Appalachian Community Histories – Tuggleville, Bell County: Puckett Creek, the Tuggle Name, and a Community Kept in the Records
Tuggleville sits in the kind of Bell County landscape where a community can be easy to pass and still hard to understand without a map. The name belongs to an unincorporated place along Puckett Creek, north of Black Snake and southeast of Blackmont, in the eastern part of Bell County near the old mountain and coalfield roads that connect the Cumberland River country with the hollows around Hulen and the Harlan County line. The United States Geological Survey’s Balkan quadrangle places this neighborhood among creek bottoms, steep ridges, small road corridors, and nearby named places that help explain how Tuggleville fit into the larger settlement pattern of southeastern Kentucky.
Like many small Appalachian communities, Tuggleville does not appear in the records as a town with a courthouse square, a charter, or a long list of public institutions. Its history has to be reconstructed from place-name records, old maps, county order books, postal studies, school records, road maps, geology reports, and family names. That kind of history is quieter, but it is not empty. Tuggleville’s story begins with land, water, kinship, and the gradual way a family name became fixed to a place.
Puckett Creek Before Tuggleville
Long before the name Tuggleville became the point of reference, Puckett Creek was already part of Bell County’s geography and settlement memory. Henry Harvey Fuson described Puckett’s Creek as rising in the Martin’s Fork range of Cumberland Mountain in Harlan County, entering Bell County below the mouth of Rocky Branch, and flowing west into the Cumberland River near Hulen. He also placed it among the southeastern and southern drainages of Bell County, along with the Cumberland River, Browney’s Creek, Hance’s Creek, Yellow Creek, and the Clear Creeks.
That matters because Tuggleville was never just a dot on a map. It belonged to a creek system. Roads, farms, school districts, mail routes, and later coalfield activity followed the valleys where people could travel and live. Puckett Creek helped tie this small community to Black Snake, Blackmont, Hulen, the Cumberland River, and the wider Bell and Harlan County borderland.
Fuson’s account also shows that Puckett Creek was remembered as one of the local divisions through which early Bell County settlement could be understood. When he organized the county’s early settlers, he treated Puckett’s Creek as one of the natural sections of the county, alongside places such as Red Bird, Straight Creek, and the river below Puckett’s Creek.
The Tuggle Name in the Local Record
The strongest clue to Tuggleville’s name is the Tuggle family. R. M. Rennick’s study of Bell County post offices gives the clearest place-name explanation, saying that the vicinity was called Tuggle, later Tuggleville, for local man Ralph Tuggle. Rennick’s work is especially valuable because it drew on United States Post Office Department site-location records, the kind of primary postal source that often preserves local names before they become standardized on modern maps.
Ralph Tuggle also appears in the older family context preserved by Fuson. In Fuson’s discussion of the Howard family network around Puckett Creek, Cassie Howard is listed as having married Ralph Tuggle. Fuson then places several Howard relatives on Puckett Creek, showing how the Tuggle name was connected to a broader local web of families, marriages, and creek settlements.
County school records add another piece. In August 1872, John Goodin, Commissioner of the Common Schools of Bell County, reported the county’s school districts and teachers. Fuson’s Volume II preserves that entry from Bell County Order Book No. 1, page 273, including “No. 23, R. Tuggle.” That does not by itself prove the later community name, but it does show the Tuggle name in Bell County’s public record during the early years of the county’s school system.
Taken together, the records suggest that Tuggleville was not named through a promotional scheme or a formal town founding. It appears to have grown from the older name Tuggle, attached to a local man and family, then carried forward into the place-name tradition of Puckett Creek.
Mail, Maps, and the Naming of a Community
Postal records are often among the best sources for Appalachian place names because mail service required a community to be described in relation to roads, creeks, railroads, and nearby offices. The National Archives explains that Post Office site-location reports were used by the Topographer’s Office to help prepare postal route maps and to record the placement or movement of post offices. These reports commonly asked for county, state, mail route, distance to nearest route, and nearby rivers, creeks, roads, canals, and railroads. Many also included a sketch map or annotated map showing the approximate post office location.
For Bell County, the relevant National Archives microfilm is Kentucky Roll 207, which covers Bath through Bell counties. That makes the site-location reports an important next stop for anyone trying to verify exactly how the Tuggle or Tuggleville name appeared in postal use.
Rennick’s post office research points in the same direction. By preserving the statement that the vicinity was first called Tuggle and later Tuggleville, his work helps bridge the gap between family history and official place-name history. In communities like this one, the post office record is often where a local name becomes visible to the outside world.
Tuggleville on the Balkan Quadrangle
The USGS Balkan quadrangle is one of the most useful visual records for Tuggleville. The 1954 edition shows the steep terrain around the Cumberland River, Puckett Creek, Black Snake, Blackmont, Hulen, and the surrounding hollows. It also shows why the community’s history should be read through movement as much as settlement. Roads follow the water. Houses and named places sit where the valley gives them room. Ridges divide one small neighborhood from another.
The modern Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Bell County map continues to place Tuggleville among the small communities and road corridors of eastern Bell County. The map labels Black Snake and Tuggleville in the same corridor and shows the importance of KY 72 in that part of the county.
That road and map context helps explain why Tuggleville belongs with other nearby community histories. Blackmont, Hulen, Black Snake, Balkan, Callaway, Tejay, Insull, and Molus all appear in the same broader landscape of creek mouths, river bends, railroad-era development, coalfield routes, and small mountain settlements. Tuggleville’s story is small, but it is not isolated.
Water, Coal, and the Physical Setting
The physical setting around Tuggleville also places it within Bell County’s coalfield and water history. The Kentucky Geological Survey’s 1981 report, “Quality of Surface Water in Bell County, Kentucky,” gathered reconnaissance data from 71 stream sites in response to the need for baseline information related to surface-mining regulations. The report described Bell County as especially suited for that kind of study because of past and current coal mining, mining’s distribution across different stratigraphic units, and the range of disturbed and undisturbed drainage basins in the county.
A search of that report identifies sampling at Puckett Creek at Tuggleville, which makes the community part of the environmental record as well as the place-name record. In other words, Tuggleville appears not only as a family-name community on a creek, but also as a point of reference in the study of Bell County streams and the coalfield landscape.
The USGS geologic map of the Balkan quadrangle, published in 1973 by A. J. Froelich and James Tazelaar, adds another layer. It covers Bell and Harlan counties at a 1:24,000 scale and gives the geologic context for the terrain around Tuggleville, Puckett Creek, and the surrounding ridges.
A Community in Fragments, but Not Forgotten
Tuggleville is the kind of place that reminds researchers how Appalachian communities often survive in fragments. A road name here. A creek name there. A family in a county history. A teacher in an order book. A postal note. A topographic label. A water-sampling station. A surname in school records.
Even the Tuggle and Tuggles surname trail reaches beyond the immediate place-name question. Black in Appalachia’s Community History Digital Archive includes Lincoln School registration cards for the Tuggles surname, sourced from Bell County Schools and Middlesboro Independent Schools. That record should not be treated as proof of Tuggleville’s naming, but it is a useful reminder that family names often remain scattered across school, church, cemetery, and migration records long after a community’s public institutions have changed or disappeared.
For Tuggleville, the most reliable story is not a legend. It is a research trail. The place was tied to Puckett Creek. The name appears to have grown from Tuggle, associated by Rennick with Ralph Tuggle. The Tuggle name appears in Fuson’s account of local family networks and in an 1872 school record preserved from Bell County Order Book No. 1. The community then became part of the map record, the road record, and the environmental record of Bell County.
That is often how small places endure. They do not always leave behind monuments. Sometimes they leave a name on a creek road, a line in a county book, and enough evidence for later generations to find them again.
Sources & Further Reading
Cook, Robert B., Jr., and Reese E. Mallette. “Quality of Surface Water in Bell County, Kentucky.” Kentucky Geological Survey, Information Circular 5, Series XI, 1981. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kgs_ic/33/
Cook, Robert B., Jr., and Reese E. Mallette. “Quality of Surface Water in Bell County, Kentucky.” Full PDF. Kentucky Geological Survey, 1981. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=kgs_ic
Froelich, A. J., and James Tazelaar. “Geologic Map of the Balkan Quadrangle, Bell and Harlan Counties, Kentucky.” U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle 1127, 1973. https://doi.org/10.3133/gq1127
Fuson, Henry Harvey. History of Bell County Kentucky, Volume 1. KYGenWeb transcription. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history1.htm
Fuson, Henry Harvey. History of Bell County Kentucky, Volume 2. KYGenWeb transcription. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history2.htm
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “2016 Gas Production Report.” Production Reports Library. https://eec.ky.gov/_layouts/15/download.aspx?SourceUrl=https%3A%2F%2Feec.ky.gov%2FNatural-Resources%2FOil-and-Gas%2FProduction+Reports+Library%2F2016+Gas+Production+Report.xlsx
Kentucky Geological Survey. “KY Geode: KGS Oil and Gas Wells Search.” University of Kentucky. https://kgs.uky.edu/kygeode/services/oilgas/
Kentucky Geological Survey. “KGS Interactive Map Services.” University of Kentucky. https://kygs.uky.edu/maps/
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Bell County State Primary Road System.” https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Bell.pdf
National Archives. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837 to 1950.” https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
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
United States Geological Survey. “Balkan, KY, 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle.” 1954. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Balkan_708112_1954_24000_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Balkan, Kentucky 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle.” USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, 1954. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KY_Balkan_708112_1954_24000_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System Domestic Names Search Application.” The National Map. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView.” National Geologic Map Database. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States Geological Survey. “Topographic Maps.” National Geospatial Program. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/topographic-maps
United States Geological Survey. “What Is the Geographic Names Information System?” U.S. Board on Geographic Names. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/what-geographic-names-information-system-gnis
FamilySearch. “Bell County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Bell_County,_Kentucky_Genealogy
Hometown Locator. “Puckett Creek in Bell County, KY.” Kentucky Gazetteer. https://kentucky.hometownlocator.com/maps/feature-map,ftc,1,fid,501413,n,puckett%20creek.cfm
Mapcarta. “Puckett Creek.” https://mapcarta.com/20956380
Black in Appalachia. “TUGGLES.” Community History Digital Archive. https://blackinappalachia.omeka.net/items/show/2085
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Author Note: Tuggleville is one of those Bell County places that asks the researcher to slow down and follow the creek, the family name, and the old records together. I hope this piece helps preserve a small Puckett Creek community that might otherwise be easy to miss on the map.