Appalachian Community Histories – Big Sinking, Wayne County: Post Offices, Baptist Meetings, and a Creek Community Near Monticello
Big Sinking is the kind of Wayne County place that still lives in records even when it does not always appear like a town on a modern map. The name remains on roads, church listings, old school memory, post office history, family obituaries, Baptist association records, and the creek itself. In the 2006 Kentucky Transportation Cabinet county road map, the name appears in Big Sinking Denny Hollow Road, Old Big Sinking School Road, and Big Sinking Road, all small official reminders that this was not just a watercourse but a remembered community.
Wayne County was formed in 1800 from Cumberland and Pulaski counties, with Monticello as the county seat. The county sits in south central Kentucky along the Tennessee border, in the Appalachian region recognized by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Big Sinking belongs to that older Wayne County landscape of creeks, meeting houses, schools, farms, and road names, where a community could be identified as much by a church and branch as by a post office.
The Name on the Creek
The first thing to understand about Big Sinking is that the name is tied to water and local usage. Robert M. Rennick’s work on Wayne County post offices is one of the strongest sources for the place name. Rennick noted that the stream appears on some maps as Sinking Creek, while people in the county commonly called it Big Sinking. That distinction matters because a researcher looking only for the official map name may miss the local name that appears in church, school, family, and postal memory.
The name also appears in federal geological work. Malcolm J. Munn’s 1914 U.S. Geological Survey bulletin on Wayne and McCreary counties places Big Sinking within the drainage landscape of eastern Wayne County, where the South Fork of the Cumberland River receives the waters of Rock Creek, Little South Fork, and Big Sinking. That makes the creek more than a label on a road sign. It was part of the natural geography that helped people describe land, travel, farms, and neighborhoods.
Big Sinking in Wayne County should not be confused with the Big Sinking oil field and Big Sinking Creek references in Lee County. Those Lee County sources belong to a different place. For a Wayne County community history, the useful trail is the Wayne County creek, the Baptist records, the post office work, the school road, the local family sources, and the records around Monticello and Pueblo.
The Post Office and the Community Name
Rennick’s post office work helps turn Big Sinking from a landscape name into a community name. His Wayne County post office survey says that Thomas Powell established a post office called Big Sinking to serve the locality of Powells Mills, a short distance up the Dry Fork of Big Sinking. That kind of detail is valuable because post offices often marked the practical center of a rural place. They were where families received mail, where roads and stores gained importance, and where a creek name could become a community identity.
Rennick’s work also ties the Big Sinking neighborhood to nearby local names, including Concord Church, Pueblo, and the Corder family. One search result from the same Rennick article notes that a related office closed in July 1951 while located in Hubert Corder’s store, serving the Concord Church neighborhood. That detail fits the way rural Wayne County communities often worked. A church, store, post office, road, and creek could overlap in one local world, even when later maps separated the names.
Big Sinking and Early Baptist Wayne County
The deepest historical record for Big Sinking comes through Baptist church history. Augusta Phillips Johnson’s A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky says the earliest settlers of Wayne and surrounding counties were largely Baptists from southwestern Virginia and North Carolina, especially from the Holston and Clinch settlements. In that same chapter, Johnson wrote that Old Concord Church on Big Sinking was thought to be the oldest church in Wayne County.
That statement places Big Sinking near the religious beginnings of the county. It does not mean every later reference to Big Sinking Church, Old Concord, and Concord Church should be treated as the same institution without checking the original church books. It does mean that Big Sinking was part of one of Wayne County’s oldest Baptist landscapes. The record is not just about doctrine. It is about settlers building meeting houses, burying grounds, road networks, and community memory along the creeks.
By 1809, Big Sinking was important enough to appear in the formation history of the Cumberland River Association. A Baptist history transcription says that Tate’s Creek Association dismissed six churches to form the new Cumberland River Association, including Big Sinking in Wayne County. Another account says those six churches, together with Beaver Creek and Otter Creek in Wayne County, met through messengers at Sinking Creek in Pulaski County and constituted the association.
In 1825, Big Sinking again appeared in Baptist association history. South Concord Baptist Association was constituted at the Big Sinking Meeting House in Wayne County on the fourth Saturday in October 1825. The churches involved included Big Sinking, Otter Creek, Cedar Sinking, Stephen’s Creek, Pleasant Point, New Salem, New Hope, White Oak, Monticello, Bethel, and Concord, with a combined membership of 462. The ministers named in the record included Matthew Floyd, Richard Barrier, William Smith, Henry Tuggle, and Thomas Hansford.
Those names show how Big Sinking stood inside a wider religious network. It was not isolated. It was linked to Monticello, White Oak, Bethel, New Salem, Otter Creek, and other Wayne County and nearby congregations. The meeting house was important enough to host association organization, and later general meetings were appointed for places including Monticello, White Oak, and Big Sinking.
Mathew Floyd, Richard Barrier, and the Church Record
The American Baptist Register for 1852 gives another important snapshot. Under the South Cumberland River Association, it lists Big Sinking in Wayne County with Mathew Floyd connected to the entry and a membership figure of 93. The register says its returns were mainly based on church statistics for 1851, which makes this a near contemporary denominational source for Big Sinking’s mid nineteenth century church life.
Richard Barrier also appears in the larger Baptist history surrounding Big Sinking. J. H. Spencer’s History of Kentucky Baptists and later Baptist history summaries place Barrier among the ministers connected to the early Cumberland River and South Concord church networks. Genealogical sources repeat the tradition that Barrier was the first pastor of Big Sinking Baptist Church, though that detail should be treated as a supporting tradition unless confirmed in original church records.
The safer conclusion is still strong. Big Sinking was part of Wayne County’s Baptist world from the early 1800s onward. It appears in association formation records, denominational statistics, local county history, and later church memory. For a rural community, that is a substantial paper trail.
A Church That Continued
Big Sinking Baptist Church did not remain only a nineteenth century reference. The Kentucky Baptist Convention’s current church listing places Big Sinking Baptist Church at 938 Highway 1258, Monticello, Kentucky. That listing is not a deep historical source by itself, but it confirms the continued presence of the institution in the modern church landscape of Wayne County.
The church also appears in twentieth and twenty first century memory through obituaries and oral history descriptions. Eastern Kentucky University’s William H. Berge Oral History Center indexes interviews connected to Big Sinking Baptist Church, including Wayne County natives and church members such as Dorothy Morrow, Homer Roberts, Lola Corder, and Herbert Corder. Those interviews are important because they preserve the kind of local memory that courthouse deeds and denominational minutes rarely include.
Big Sinking School and Pueblo
The school is another key part of the community’s story. The county road map preserves Old Big Sinking School Road, and family memory gives the name life. Velda Jane Roberts’ obituary says she was born in the Big Sinking community of Wayne County in 1927 and attended Big Sinking School at Pueblo through the eighth grade. The same obituary says her family attended Big Sinking Baptist Church and that she was baptized in Big Sinking Creek by Wiley Jones.
That one obituary ties together the community’s main historical anchors: Big Sinking as birthplace, Pueblo as school location, Big Sinking Baptist Church as religious home, and Big Sinking Creek as the place of baptism. It shows how local identity survived not just in official records but in the way people told the story of a life.
Other community memory sources point in the same direction. Obituaries and local references connect Big Sinking families such as Roberts, Corder, Dick, Morrow, Denney, Powell, Floyd, and Barrier to the church, school, roads, and creek. These sources should be used carefully, but they are valuable because they preserve the community as people remembered it, not only as institutions recorded it.
What the Records Preserve
Big Sinking’s history is not built around one courthouse square or one famous event. It is built from a creek name, a meeting house, a post office, a school, a church, and the families who kept those names in use. The strongest records suggest a community that formed around water, worship, roads, and kinship. Its name remained useful because it described a real place in people’s daily lives.
That is why Big Sinking matters. It reminds us that Appalachian history is often found in the smaller names that survive in church minutes, old roads, school memories, association records, and family stories. Big Sinking was never just a creek on the edge of Monticello. It was a Wayne County neighborhood where people worshiped, learned, farmed, traveled, married, buried their dead, and remembered where they came from.
Sources & Further Reading
Rennick, Robert M. “Wayne County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/385/
Rennick, Robert M. The Post Offices of Wayne County, Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1390&context=kentucky_county_histories
Wayne County Clerk. “Online Records.” Wayne County Clerk’s Office, Monticello, Kentucky. https://wayne.countyclerk.us/online-records/
Wayne County Clerk. “Home.” Wayne County Clerk’s Office, Monticello, Kentucky. https://wayne.countyclerk.us/
FamilySearch. “Deeds, 1800–1901; General Index to Deeds, 1800–1960.” FamilySearch Catalog. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/105782
FamilySearch. “Wayne County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Wayne_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Wayne County Road Series Map. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, 2006. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/Maps/wayne_cmap.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census.” National Archives. https://1950census.archives.gov/
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census Records.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950
National Archives and Records Administration. “Enumeration District Maps.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950/ed-maps
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Kentucky Land Office.” Kentucky Secretary of State. https://sos.ky.gov/land/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Patent Series Overview.” Kentucky Secretary of State. https://sos.ky.gov/land/non-military/patents/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Baptist Convention. “Big Sinking Baptist Church.” Kentucky Baptist Convention. https://www.kybaptist.org/churches/big-sinking-baptist-church/
Burrage, Henry S., ed. The American Baptist Register for 1852. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1852. https://archive.org/stream/americanbaptistr00burr/americanbaptistr00burr_djvu.txt
Spencer, J. H. A History of Kentucky Baptists. Vol. 2. Cincinnati: J. R. Baumes, 1886. https://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/spencer.ky.bap.v2.sect10.html
Masters, Frank M. A History of Baptists in Kentucky. Louisville: Kentucky Baptist Historical Society, 1953. https://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.baptists.masters.chp17.miss.anti.miss.associations.html
Masters, Frank M. A History of Baptists in Kentucky. Louisville: Kentucky Baptist Historical Society, 1953. https://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.baptists.masters.chp.30.three.decades.html
Baptist History Homepage. “Cumberland River Association of Baptist Churches, Kentucky: A Short History.” https://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.pulaski.cumber.rvr.asc.html
Johnson, Augusta Phillips. A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800–1900. Louisville: Standard Printing Company, 1939. https://seekingmyroots.com/members/files/H002178.pdf
Johnson, Augusta Phillips. A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800–1900, chapter 5, “Churches and Preachers.” Genealogy Trails. https://genealogytrails.com/ken/wayne/chapter_5.html
Johnson, Augusta Phillips. A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800–1900, chapter 8, “Newspapers.” Genealogy Trails. https://genealogytrails.com/ken/wayne/chapter_8.html
Munn, Malcolm J. Reconnaissance of the Oil and Gas Fields in Wayne and McCreary Counties, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 579. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b579
Munn, Malcolm J. Reconnaissance of the Oil and Gas Fields in Wayne and McCreary Counties, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 579. PDF. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0579/report.pdf
Eastern Kentucky University. “Browse Interviews: Big Sinking Baptist Church.” William H. Berge Oral History Center. https://oralhistory.eku.edu/items/browse?tags=Big+Sinking+Baptist+Church
USGenWeb Archives. “Wayne County, Kentucky Archives Table of Contents.” https://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/wayne/wayne.html
Wayne County Public Library. “Wayne County Public Library, KY.” Community History Archives. https://communityhistoryarchives.com/places/wayne-county-public-library-ky/
Advantage Archives. “Digital Archive of Wayne County Public Library.” https://wcpl.advantage-preservation.com/
OldNews. “Wayne County Outlook Historical Archive.” https://www.oldnews.com/en/newspapers/united-states/kentucky/monticello/wayne-county-outlook
LDS Genealogy. “Wayne County, Kentucky Newspapers and Obituaries.” https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/Wayne-County-Newspapers-and-Obituaries.htm
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Wayne County, Kentucky.” https://www.kyatlas.com/21231.html
Hickey Funeral Home. “Dorothy Roberts Morrow Obituary.” May 5, 2011. https://www.hickeyfuneralhome.com/obituaries/dorothy-morrow
Hickey Funeral Home. “Mildred Irene Dick Obituary.” April 15, 2013. https://www.hickeyfuneralhome.com/obituaries/mildred-dick
Hickey Funeral Home. “Velda Jane Roberts Obituary.” June 24, 2020. https://www.hickeyfuneralhome.com/obituaries/velda-roberts
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Author Note: Big Sinking is a reminder that some Appalachian communities survive less through town limits than through creek names, church records, school memories, and family stories. I wrote this one carefully because Wayne County’s Big Sinking can easily be confused with other Kentucky places that share the name.