Appalachian Community Histories – Premier, Bell County: A Coal Company Name in the Middlesboro Field
Premier is one of those Bell County names that survives best in the records of coal, roads, railroads, and maps. It does not appear in the historical record with the same public face as Middlesboro, Pineville, or the larger coal towns along Straight Creek and the Cumberland River. Instead, Premier comes into view through company names, mine reports, federal wartime orders, court cases, and the nearby name Paramount.
That kind of record trail is common in the mountains. Some places grew around churches, stores, schools, or post offices. Others were known first by the mine, the tipple, the railroad siding, or the company that employed the people who lived nearby. Premier seems to belong mostly to that second group. Its clearest history is tied to Premier Coal Company, Premier Jellico Coal Corporation, and the coal country west and southwest of Middlesboro.
Bell County itself sits in Kentucky’s Eastern Coal Field. The county was formed in 1867 from parts of Harlan and Knox counties, and its landscape includes the Cumberland Gap, Pineville, Middlesboro, and the mountain corridors that connected southeastern Kentucky to Tennessee and Virginia. Official county history places Bell County in the Eastern Coal Field, while Kentucky Geological Survey mapping describes a county where mountainous terrain dominates and communities often follow stream valleys. Middlesboro is the major exception, set in the basin long associated with the Middlesboro impact structure.
Premier and Paramount
The strongest clue for Premier’s location and identity is its repeated connection with Paramount. A Kentucky Court of Appeals case from 1942 gives one of the clearest statements. In Guyan Machinery Co. v. Premier Coal Co., the court recorded that on June 24, 1939, Premier Coal Company purchased mining machinery and equipment from Guyan Machinery Company. The machinery was to be delivered to the company’s mine at Paramount, near Middlesboro, Kentucky.
That detail matters. It does not prove that Premier and Paramount were exactly the same place in every record, but it does show that the Premier Coal Company mine was physically tied to Paramount and the Middlesboro coal field. The same case also places the dispute in Bell Circuit Court and gives a small business snapshot of the mine economy. Machinery was bought on notes, partial payments were made, and the unpaid balance became a lawsuit. Behind that legal dispute was the daily work of keeping an underground coal operation supplied, repaired, and producing.
Federal records strengthen the Premier and Paramount connection. In April 1943, the Federal Register published an Office of Price Administration order for Premier Jellico Coal Corporation of Middlesboro. The order identified coal produced at the company’s Premier Mine, Mine Index No. 378, in District No. 8, and set adjusted wartime coal prices under federal price controls.
Two years later, a June 1945 Federal Register listing connected Premier Jellico Coal Corporation of Middlesboro with “Premier, Paramount, Ky.” in a War Labor Disputes Act context. That federal wording is valuable because it places the two names together in the same wartime labor record. It also suggests that anyone researching Premier should treat Paramount as part of the same documentary neighborhood, while still checking maps, deeds, and mine records before treating the names as interchangeable.
The Mine in the State Records
The Kentucky Department of Mines annual reports are among the best primary sources for Premier. Search results from Kentucky Geological Survey copies of the 1927 and 1928 annual mine reports show Premier Coal Company appearing among Bell County operators. Those reports are the kind of records that can usually provide production figures, mine method, employee counts, ownership, inspection notes, and accident details when the full tables are checked page by page.
A later coal mine compilation hosted through RootsWeb lists Premier Coal Company at Middlesboro in Bell County from 1927 to 1942, and Premier Jellico Coal Corporation at Middlesboro from 1943 to 1953. That compilation should be treated as a guide rather than the final authority, but it points in the same direction as the federal records. The Premier name appears to have passed from Premier Coal Company into the wartime and postwar record of Premier Jellico Coal Corporation.
Local history also preserves the company name. Henry Harvey Fuson’s History of Bell County, Kentucky, Volume II, as transcribed by Bell County KYGenWeb, includes Premier Coal Company in a Middlesborough business listing and names Capt. W. E. Cabell as manager. Fuson’s list places Premier among the businesses, professionals, coal companies, stores, and services that made Middlesboro a commercial center for the surrounding mining district.
That kind of listing helps explain Premier’s place in the broader county story. The company was not just a remote opening in the mountains. It was connected to Middlesboro’s business world, to machinery suppliers, to federal coal pricing, to rail movement, and to the legal and labor systems that governed the coal industry during the middle decades of the twentieth century.
The Tipple and the Railroad Crossing
One of the most vivid records connected to Premier comes from McCarter v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co., decided by the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1951. The case arose from a February 10, 1948 accident at a private railroad crossing in Bell County not far from Middlesboro. O. H. McCarter was driving a Reo tractor truck and trailer loaded with fourteen tons of coal. The court stated that he was coming from the tipple of the Premier Coal Company.
The court’s description gives a rare physical picture of the Premier mining landscape. The road from the tipple ran straight and close to the railroad tracks. The truck had to make a sharp turn to cross. The tracks and road ran parallel for hundreds of feet, and the crossing was used heavily enough that testimony described hundreds of people passing over it during a day.
Court cases are not written as local history, but they often preserve the details local historians need. In this case, the record shows coal moving by truck from the Premier tipple, a Louisville & Nashville Railroad setting, a nearby private crossing, and a road pattern shaped by mine traffic. The case was decided on the legal question of contributory negligence, but for the history of Premier it does something else. It shows the mine as part of a busy working corridor where coal trucks, trains, mine roads, and everyday local travel met in the same narrow space.
Wartime Coal and Federal Oversight
The 1943 Federal Register order places Premier Jellico Coal Corporation inside the larger wartime coal economy. During World War II, coal was not only a local industry. It was a regulated fuel supply tied to transportation, industrial production, home heating, railroads, and federal price controls. The Office of Price Administration order for Premier Jellico Coal Corporation was issued under Maximum Price Regulation No. 120 for bituminous coal delivered from a mine or preparation plant.
The order named the company, its Middlesboro address, the Premier Mine, Mine Index No. 378, and District No. 8. It then set maximum prices for different size groups of coal and railroad locomotive fuel. For a small place like Premier, this is an unusually strong document. It confirms that the mine was not simply a local name remembered after the fact. It was known to federal regulators during the war and listed in the national record by mine index number.
The 1945 Federal Register labor listing adds another layer. By connecting Premier Jellico Coal Corporation, Middlesboro, and Premier or Paramount, Kentucky, it places the operation within wartime labor dispute oversight. This does not tell the whole story of the miners, their union activity, or the dispute itself, but it gives researchers a firm lead. Newspapers from Middlesboro, Pineville, Louisville, and regional labor papers may fill in the human side of that record.
A Coal Place Remembered Through Records
Premier’s story is not easy to write as a simple town history. The available records do not yet show a complete community narrative with schools, churches, families, stores, and postmasters all laid out in one place. Instead, Premier appears through the machinery of coal itself. It appears in a court case over mine equipment. It appears in annual mine reports. It appears in a federal coal price order. It appears in a wartime labor record. It appears in a railroad crossing case after a coal truck left the company tipple.
That kind of history is still important. In Appalachia, many places were built around work sites that later disappeared from the landscape. Tipples were removed. Mine portals closed. Railroad spurs were pulled up or grown over. Company names changed. A place that once meant employment, danger, travel, payday, and community memory could later survive only as a map label or a line in a government report.
Premier seems to be one of those places. Its history belongs to the Middlesboro coal field, to the Premier and Paramount records, and to the world of Bell County mining in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. The next step would be to check Bell County deeds, mineral leases, mine maps, Sanborn maps if available, local newspapers, and Kentucky Department of Mines reports year by year. Those records may reveal the families who lived near the mine, the men who worked underground, the accidents that shaped the community, and the exact relationship between Premier and Paramount.
For now, the surviving record already tells a meaningful story. Premier was not a large town in the way Middlesboro or Pineville were towns. It was a coal place, tied to a company, a mine, a tipple, a railroad, and a neighboring name. Its history was written in the paperwork of an industry that shaped Bell County, and in those records the name Premier still remains.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Office of Price Administration. “Order No. 176 Under Maximum Price Regulation No. 120, Premier Jellico Coal Corporation.” Federal Register 8, no. 69, April 8, 1943. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Federal_Register_1943-04-08-_Vol_8_Iss_69_%28IA_sim_federal-register-find_1943-04-08_8_69%29.pdf
United States Department of Labor. “War Labor Disputes Act Notices.” Federal Register 10, no. 119, June 16, 1945. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1945-06-16/pdf/FR-1945-06-16.pdf
Guyan Machinery Co. v. Premier Coal Co., 291 Ky. 84, 163 S.W.2d 284. Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1942. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/guyan-machinery-co-v-901851928
McCarter v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co., 236 S.W.2d 933. Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1951. https://law.justia.com/cases/kentucky/court-of-appeals/1951/236-s-w-2d-933-1.html
Kentucky Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines for the Year 1927. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Department of Mines, 1928. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1927.pdf
Kentucky Department of Mines. Annual Report of the State Department of Mines for the Year 1928. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Department of Mines, 1929. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/DanielReportMines1928.pdf
Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals. Annual Report. HathiTrust catalog record. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006206733
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” USGS. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
Kentucky Geographic Names Information System. “Kentucky Geographic Names Information System, GNIS.” Kentucky Open GIS Data. https://opengisdata.ky.gov/datasets/ky-geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “Fork Ridge, Tennessee-Kentucky, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangle.” USGS National Map. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/TN/TN_Fork_Ridge_20160414_TM_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView.” National Geologic Map Database. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Carey, Daniel I. Generalized Geologic Map for Land-Use Planning: Bell County, Kentucky. Kentucky Geological Survey, 2007. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kgs_mc/181/
Carey, Daniel I. Bell County, Kentucky. Kentucky Geological Survey, 2007. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc181_12.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Bell County, Kentucky.” Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1382&context=kentucky_county_histories
Fuson, Henry Harvey. History of Bell County, Kentucky. New York: Hobson Book Press, 1947. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102947598
Fuson, Henry Harvey. History of Bell County, Kentucky, Volume II. Transcribed by Bell County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history2.htm
Cornett, Tim. Bell County, Kentucky: A Brief History. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2009. https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/bell-county-kentucky-9781596298095
Bell County, Kentucky. “About Us.” Official Bell County Website. https://bellcounty.ky.gov/Pages/about.aspx
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Bell County, Kentucky.” University of Kentucky. https://www.kyatlas.com/21013.html
FamilySearch. “Bell County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Bell_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Bell County KYGenWeb. “Bell County Genealogy.” KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/bell/
RootsWeb. “Coal Mines in Bell County Kentucky.” RootsWeb Kentucky Coal Mine Records Compilation. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kycoalmi/bellcomines.html
TopoZone. “Topo Map of Cities in Bell County, Kentucky.” TopoZone. https://www.topozone.com/kentucky/bell-ky/city/
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Bell County, Kentucky State Primary Road System. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, 2024. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Bell.pdf
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” ARC. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” ARC. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Premier is the kind of Bell County place that has to be rebuilt from scattered records rather than one clean local history. I wrote this piece to preserve the coal-company, map, railroad, and federal-record trail before the name fades further from memory.