Appalachian Community Histories – Blackwater, Lee County: Blackwater Creek, the Salt Lick, and Big Door Church
Blackwater, Virginia, sits in Lee County as one of those Appalachian places whose history is easier to find in pieces than in one single town history. The modern federal place-name record identifies Blackwater as a populated place in Lee County, with the GNIS feature record naming it “Blackwater,” classing it as a populated place, and listing it as an unincorporated place in Lee County. That official record gives the community a firm map identity, but the older story of Blackwater reaches back through creeks, roads, post offices, church minutes, family land records, and the memory of a salt lick that made the place important long before it became a postal name.
Blackwater was never just a name on a map. It belonged to a creek valley, a road, a post office, a school, a church, and a neighborhood of families tied to the Virginia and Tennessee line. The community appears on the Ben Hur USGS topographic map area, and later map references place it near the rugged country southeast of Jonesville. The topographic record matters because Blackwater’s story is tied to the shape of the land itself. Roads followed the water and the ridges. Families settled along the forks of Blackwater Creek. The community’s public life formed around the places where people could gather, worship, trade, learn, and receive mail.
Blackwater Creek and the Salt Lick
The deepest historical thread in Blackwater is the salt lick. In frontier Appalachia, a salt lick was more than a curiosity. It could draw animals, hunters, travelers, speculators, and settlers. Local-history research on Blackwater points to the old lick as a landmark known in early land records and tied to the routes that moved through the Powell Mountain and Newman’s Ridge country. The same research describes Blackwater as a place connected to old hunting paths, buffalo traces, and land claims that used the lick, the creek, and the surrounding ridges as reference points.
The source trail for the lick is not perfect, but it is unusually rich for a small community. A local Blackwater history page cites early land and deed records, including a Washington County survey entry describing land on the forks of Blackwater, near the foot of Powell Mountain, on the west side of the buffalo lick, and around Newman’s Ridge. The same page connects later Lee County deed references to the Blackwater tract and the lick premises. These are secondary transcriptions and should be checked against the original records, but they are valuable because they preserve book and page references that point a researcher back toward courthouse and Library of Virginia material.
By the early nineteenth century, the salt lick had become more than a natural feature. It appears in records as the Blackwater salt works. Local research cites Lee County Order Book 2 for January 27, 1818, when David Burk proposed an alteration in the road leading from the Blackwater salt works up Blackwater to the state line. Another cited order, from April 29, 1818, appointed viewers for a road from below the Blackwater salt works to John B. Neil’s. Even if one treats the online transcription as a finding aid, the wording shows how central the salt works had become to movement through the area. A road was not described by an abstract compass point alone. It was described by the salt works.
Land, Families, and the Records Around the Salt Works
Blackwater’s early history is difficult to separate from family land records. Names such as Rogers, Roberts, Osborne, Lawson, Wallin or Wallen, Robinette, Bledsoe, and Carter appear repeatedly in the research trail. Deeds and chancery records are especially important because a place like Blackwater often entered the written record through land division, inheritance, road petitions, and disputes over property.
The Library of Virginia’s Chancery Records Index is one of the strongest official starting points for this type of research. The Library describes chancery causes as equity cases decided by a judge, often full of testimony and valuable for local and family history. Lee County chancery records are part of the broader Virginia chancery record system, and Blackwater-related surnames should be searched there with care. For a community whose history runs through estates, tracts, licks, creek forks, and heirs, chancery material may preserve details that do not appear in county histories.
The Library of Virginia’s county microfilm guide also confirms the survival of Lee County court material, including Order Book Volume 2 for 1814 to 1818. That is significant because the Blackwater salt works road references are tied to that exact period. The article trail should lead a researcher to the original order book images or microfilm whenever possible, since online family and local-history pages are best used as roadmaps rather than replacements for the records themselves.
Virginia Land Office grant material also helps locate Blackwater families and geography. One genealogical index to Lawson records cites a January 21, 1825 Virginia Land Office grant to David Lawson for fifty acres on the southeast fork of Blackwater in Lee County. That kind of record shows how Blackwater was not just a neighborhood name, but a land-description term used in official state land documents.
The Post Office and the Name Blackwater
The postal record gives Blackwater a different kind of public identity. In many Appalachian communities, the post office marked the point where a neighborhood became visible to the wider world. Jim Forte’s Lee County postal-history index lists “Black Water” from 1874 to 1893 and “Blackwater” from 1893 to date. The same postal-history site lists a 1913 Blackwater postal stationery cover from Lee County, which is a useful surviving artifact of the operating post office.
The spelling change from Black Water to Blackwater may seem small, but it matters. It suggests how the place name settled into its modern form over time. Early records may use the two-word form, while later records and modern maps usually use the one-word form. Anyone researching the community should search both spellings, along with Blackwater Creek, Blackwater Lick, Blackwater Salt Works, Blackwater School, and Big Door Church.
The United States Postal Service’s Postmaster Finder is another official research tool for postal history. USPS describes it as a database for postmasters by post office, with most postmasters appointed after 1971 and some earlier appointments included back into the 1700s. USPS also provides post office searches by county, state, ZIP Code, establishment date, and discontinuance date when research has been completed. For Blackwater, the postal record is one of the clearest ways to follow the community from the late nineteenth century into the modern period.
Blackwater Lick and Big Door Church
The most important community anchor in the Blackwater record may be Blackwater Lick Primitive Baptist Church, also known as Big Door. The Association of Religion Data Archives states that the Eastern District Association of Primitive Baptists traces its beginning to a church organized in Blackwater, Virginia, in 1847, in a building that had previously been used as a distillery. That church was called Blackwater Lick, and in 1848 the association formed with Blackwater Lick and five other churches.
The church’s own association minutes preserve an even richer account. The 2013 proceedings of the Eastern District Association say Blackwater Lick Primitive Baptist Church was organized on September 27, 1847, near the present Blackwater Post Office. The minutes explain that the nearby old salt works gave the church the “Lick” name, and that an old still house was first used before a log building was erected. They also record that during the latter part of the Civil War, Union soldiers came through Blackwater and stayed in the church. The next morning, according to the account, the building was gone, though whether the fire was accidental or intentional remained unknown.
Later association minutes retell the church history with additional detail. The 2017 proceedings state that salt water had been pumped from a well and boiled down in large kettles on a furnace near the present post office site. They also state that the church was organized on September 27, 1847, that Elder G. B. Wallen was remembered as the first pastor, and that the Eastern District Association met with Blackwater Lick in 1848. The same account says the name Big Door came from the large double door on the postwar log church, which was used for worship, school, and community gatherings.
That church history places Blackwater in the wider religious geography of the region. It was not only a small Lee County community. It was a place where an association formed, where ministers and families gathered, where a church doubled as a school and public meeting place, and where memory of the Civil War entered local tradition. In many mountain communities, the church was the archive before there was an archive. Blackwater Lick’s minutes are part of that record.
School, Work, and Community Life
Blackwater’s twentieth-century story can also be followed through the school and the church property. The Eastern District Association minutes say a two-story church building was erected in 1906, with the upper floor used for Odd Fellow and Masonic meetings. That building served until 1960, and a church kitchen was added in 1971. The same 2013 account says the school property was acquired in preparation for the association’s 150th annual session. It describes the school building as having been constructed in the 1920s with later additions, used as a combined school until 1968, and then remaining an elementary school for several years.
The building later served another role. The association minutes state that the former school property was used as a garment factory from the early 1970s until its closing in 1995, employing more than sixty people and having a major economic impact on the community. That single building tells a familiar Appalachian story. It was a school, then part of the church’s extended community space, and for a time a source of wage work. In small places, buildings often carry more than one generation of memory.
Blackwater in Newspapers and Public Memory
Newspapers give scattered but useful glimpses of Blackwater beyond church and land records. Virginia Chronicle includes a January 24, 1925 issue of Crawford’s Weekly with a notice that the Blackwater Salt Works might again be operated. That brief item is important because it shows that the salt works remained part of local economic imagination long after the early road and deed references.
Another newspaper lead appears in the Victoria Dispatch on March 13, 1931, in a piece called “A Little Tour of Lee County.” It describes travel through Lee County and mentions the route through Blackwater as part of that local geography. Such pieces do not always give deep community history, but they help show how Blackwater fit into the road network and county identity of the early twentieth century.
The Historical Marker Database also places a marker near Blackwater at the Virginia and Tennessee line area, at the intersection of Trail of the Lonesome Pine Road and the state line. That kind of modern marker source is secondary, but it helps frame Blackwater as a borderland community, tied to travel between Lee County, Virginia, and Hancock County, Tennessee.
A Community Preserved in Fragments
Blackwater’s history is not preserved in one courthouse book or one published county chapter. It survives in fragments. It is in the GNIS record that fixes the modern place name. It is in USGS maps that show the community in relation to creek, road, ridge, and county line. It is in postal records that show the shift from Black Water to Blackwater. It is in court records that mention the Blackwater salt works. It is in deed and land grant records that name the forks of Blackwater and the families who lived along them. It is in Primitive Baptist minutes that remember a church, a school, a burned building, a rebuilt congregation, and a community that gathered around Big Door.
The story of Blackwater is the story of how a small Appalachian place becomes visible through ordinary records. A salt lick became a landmark. A creek became a place name. A road was described by the salt works. A post office fixed the name in daily use. A church preserved the memory of the community when other written histories passed it by.
For Blackwater, the strongest history is not found by looking for a town charter or a single founding date. It is found by following the creek.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Geological Survey. “Blackwater.” Geographic Names Information System, Feature ID 1477119, Lee County, Virginia. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/summary/1477119
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” U.S. Geological Survey. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “Ben Hur, VA.” US Topo Map, 2016. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/VA/VA_Ben_Hur_20160719_TM_geo.pdf
University of Texas Libraries. “Virginia Historical Topographic Maps.” Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/virginia/
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
Jim Forte Postal History. “Post Offices: Lee County, Virginia.” https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?county=Lee&state=VA&task=display
Jim Forte Postal History. “Blackwater, Lee County, Virginia, Postal History Covers.” https://www.postalhistory.com/results.asp?cs=VA&po=Blackwater&searchtype=2
Library of Virginia. “Chancery Records Index.” https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/cri
Library of Virginia. “Lee County Microfilm.” County and City Records on Microfilm. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/ccmf/VA/VA149
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants/Northern Neck Grants and Surveys.” https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/opac/lva1about.html
Eastern District Association of Primitive Baptists. Proceedings of the 142nd Annual Session, Blackwater Lick Church, Blackwater, Virginia, October 4, 1990. https://www.edapb.org/pdf/archiveminutes/October41990.pdf
Eastern District Association of Primitive Baptists. Proceedings of the 161st Annual Session, Blackwater Lick Church, Blackwater, Virginia, October 3, 2013. https://www.edapb.org/pdf/2013Minutes.pdf
Eastern District Association of Primitive Baptists. Proceedings of the 165th Annual Session, Blackwater Lick Church, Blackwater, Virginia, October 5, 2017. https://www.edapb.org/pdf/2017Proceedings.pdf
Association of Religion Data Archives. “Primitive Baptists, Eastern District Association of.” https://www.thearda.com/us-religion/group-profiles/groups?D=660
My Long Hunters. “Blackwater, Virginia.” https://www.mylonghunters.info/blackwater-virginia
My Long Hunters. “The Blackwater Saltworks.” https://www.mylonghunters.info/the-blackwater-salt-lick
Virginia Chronicle. Crawford’s Weekly. “Blackwater Salt Works.” January 24, 1925. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=CW19250124.1.1
Virginia Chronicle. Victoria Dispatch. “A Little Tour of Lee County.” March 13, 1931. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=VTD19310313.1.3
Virginia Chronicle. Times Dispatch. October 24, 1914. https://virginiachronicle.com/
Virginia Chronicle. Dickenson County Herald. August 5, 1948. https://virginiachronicle.com/
FamilySearch. “Lee County, Virginia Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Lee_County,_Virginia_Genealogy
AccessGenealogy. “Early Records of Lee County, Virginia.” https://accessgenealogy.com/virginia/early-records-of-lee-county-virginia.htm
Genealogy Trails. “Lee County, Virginia Genealogy and History.” https://genealogytrails.com/vir/lee/
Genealogy Trails. “1890 Veterans Census, Lee County, Virginia.” https://genealogytrails.com/vir/lee/1890vets.html
Summers, Lewis Preston. History of Southwest Virginia, 1746–1786, Washington County, 1777–1870. Richmond: J. L. Hill Printing Company, 1903. https://archive.org/details/historysouthwes00summgoog
Mize, Martha Grace Lowry. The Lee County, Virginia Story. Jonesville, VA: Lee County Historical and Genealogical Society, 1979. https://www.worldcat.org/title/lee-county-virginia-story/oclc/6226727
Tennis, Joe. Southwest Virginia Crossroads: An Almanac of Place Names and Places to See. Johnson City, TN: Overmountain Press, 2004. https://www.worldcat.org/title/southwest-virginia-crossroads-an-almanac-of-place-names-and-places-to-see/oclc/56413842
Historical Marker Database. “Virginia / Tennessee State Line.” https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=104316
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “County Economic Status and Distressed Areas in Appalachian Virginia, Fiscal Year 2025.” June 2024. https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/CountyEconomicStatusandDistressAreasFY2025Virginia.pdf
Author Note: Blackwater is one of those Appalachian communities that shows up best when you follow the records sideways through creeks, churches, post offices, roads, and old land books. I wanted this piece to treat the salt lick and Big Door Church not as footnotes, but as the anchors that kept the place visible.