office.

It was a common ritual that at about noon, I would jump into my Dad’s Jeep with him for the 3/4-mile trip to the CRITES post office to get mail and to visit the adjacent company store where he would get groceries and stuff for his evening shift- at- the- mine dinner bucket. I vividly recall going up the highway next to the creek and making a right-hand turn through the long straight line of very large poplar trees that lined the right side of the road. We turned into an alley that led to the post office.

About 40 years ago, I had seen the renovation of Buffalo Creek after the flood. A couple of years ago, I made a melancholy visit back to Buffalo Creek. I was thrilled to see that several of the large roadside poplar trees were still at Crites. This time the poplar trees were to the left of new highway, across a wide, vacant bottom. Remnants of the old road were behind the trees which appeared to be silent sentinels, protecting memories. I took pictures.

When I learned that at one time there was a POPLAR post office at or near Crites, I contemplated how apt it was that the office was named POPLAR in 1884, witnessed by the roadside poplars of Crites which came many years later and are still there. I was:

Douglas Dempsey

Box 3, Crites, West Virginia