Appalachian History Series – Daniel Boone Coal Corporation: The Perry County Coal Company Behind Lennut and Heiner
The story of Daniel Boone Coal Corporation in Perry County is not easy to follow by name alone. In the records, the company appears through a cluster of related names, including Daniel Boone Coal Company, Daniel Boone Coal Corporation, Daniel Boone Mining Corporation, Boone Mining Company, and property later operated through Columbus Mining Company. That confusion is part of the history itself. The company’s paper trail runs through leases, mine reports, railroad towns, court cases, receivership records, coal trade journals, and the material remains of a company store economy.
At its center was the Hazard coal field, especially the communities of Lennut and Heiner, where coal, railroads, company houses, commissaries, and court disputes all met in the same narrow valleys. Daniel Boone Coal was not simply a single mine or one corporate name. It was part of a larger Perry County coal world in which leases changed hands, companies reorganized, old properties were revived, and mines were operated by firms whose names did not always match the name on the lease.
The Early Lease Trail
One of the earliest published legal trails begins with a 1913 coal lease in Perry County. In Daniel Boone Coal Co. v. Miller, the Kentucky Court of Appeals described a lease made by W. H. Miller and his wife to the Ross-Petrey Coal Company. That lease was later assigned to Daniel Boone Coal Company in 1915. By 1917, Miller was trying to cancel the lease, arguing that the company had abandoned it and that the agreement lacked mutuality. The case is valuable because it places Daniel Boone Coal Company in Perry County before the later 1920s Daniel Boone Coal Corporation records become prominent. It also shows how coal companies often entered mountain communities first through lease assignments rather than through direct purchase of land.
Another federal case later supplied an even more complicated chain. In C.T.C. Investment Co. v. Daniel Boone Coal Corporation, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky discussed a different 1913 lease in Perry County, originally made to the North Fork Coal Company. That lease was assigned to Daniel Boone Coal Company, whose name was later changed to Boone Mining Company. The same case stated that Daniel Boone Coal Corporation had possession of the leasehold before May 1, 1924, and continued operating it after May 1, 1928. The court’s language is one of the clearest explanations for why Daniel Boone Coal Company, Boone Mining Company, and Daniel Boone Coal Corporation should be studied together rather than treated as entirely separate subjects.
Maynard Coal, Columbus Mining, and the Hazard Field
The company’s later Perry County story was shaped by the collapse and sale of other coal interests. In January 1925, Coal Age reported that the mines of the defunct Maynard Coal Company and interests tied to Superior Coal & Dock Company were sold from the courthouse steps in Hazard. Three Kentucky mines were bought by Daniel Boone Coal Corporation for $370,000. Coal Age described Daniel Boone Coal Corporation as a holding company organized for bondholders, which is important because it explains why the corporation appears in legal and property records as much as it does in mining records.
The same Coal Age report stated that Daniel Boone Coal Corporation immediately arranged with Columbus Mining Company to operate the three Hazard area mines and sell the coal. Columbus Mining Company had already been operating the properties temporarily, and the arrangement was expected to increase the company’s total Hazard field output to about one million tons per year. This relationship helps explain why Daniel Boone properties in Perry County can appear in records under Daniel Boone names while the practical mine management was tied to Columbus Mining Company and its officers.
Mine No. 8 and the Flag Seam
Coal Age gave unusually detailed descriptions of Daniel Boone Coal Corporation’s Perry County mines in 1926. One article described Daniel Boone Coal Corporation’s Mine No. 8 in Perry County as a former Maynard Coal Company property operated and managed by Columbus Mining Company. The mine worked the Flag seam, and the article described coal being moved by conveyor from near the top of the hill down to the tipple, where shaker screens, picking tables, and loading booms prepared the coal for shipment.
That description matters because it shows the physical form of a 1920s Perry County coal operation. Daniel Boone Coal Corporation’s Mine No. 8 was not only a hole in the mountain. It was a system of hillside workings, mechanical haulage, tipple preparation, and railroad loading. By the mid 1920s, the company’s story belonged as much to coal engineering and transportation as to corporate law.
Mine No. 9 at Lennut
Another Coal Age article described Mine No. 9 of Daniel Boone Coal Corporation at Lennut in Perry County. It placed the mine on the main line of the L. & E. division of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and described it as one of the older and larger operations in the Hazard field. Like Mine No. 8, Mine No. 9 was controlled by Columbus Mining Company. The article also identified the Fire Clay seam as the coal being worked and described the mine’s tipple equipment, including shaker screens, picking tables, and loading booms.
The Fire Clay seam was one of the important coal seams of eastern Kentucky, and later Kentucky Geological Survey publications continued to treat it as a major subject of study. The KGS coal publications list includes a study of the Fire Clay coal in part of the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field, built from thousands of data points, which shows the continuing geological importance of the same seam named in the Daniel Boone Mine No. 9 account.
Lennut, the Tipple, and the Coal Camp Landscape
Court records also help reconstruct the built environment around Daniel Boone Coal Corporation. In Spencer’s Administrator v. Number Four Superior Coal Co. and Daniel Boone Coal Corporation, the Kentucky Court of Appeals stated that Daniel Boone Coal Corporation operated a mine at Lennut in Perry County. The case placed Number Four Superior Coal Company across the North Fork of the Kentucky River and described Daniel Boone company houses, commissaries, electric lighting, poles, and power lines. The opinion noted that both companies’ mines were electrically equipped, with lines carrying both ordinary lighting voltage and higher voltage power for mine equipment.
Another Kentucky case, Spencer v. Commonwealth, gives an even closer location for the Daniel Boone tipple. The opinion described the Louisville & Nashville Railroad tracks across the Kentucky River from Hazard, a railroad tunnel about one mile north of Hazard, the Daniel Boone Coal Company tipple about 300 feet north of the tunnel, and the Lennut station about 100 feet north of the tipple. The case was criminal rather than corporate, but its place details are valuable because they put Daniel Boone Coal into the physical geography of Lennut: railroad, tunnel, station, tipple, and workers moving through the landscape between Hazard and the camp.
Commissaries, Houses, and Receivership
The federal case C.T.C. Investment Co. v. Daniel Boone Coal Corporation shows the company in financial distress and in receivership. The court described a commissary adjoining the leased premises at Lennut, about one mile by rail from Hazard. It also discussed mining houses, mine equipment, property inventory, and the role of the receiver. The case records values placed on commissary stock and equipment, showing that the company store and mine property were not incidental. They were central assets in the legal struggle over creditors, liens, royalties, and control of the operation.
The same case tied the Daniel Boone operation back to Columbus Mining Company. A witness identified in the opinion, Barbieux, was described as general manager of Columbus Mining Company, which operated Daniel Boone’s property and had an office at Allais. This is another reminder that the Daniel Boone Coal Corporation story cannot be separated from the wider Columbus Mining network in Perry County.
Accidents and the Human Record
The human cost of the company’s mining world appears in scattered court and archival records. The National Archives finding aid for federal court records from Jackson, Kentucky, lists Sallie Wooton, Administrator of Preston Wooton v. Daniel Boone Coal Company, a law injury case filed on July 8, 1918. The published finding aid does not supply the full story of the injury, but the case file is an important archival lead for anyone trying to recover the lives and working conditions behind the company’s early Perry County operations.
A later Kentucky workers’ compensation case, Daniel Boone Coal Corporation’s Receiver v. Fugate, concerned the death of Shade Fugate in the mines of Daniel Boone Coal Corporation while the company was being operated by John W. Hall as receiver. The case reached the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1933 after the Workmen’s Compensation Board and the courts considered the claims of Fugate’s widow and grandchildren. It places Daniel Boone Coal Corporation within the legal history of mine labor, workplace death, receivership, and family compensation during the Depression era.
The Spencer case also shows how company towns could place children, workers, power lines, company property, and public paths in close contact. The case involved the death of a child in an electrically equipped coal camp environment, and although its legal focus was liability, its historical value lies in the details it preserved about company houses, commissaries, poles, wires, and the daily geography of Lennut.
Why Daniel Boone Coal Matters
Daniel Boone Coal Corporation matters because it reveals how Perry County coal history was built out of more than production totals. Its record includes lease transfers, corporate name changes, bondholder control, courthouse sales, receivership, mine engineering, company stores, tipples, electric lines, railroad stations, and workers’ families. The same company can be followed through a 1915 lease assignment, a 1925 courthouse sale, 1926 Coal Age mine descriptions, 1929 camp litigation, a 1931 federal creditors’ case, and a 1933 workers’ compensation appeal.
It also matters because it helps connect several Perry County places that can otherwise be studied separately. Lennut, Heiner, Hazard, Allais, the North Fork of the Kentucky River, the L&N railroad line, Maynard Coal Company, Columbus Mining Company, and Daniel Boone Coal Corporation all belong to the same historical map. The story is not just of one coal company, but of how the Hazard field worked during the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s.
For local historians, the lesson is clear. Anyone researching Daniel Boone Coal must search every connected name. Daniel Boone Coal Company, Daniel Boone Coal Corporation, Daniel Boone Mining Corporation, Boone Mining Company, Columbus Mining Company, Maynard Coal Company, Lennut, Heiner, and Hazard all open different doors into the same coal landscape.
Sources & Further Reading
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines, 1924. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1924. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines, 1925. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1925. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines, 1927. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1927. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1927.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines, 1928. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1928. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/DanielReportMines1928.pdf
Kentucky Court of Appeals. Daniel Boone Coal Co. v. Miller, 186 Ky. 561, 217 S.W. 666. 1920. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/daniel-boone-coal-co-901823602
United States District Court, Eastern District of Kentucky. C.T.C. Investment Co. v. Daniel Boone Coal Corporation, 58 F.2d 305. 1931. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/F2/58/305/1504241/
Kentucky Court of Appeals. Spencer’s Administrator v. Number Four Superior Coal Co., 228 Ky. 799, 16 S.W.2d 168. 1929. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914a6c0add7b049346e0542
Kentucky Court of Appeals. Spencer’s Administrator v. Number Four Superior Coal Co., 228 Ky. 799, 16 S.W.2d 168. 1929. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/spencer-s-admr-v-890478073
Kentucky Court of Appeals. Spencer v. Commonwealth. 1931. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914a633add7b049346d7380
Kentucky Court of Appeals. Daniel Boone Coal Corporation’s Receiver v. Fugate, 248 Ky. 507, 58 S.W.2d 905. 1933. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914a595add7b049346cc9e8
National Archives. “RG 21: U.S. District Court, Jackson, Kentucky, Law and Equity Case Files, including Sallie Wooton, Administrator of Preston Wooton v. Daniel Boone Coal Company.” National Archives at Atlanta finding aid. https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/finding-aids/rg21-5752964
Coal Age. “Maynard Coal Properties Sold On Court House Steps.” Coal Age 27, no. 4. January 22, 1925. https://delibra.bg.polsl.pl/Content/8867/P-375_Vol27_No4.pdf
Coal Age. “Mine No. 9 of the Daniel Boone Coal Corporation.” Coal Age 29, no. 11. March 1926. https://delibra.bg.polsl.pl/Content/8952/P-375_Vol_29_1926_Nr11.pdf
Coal Age. “Daniel Boone Coal Corporation’s Mine No. 8.” Coal Age 29, no. 14. April 1926. https://delibra.bg.polsl.pl/Content/8900/P-375_Vol29_No14.pdf
Chenault, Samuel Morse. “Hazard, Heart of the Coal Fields.” Lexington Herald, December 21, 1919. Transcribed by Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/scrapbooks-albums-gathered-notes/scrapbooks-guide/local-history-scrapbook-guide-1920-1980/hazard-heart-of-the-coal-fields/
Coal Education. “Perry County, Kentucky Coal Camps.” Coal Education. https://www.coaleducation.org/coalhistory/coaltowns/coalcamps/perry_county.htm
RootsWeb. “Coal Mines in Perry County, Kentucky.” RootsWeb. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kycoalmi/perrycomines.html
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Coal Publications.” University of Kentucky. https://kygs.uky.edu/pubs/coal
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Perry County, Kentucky.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 34, no. 2. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP34-2.pdf
Federal Trade Commission. Cost Reports of the Federal Trade Commission: Coal. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. https://books.google.com/books?id=O1k9AQAAMAAJ
Boster, N. D. “Creditors’ Rights, Judgment Liens and Priorities in Kentucky.” Kentucky Law Journal. University of Kentucky UKnowledge. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3706&context=klj
Author Note: Daniel Boone Coal Corporation is one of those Perry County coal stories that only becomes clear when mine reports, court cases, trade journals, and place names are read together. I wanted this article to recover Lennut and Heiner not just as coal-camp names, but as working communities tied to leases, railroads, commissaries, and families.