Appalachian Community Histories – Steubenville, Wayne County: Old Route 90, Baptist Ground, and an Oil Field Crossroads
Steubenville sits in Wayne County about five miles northeast of Monticello, along the road remembered as the old Monticello-Burnside Turnpike. It is easy to pass through a place like this and see only a road, a church, an old school, and the memory of a store. The records show more than that. Steubenville was a community tied to early settlement, Baptist worship, burial ground, turnpike travel, rural schooling, postal history, and the oil fields that once drew attention to this part of south-central Kentucky.
Wayne County itself was created in 1800 from parts of Pulaski and Cumberland Counties and named for General Anthony Wayne, the Revolutionary War officer whose name also shaped the county’s identity. Steubenville’s own name may point to another Revolutionary War figure, Friedrich von Steuben, the Prussian officer remembered for training Washington’s troops. Kentucky Atlas treats that name origin as possible rather than certain, which is the careful way to tell it.
An Early Settlement Northeast of Monticello
The strongest early thread in Steubenville’s story runs through Anthony Gholson. Augusta Phillips Johnson’s A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800-1900 says that in the fall of 1801 Gholson moved from Botetourt County, Virginia, to Wayne County and settled five miles northeast of Monticello. That description fits the Steubenville neighborhood and places the community’s recorded roots very close to the founding years of the county itself.
Johnson also records that in 1801 Anthony Gholson gave land for a Baptist church and burying ground at Steubenville. The first church structure was made of logs, later torn down in the 1880s and replaced by a frame building. That single detail gives Steubenville one of the clearest kinds of community history. Before the post office, before the oil field, and before the school building remembered by later generations, there was a meeting place and a burial ground.
The Gholson story should also be read honestly within the world of early Wayne County. Johnson’s family material describes Anthony Gholson as a man of property and says that he held enslaved people. That does not erase the church and cemetery history, but it places the early settlement in the fuller borderland history of Kentucky, where land, religion, family status, and slavery often stood beside one another in the same records.
From Oak Forest to Steubenville
The post office record helps show when Steubenville became a named public place. Kentucky Atlas says that an Oak Forest post office opened in the vicinity in 1842, probably about a mile northeast, then moved to the town and became Steubenville in 1851. It closed in 1854 and opened again in 1871. Robert M. Rennick’s Wayne County post office research is especially important here because post offices often preserve the paper trail of small Kentucky communities that never became incorporated towns.
Rennick’s post office work identifies the 1851 name change to Steubenville, the 1854 closing, and the 1871 re-establishment by Joseph A. Bohon. Jim Forte Postal History also lists Steubenville from 1871 to 1992 and Stubanville from 1851 to 1854, giving a useful postal-history clue for spelling and record searching. Kentucky Atlas gives 1995 as the final closing year, while Jim Forte and Gardens to Gables give 1992, so the safest wording is that Steubenville’s post office identity lasted into the late twentieth century.
That postal history matters because a post office was more than a mail stop. In a rural community, it was a place name made official. It told outsiders where a family lived, gave newspapers and court notices a location, and tied farms and churches to a wider map. For Steubenville, the post office record is one of the clearest bridges between the early Gholson settlement and the twentieth-century crossroads remembered by local residents.
The Turnpike and the Road Through the Community
Steubenville’s location on the Monticello-Burnside route made the road central to its story. Kentucky Atlas places the community on what was the Monticello-Burnside Turnpike and notes that the turnpike was built from 1876 to 1900. Gardens to Gables identifies the Burnside Pike as Wayne County’s first toll road and describes it as the route between Monticello and Burnside, in Pulaski County.
That road connected Steubenville to a wider transportation pattern. Burnside was a railroad and river-linked point north of Wayne County, while Monticello was the county seat. A community on that route could serve travelers, mail, churchgoers, students, farmers, and later oil-field traffic. The road made Steubenville visible. When later highway changes moved traffic away from the older route, the place did not disappear from memory, but it became easier to miss. Gardens to Gables notes that KY 90 was rerouted to the Monticello bypass in the 1980s and that the former turnpike route became a county road.
Church, Cemetery, School, and Store
The church and cemetery are among the deepest anchors of Steubenville. Johnson’s account of the 1801 Baptist church and burying ground gives the community an early religious history, while the Kentucky Historical Society cemetery database places Steubenville Cemetery 3.3 miles northeast of Monticello on Old Road 90. The KHS listing also notes burials connected to military service, including General Joshua Buster of the 53rd Regiment Kentucky Militia and Civil War veterans Capt. F. Bates and W. Pannell.
Nearby Spann Cemetery also appears in the KHS Wayne County cemetery database, southeast of Steubenville toward Wright Hollow Branch. Its note names Moses Wright, born in 1788 and died in 1871, as a War of 1812 soldier. These cemetery entries show how the Steubenville area was part of a wider rural settlement pattern, where family grounds, church grounds, and small neighborhood cemeteries preserved the names of people who rarely appear in county histories.
By the twentieth century, Steubenville also had the familiar landmarks of a rural Kentucky crossroads. Gardens to Gables describes an old store, a former two-room school built in 1934, and the church building across the road. The school remained in service until 1960, according to the same field account, and the article notes that Wayne County still had dozens of one-room and two-room schools in the late 1950s.
Local memories collected in the comments to the Gardens to Gables article add the human layer that official records often miss. Former residents remembered the store, the post office, school lunches, teachers, and the church building. Those recollections should be treated as memory unless checked against school board records, post office records, and church minutes, but they are still valuable. They show that Steubenville was not just a map label. It was a place where children went to school, families picked up mail, people gathered around a stove, and church life marked the week.
Oil Beneath the Farms
Steubenville also belongs to Wayne County’s oil history. Augusta Phillips Johnson wrote that oil strikes were made at Steubenville and Mill Springs, placing the community within a larger county story that included Sunnybrook, Slickford, Cooper, Parmleysville, and other fields. Johnson described Wayne County as a place where farming, timber, coal, and oil all shaped the local economy, though she also made clear that the county did not become a large oil center on the scale boosters might have hoped.
The strongest primary source for this part of the story is Malcolm J. Munn’s 1914 U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 579, Reconnaissance of Oil and Gas Fields in Wayne and McCreary Counties, Kentucky. The USGS publication record identifies it as a federal bulletin by Munn, published by the Government Printing Office in 1914.
Munn’s report gives Steubenville a place in the technical record of Kentucky oil production. The report described the Steubenville field as extending from the Sue Jones farm south of Steubenville in a direction slightly south of east for about five and a half or six miles, with the oil-bearing belt ranging from about one-half mile to one and a half miles in width. It also stated that the better wells initially produced from 100 to perhaps 500 barrels a day, though most produced less than 100 barrels a day at their best.
Munn also noted that some of the best wells were on the John Bohon farm, about half a mile south of Steubenville. That detail connects the oil-field record back to the family names that appear in postal and community history. Joseph A. Bohon is tied to the 1871 re-establishment of the post office, while John Bohon’s farm appears in the oil-field report. The repeated family name does not prove a single story by itself, but it shows how landholding, mail, and mineral development overlapped in rural Wayne County.
A Crossroads Left in the Records
Steubenville’s story is not one single event. It is a layered community history. The early records point to Anthony Gholson, Baptist worship, and a burying ground. The postal records show Oak Forest, Stubanville or Steubenville, closure, reopening, and a name that stayed in use for generations. The turnpike tied the place to Monticello and Burnside. The school and store gave the community its twentieth-century shape. The oil field placed the farms south and east of Steubenville in a federal geological report.
That is why Steubenville matters. Many Appalachian communities never became towns in the formal sense. They did not always have city limits, mayors, newspapers, or monuments. Their history has to be gathered from post office ledgers, old roads, cemeteries, church notes, school memories, land records, maps, and government reports. Steubenville survives in exactly that way, not as a footnote, but as a Wayne County crossroads where the records still point back to a living community.
Sources & Further Reading
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Steubenville, Kentucky.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-steubenville.html
Rennick, Robert M. “Wayne County – Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky 385. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/385/
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Wayne County, Kentucky.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1390&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rennick, Robert M. “Wayne County – Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection 139. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/139/
Morehead State University. “Robert M. Rennick Kentucky Place Name Collection.” ScholarWorks at Morehead State University. Accessed May 25, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/robert_rennick_collection/
Jim Forte Postal History. “Wayne County, Kentucky Post Offices.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?county=Wayne&pagenum=4&searchtext=&state=KY&task=display
National Archives. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” National Archives. Last reviewed May 26, 2020. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
Brother, Janie-Rice. “Kentucky Places: Steubenville, Wayne County, Kentucky.” Gardens to Gables, July 4, 2018. https://www.gardenstogables.com/kentucky-places-steubenville-wayne-county-kentucky/
Johnson, Augusta Phillips. A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800–1900. Louisville, KY: Standard Printing Company, 1939. https://seekingmyroots.com/members/files/H002178.pdf
Johnson, Augusta Phillips. A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800–1900. FamilySearch Digital Library. https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/215889-a-century-of-wayne-county-kentucky-1800-1900
Johnson, Augusta Phillips. A Century of Wayne County Kentucky, 1800–1900. Transcribed at Genealogy Trails. https://genealogytrails.com/ken/wayne/
Munn, Malcolm J. Reconnaissance of Oil and Gas Fields in Wayne and McCreary Counties, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 579. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b579
Munn, Malcolm J. Reconnaissance of Oil and Gas Fields in Wayne and McCreary Counties, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 579. Full report PDF. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0579/report.pdf
Kentucky Historical Society. “Cemeteries in Kentucky Database: Wayne County.” Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/LIB/id/488/
Kentucky Historical Society. “Wayne County.” Cemeteries in Kentucky Database PDF. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/api/collection/LIB/id/488/download
Find a Grave. “Steubenville Cemetery.” Wayne County, Kentucky. Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/76208/steubenville-cemetery
Find a Grave. “Spann Cemetery.” Wayne County, Kentucky. Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/76201/spann-cemetery
LDSGenealogy. “Wayne County KY Cemetery Records.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/Wayne-County-Cemetery-Records.htm
Wayne County Cemeteries Online. “Wayne County, Kentucky Cemeteries.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kywaycem/tableofcontents.html
Wayne County Public Library. “Historical Newspapers of Wayne County.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.wcpl.info/content/historical-newspapers-wayne-county
Wayne County Public Library and Advantage Archives. “Digital Archive of Wayne County Public Library.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://wcpl.advantage-preservation.com/
Community History Archives. “Wayne County Public Library, KY.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://communityhistoryarchives.com/places/wayne-county-public-library-ky/
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
Kentucky Geography Network. “Kentucky Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://opengisdata.ky.gov/datasets/ky-geographic-names-information-system-gnis
TopoZone. “Steubenville Topo Map, Wayne County KY.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.topozone.com/kentucky/wayne-ky/city/steubenville-2/
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
United States Geological Survey. “Geologic Map of the Monticello Quadrangle, Wayne County, Kentucky.” USGS Open-File Report 74-262, 1974. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-monticello-quadrangle-wayne-county-kentucky-0
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Generalized Geologic Map for Land-Use Planning: Wayne County, Kentucky.” Map and Chart 93, Series XII. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc93_12.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Wayne County Road Series Map.” 2006. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/Maps/wayne_cmap.pdf
Shearer, Guy Cooper. “William Armstrong Cooper, 1813–1909.” The Filson Club History Quarterly 25, no. 2. https://filsonhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/publicationpdfs/25-2-5_William-Armstrong-Cooper-1813-1909_Shearer-Guy-C..pdf
Edwards, Bobby Gale. Glimpses of Historical Wayne County, Kentucky. Lexington, KY: Thoroughbred Press, 1970. WorldCat record. https://search.worldcat.org/zh-cn/title/Glimpses-of-historical-Wayne-County-Kentucky/oclc/115782
Wayne County Historical Society. “Genealogy Library.” Elizabeth Furr Duncan Library. Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.waynecountymuseum.com/genealogy_library
Wayne County, Kentucky Government. “Wayne County.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://waynecounty.ky.gov/
FamilySearch. “Wayne County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Wayne_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Steubenville is the kind of Wayne County place that shows how much history can survive in post office records, old roads, cemeteries, church ground, and local memory. I wrote this one as a reminder that even a small crossroads can hold several layers of Appalachian history if the records are followed carefully.