Appalachian Community Histories – Arjay, Bell County: Straight Creek, Hanby Mine, and a Coal Camp Kept in the Records
Arjay sits in Bell County on the coalfield road north and east of Pineville, where the Left Fork of Straight Creek cuts through a narrow valley shaped by ridges, rail lines, roads, and mines. Like many places in southeastern Kentucky, Arjay is easy to pass through quickly but harder to understand unless the old records are placed side by side. A post office entry, a mine inspection report, a federal photograph caption, a folk song catalog card, and a later mine safety record each preserve a different piece of the same community.
The place name itself comes from the coal industry. Robert M. Rennick’s Bell County post office history, preserved in a KYGenWeb transcription, identifies Arjay as a coal town along Kentucky 66 and the Left Fork of Straight Creek, nearly three miles northeast of Pineville. The same entry says the name came from the initials of coal operator R. J. Asher and that the Arjay post office was established on February 23, 1911, with George W. Hairston as postmaster.
That date matters. Arjay was not just a settlement that happened to have a mine nearby. Its recorded identity grew out of the same early twentieth century coal expansion that built new camps, opened post offices, extended railroad branches, and brought families into valleys where the geography allowed mining, hauling, and company settlement to meet.
New Arjay and the Straight Creek Seam
By 1920, the New Arjay Coal Company was visible in Kentucky’s official mine inspection records. The State Department of Mines listed the company at Arjay, Kentucky, and placed its mine on a branch line of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The report said the mine worked the Straight Creek seam, used pick work and solid shooting, and hauled coal by mules. It was inspected on August 20, 1920. The company’s main office was in Pineville, L. A. Bowling was listed as president and general manager, and Rice Griffin was named mine foreman.
That brief inspection entry gives Arjay a sharper outline. It was connected to Pineville by business and administration, to the L&N by transportation, and to the Straight Creek seam by geology. The coal was not an abstract resource. It was cut, shot, loaded, and hauled by men and animals in a valley where the mine, the branch line, and the community depended on one another.
The same mine report places New Arjay among a larger cluster of Straight Creek and nearby Bell County operations. Other entries in the surrounding pages name mines at Forks of Straight Creek, Jenson, Cary, Elliotts Branch, and other points tied to the L&N’s branch-line coal geography. Arjay belonged to that web of small company towns and working mines rather than standing alone as an isolated place.
Arjay in the Folk Record
Arjay’s coal history is the clearest part of its public record, but it was not the whole life of the place. In 1937, Alan Lomax and Elizabeth Lyttleton documented music connected to Arjay for what is now the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. One catalog card for “Fare You Well, Green Fields” names Bradley Browning as singer, gives Arjay, Kentucky, as the place of creation, and dates the item to September 9, 1937.
That record is important because it catches Arjay as a cultural place, not only as an industrial one. The community was part of the coalfield economy, but it also belonged to the older musical and oral traditions of the mountains. A federal music collector’s card and a state mine inspector’s entry tell different kinds of truth. Together they show that Arjay had both work rhythms and song traditions, both company records and family memory.
Russell Lee Comes to Arjay
The richest surviving visual record of Arjay appears to come from August 31, 1946, when documentary photographer Russell Lee photographed the Fox Ridge Mining Company’s Hanby Mine community. Lee’s work was part of a national survey of bituminous coal communities conducted in 1946 under a strike-ending agreement involving the Department of the Interior and the United Mine Workers of America. The National Archives explains that the survey documented miners, families, homes, mines, medical facilities, sanitary conditions, and community life.
In Arjay, Lee’s camera did not only record mine buildings or coal equipment. It recorded homes beside railroad tracks, families at tables, children carrying water, porches, gardens, privies, burned houses, patched interiors, and the domestic work that held coal-camp life together. One National Archives image, now widely reproduced through public-domain collections, is titled “Houses along the railroad tracks. Fox Ridge Mining Company, Inc., Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky” and is dated August 31, 1946.
The title alone says much. The houses were not simply in Arjay. They were along the railroad track. The community’s layout followed the infrastructure of coal. The valley, track, mine, and houses formed one working landscape. In that kind of camp, geography shaped daily life. Trains, coal cars, footpaths, garden patches, wells, privies, and company houses all existed close together because the valley allowed little wasted space.
Water, Rent, and Company Houses
The Russell Lee captions make Arjay unusually visible because they preserve conditions that many written mine reports leave out. One image, preserved through the U.S. Geological Survey’s public domain image collection, shows a miner’s daughter getting water at the well. The caption says the well was the only approved drinking water source in the camp. It also notes that a spring at the other end of the camp had been condemned by the public health officer, but that no warning sign marked it, and some families continued to use it because it was closer to their homes.
That one caption turns a photograph into a record of public health, family labor, and coal-camp inequality. A child carrying water was not just doing a household chore. She was part of a daily system created by the absence of safe, convenient water in every home. The approved well, the condemned spring, and the families still using the spring because of distance all show how coal-camp conditions worked in practice.
Another Lee photograph shows Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Broughton with their twelve-hour-old baby. Its caption says the family and their other son lived in a four-room house and paid seven dollars monthly rent to the Fox Ridge Mining Company.
A related Arjay photograph shows Andrew Broughton with 315 quarts of fruits and vegetables that his wife had canned that summer. The two records belong together. One shows a newborn child and a rented company house. The other shows the preserved food that helped a family get through the year. Coal-camp life was shaped by wages and rent, but also by gardens, canning, cooking, child care, hauling water, and the unpaid labor that made survival possible.
The Federal Camera and the Family Table
Lee’s Arjay images are powerful because they do not treat miners’ families as background. The photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Davis and their children eating dinner in the kitchen of their two-room house places the family table at the center of the historical record. The title identifies the Fox Ridge Mining Company, Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky, but the image itself points toward the intimate life of a coal camp household.
The same is true of the photographs of Gillie Wells, Ceph Holland’s family, Mack Jones and her children, burned houses, porches, privies, railroad-side homes, and miners’ children. These images were made for a federal survey, but they now serve another purpose. They restore names, faces, and household spaces to a place that otherwise might be reduced to a mine listing or a post office entry.
Arjay’s record therefore has two sides. In mine reports, the town appears through seams, haulage, inspection dates, and company officers. In Lee’s photographs, it appears through water buckets, dinner tables, newborn babies, garden produce, rent, and houses standing close to railroad tracks. Neither side is complete without the other.
Straight Creek Mining After the Camp Era
Arjay’s mining story did not end with the early camp period or with Russell Lee’s visit in 1946. Later records connect the Arjay area to Left Fork Mining Company and the Straight Creek No. 1 Mine. A 2006 Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing annual report listed Left Fork Mining Company at Arjay with mine number 10931-12, operator Benjamin R. Bennett, the Straight Creek seam, and 291,506 tons of underground rail coal production.
By 2011, the same state annual report series still listed Left Fork Mining Company at Arjay and the Straight Creek seam, but the entry showed zero tonnage while still listing men employed, days worked, and one reportable accident. Federal mine safety records also identify Straight Creek No. 1 Mine, MSHA I.D. No. 15-12564, as a Bell County mine connected to Left Fork Mining Company of Arjay. A 2010 Federal Register notice gave the company’s address as P.O. Box 405, Arjay, Kentucky, and identified the mine as Straight Creek No. 1 in Bell County.
These later records show continuity and change. The early New Arjay Coal Company report described mule haulage and pick work in 1920. The twenty-first century records belong to a different regulatory world, with mine identification numbers, formal safety petitions, production tables, and annual accident reporting. Yet the place name Arjay and the Straight Creek seam remain connected across the records.
Remembering Arjay in the Records
Arjay’s history is not preserved in one courthouse book or one local memory. It survives in scattered but unusually strong sources. Rennick’s post office work gives the name, the post office date, and the connection to R. J. Asher. Kentucky mine reports show New Arjay Coal Company working the Straight Creek seam by 1920. The Library of Congress places Arjay in the 1937 folk music record through Bradley Browning and the Lomax collection. Russell Lee’s 1946 photographs document Fox Ridge Mining Company’s Hanby Mine community in rare detail. Later mine safety and production records show Straight Creek mining still tied to Arjay decades after the classic coal-camp period.
Taken together, those sources make Arjay more than a dot on a Bell County map. They show a coal town built along a creek, a railroad, and a seam of coal. They show a place where families rented company houses, carried water, raised gardens, canned food, ate dinner in small kitchens, and lived under the daily pressures of mine work and camp conditions. They also show a community with music, memory, and names that survived beyond the company ledger.
Arjay’s story is the story of many Appalachian coal places, but the record here is unusually personal. The strongest sources do not only say that coal was mined. They show who lived there, how they lived, what they paid, where they drew water, what they grew, and how a narrow Bell County valley became home.
Sources & Further Reading
Lee, Russell. “Houses along the Railroad Tracks. Fox Ridge Mining Company, Inc., Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky.” Photograph. National Archives and Records Administration, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Houses_along_the_railroad_tracks._Fox_Ridge_Mining_Company,_Inc.,_Hanby_Mine,_Arjay,_Bell_County,_Kentucky_-_NARA_-_541143.jpg
Lee, Russell. “Typical Privy. Fox Ridge Mining Company, Inc., Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky.” Photograph. National Archives and Records Administration, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Typical_privy._Fox_Ridge_Mining_Company,_Inc.,_Hanby_Mine,_Arjay,_Bell_County,_Kentucky_-_NARA_-_541142.jpg
Lee, Russell. “Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Davis and Their Two Children Eating Dinner in the Kitchen of Their Two Room House. Fox Ridge Mining Company, Inc., Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky.” Photograph. National Archives and Records Administration, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mr._and_Mrs._Charlie_Davis_and_their_two_children_eating_dinner_in_the_kitchen_of_their_two_room_house._Fox_Ridge…_-_NARA_-_541144.jpg
Lee, Russell. “Andrew Broughton with Some of the 315 Quarts of Fruits and Vegetables Which His Wife Canned This Summer. Fox Ridge Mining Company, Inc., Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky.” Photograph. National Archives and Records Administration, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrew_Broughton_with_some_of_the_315_quarts_of_fruits_and_vegetables_which_his_wife_canned_this_summer._Fox_Ridge…_-_NARA_-_541153.jpg
Lee, Russell. “Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Broughton with Their Twelve Hour Old Baby. Fox Ridge Mining Company, Inc., Hanby Mine, Arjay, Bell County, Kentucky.” Photograph. National Archives and Records Administration, August 31, 1946. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mr._and_Mrs._Andrew_Broughton_with_their_twelve_hour_old_baby._They_and_their_other_son_live_in_a_four_room_house_for_which_they_pay_$7_monthly._Fox_Ridge_Mining_Company,_Inc.,_Hanb_-_DPLA_-_40f7a31804af3c65ba2d8a65bd23af25_(page_1).gif
National Archives and Records Administration. “Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey.” National Archives Museum. Accessed May 26, 2026. https://visit.archives.gov/whats-on/explore-exhibits/power-light-russell-lees-coal-survey
National Archives Foundation. “Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://archivesfoundation.org/exhibit/power-and-light/
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines of the State of Kentucky for the Year 1920. Frankfort, KY, 1921. https://archive.org/stream/annualreport41deptgoog/annualreport41deptgoog_djvu.txt
Kentucky Geological Survey. Annual Reports Collection. Kentucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky. Accessed May 26, 2026. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/index.asp
Jones, Daniel. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines, 1925. Kentucky Geological Survey digital archive. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky Department for Natural Resources, Office of Mine Safety and Licensing. 2006 Annual Report. Frankfort, KY, 2007. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Archived_Annual_Reports/2006%20Annual%20Report.pdf
Kentucky Department for Natural Resources, Office of Mine Safety and Licensing. 2011 Annual Report. Frankfort, KY, 2012. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Archived_Annual_Reports/2011%20Annual%20Report.pdf
Kentucky Division of Mine Safety. “Annual Reports.” Kentucky Mine Mapping Information System. Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.minemaps.ky.gov/Maps/AnnualReports
U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Petitions for Modification.” Federal Register 75, no. 136, July 16, 2010. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2010/07/16/2010-17323/petitions-for-modification
U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual Coal Report 2008. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, 2009. https://downloads.regulations.gov/OSM-2015-0002-0112/content.pdf
U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Coal Data.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/coal/data.php
Rennick, Robert M. “Bell County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky 383. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/383/
Rennick, Robert M. “Bell County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection 34. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/34/
Lomax, Alan, Elizabeth Lyttleton, and Bradley Browning. “Fare You Well, Green Fields.” Arjay, Kentucky, September 9, 1937. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc9999005.4510/
United States Census Bureau. “2020 Gazetteer Files.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/time-series/geo/gazetteer-files.html
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “State Primary Road System: Bell County.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Bell.pdf
U.S. Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
University of Kentucky Appalachian Center. Hearings. Digitized labor-hearing material, including testimony referencing Arjay, Kentucky. https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/HD9547_KA4.pdf
KYGenWeb. “Bell County, Kentucky Post Offices.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/bell/post_offices/post_offices.htm
KYGenWeb. “History of Bell County, Kentucky, Volume II.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history2.htm
RootsWeb. “Coal Mines in Bell County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kycoalmi/bellcomines.html
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” Accessed May 26, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Author Note: Arjay is one of those Bell County places where the record becomes powerful when mine reports, post office history, maps, and photographs are read together. The Russell Lee images make the community feel especially close, because they preserve not only coal work but also families, homes, water, rent, gardens, and daily life.