Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Edgar L. Bradley of Harlan, Kentucky
In late 1920, as a new coal settlement was taking shape along the Poor Fork of the Cumberland River, Edgar L. Bradley appears in the historical record through a small but important act. He applied for a post office.
That may seem like a narrow detail, but in an early twentieth-century coal camp, a post office was more than a mail counter. It was a sign that a place had become settled enough, populated enough, and connected enough to need formal recognition from the federal postal system. For Totz, Harlan County, Kentucky, Bradley’s application marked one of the first documentary steps in turning a mine location and rail stop into a named community.
The record does not yet give Edgar L. Bradley a full biography. It does not make him the namesake of Totz, the mine owner, or the central industrial figure behind the camp. That role belonged to the coal company and to Harry Totz, whose name was attached to the place. Bradley’s significance is different. He stands at the administrative doorway of the community, where railroad, coal, settlement, and federal mail service met.
A Name in the Postal Record
The strongest published lead for Edgar L. Bradley comes from Robert M. Rennick’s study of Harlan County post offices. Rennick’s work identifies Bradley as the man who applied in late 1920 for the Totz post office. The proposed office was meant to serve the recently opened Colton Station and the Harlan Cumberland Coal Company mine.
That single statement gives Bradley a clear place in the story. It places him at the moment before Totz became established as a post office. It also ties him to a practical need. A new station, a new mine, and a growing settlement required reliable mail service.
In mountain communities, post offices often preserved the first official traces of local growth. They marked where families lived, where companies operated, where roads and railroads connected, and where a community expected to remain. Bradley’s application belongs to that larger pattern.
Colton Station Before Totz
Totz did not begin with the name Totz. Kentucky place-name sources identify the community as originally known as Colton. The name Pine Mountain Station was also used. These older names point to the transportation setting of the place before the Totz name became fixed.
The community stood on the Poor Fork of the Cumberland River, about twelve miles northeast of Harlan. That location mattered. The Poor Fork valley was one of the corridors through which coal development, rail access, and company settlement expanded in eastern Harlan County during the early twentieth century.
Bradley’s application was therefore not made for an isolated country post office in the older farming sense. It was tied to a newly developing industrial settlement. Colton Station and the nearby mine needed connection to the outside world. Mail service helped provide that connection.
The Harlan Cumberland Coal Company Setting
The Harlan Cumberland Coal Company gives the application its industrial background. Coal mine listings place the Harlan Cumberland Coal Mining Company at Totz from 1921 to 1925. Later operators at Totz included the Harlan Ashless Coal Company and the Harlan Central Coal Company.
Those later operators belong to the broader history of Totz, but for Bradley’s story the important point is the beginning. His application came at the moment when the Harlan Cumberland operation was new, when Colton Station was recent, and when the settlement needed a post office to serve the people and business connected to the mine.
A coal camp depended on many systems at once. There was the mine itself, the tipple, the railroad, the company store, the housing, the school, the church life that followed, and the mail. Mail connected miners and families to relatives, banks, suppliers, newspapers, government offices, and mail-order goods. In a place built around work, the post office also helped make daily life possible.
Why Bradley’s Application Mattered
Bradley’s known act was administrative, but administrative acts could shape how a community entered the record. A post office application required a place to be described, named, located, and justified. It placed a local need before the federal government.
The National Archives describes post office site location reports as records used for establishing new post offices and documenting name or location changes. These reports could include the county and state, nearby mail routes, rivers, roads, railroads, and sometimes sketch maps or notes about the families or people to be served.
That is why Bradley’s application is valuable. It may preserve the geography of early Totz in a way that ordinary memory does not. It may show how the proposed office related to Colton Station, the Poor Fork, nearby post offices, and the new coal operation. If the original site report survives in National Archives Microfilm M1126, it may be the strongest primary source for Bradley’s role.
The Question of Postmaster Service
One question remains open from the available published information. Bradley applied for the Totz post office, but that does not automatically prove he served as postmaster.
The National Archives record set for postmaster appointments, Microfilm M841, is the proper place to confirm that point. Those records can show establishment and discontinuance dates, name changes, postmaster names, and appointment dates. If Bradley was appointed as Totz postmaster, M841 should be the source most likely to confirm it.
Until that record is checked directly, the careful statement is that Edgar L. Bradley applied for the Totz post office in late 1920. He should not be described as the first postmaster unless the appointment record confirms it.
That kind of caution matters in local history. A small difference in wording can separate a supported fact from an assumption.
Totz Becomes a Postal Place
The Totz post office opened in 1921. That formal opening followed the period in which Bradley made his application. By then, the place-name record had begun shifting from Colton toward Totz, the name associated with Harry Totz and the coal development there.
The post office helped fix that name in public use. Once a community had a post office, its name appeared on maps, letters, postal guides, government lists, business records, and family documents. Over time, those records made the name durable.
In that sense, Bradley’s application helped carry the community from a local industrial site into the official geography of Harlan County. He was not the whole story of Totz, but he appears at a key moment in the naming and recognition of the place.
Bradley’s Place in Harlan County History
Edgar L. Bradley’s story is a reminder that Appalachian history is often preserved through brief records. A person may appear only once or twice in a surviving source, yet that appearance can tell us something important about how a community formed.
Bradley’s known connection to Totz is not dramatic. It is not a feud story, a mine disaster, a political career, or a famous family biography. It is the story of a man connected to a practical civic step. He applied for mail service where a coal camp was beginning to take shape.
That act placed him in the early documentary history of Totz. It linked him to Colton Station, the Harlan Cumberland Coal Company mine, and the transformation of a Poor Fork settlement into a recognized Harlan County post office.
For now, Edgar L. Bradley should be remembered carefully. The record supports him as the applicant for the Totz post office in late 1920. Further research in federal postal records, county records, newspapers, and postmaster appointment ledgers may reveal more about who he was, where he lived, and whether he later served the office he helped bring into being.
Until then, his place in the story is still meaningful. Edgar L. Bradley stands in the first postal chapter of Totz, at the point where a new coalfield settlement asked to be reached by the mail.
Sources & Further Reading
Rennick, Robert M. “Harlan County – Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University, 2004. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/391/
Rennick, Robert M. “Harlan County – Post Offices.” PDF. County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University, 2004. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1384&context=kentucky_county_histories
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832 – September 30, 1971.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837-1950. Microfilm Publication M1126 descriptive pamphlet. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/post-offices/m1126.pdf
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” About USPS. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
United States Postal Service. “Postmasters by City.” Postmaster Finder. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/postmasters-by-city.htm
United States Postal Service. “Additional Resources.” Postal History. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/research-sources.htm
United States Postal Service. Sources of Historical Information on Post Offices, Postal Employees, Mail Routes, and Mail Contractors. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/sources-of-historical-information.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “Harlan County – Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Morehead State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/76/
Morehead State University. “Robert M. Rennick Kentucky Place Name Collection.” ScholarWorks at Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/robert_rennick_collection/
Elbon, David C. “Totz, Kentucky.” Kentucky Atlas & Gazetteer. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-totz.html
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System: Totz.” The National Map. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/490235
U.S. Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” U.S. Board on Geographic Names. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
Kentucky Office of Geographic Information. “Ky Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).” Kentucky Open GIS Data. https://opengisdata.ky.gov/datasets/ky-geographic-names-information-system-gnis
Harlan County Clerk’s Office. “Records.” Harlan County Clerk’s Office. https://harlan.countyclerk.us/records/
Harlan County Clerk’s Office. “Home.” Harlan County Clerk’s Office. https://harlan.countyclerk.us/
eCCLIX. “County Clerk’s Office.” eCCLIX Central. https://www.ecclix.com/ecclix/login.aspx
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Research Guides.” Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Research-Guides.aspx
FamilySearch. “Harlan County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Harlan_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Coal Education. “Harlan County, Kentucky Coal Camps.” Coal Education. https://coaleducation.org/coalhistory/coaltowns/coalcamps/harlan_county_coal_camps.htm
KYGenWeb. “Coal Mines in Harlan.” Harlan County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/harlan/coal_mines.html
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Petition – Docket No. M-2007-072-C.” MSHA. https://www.msha.gov/petition-docket-no-m-2007-072-c
Federal Register. “Petitions for Modification.” Federal Register, January 25, 2008. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2008/01/25/E8-1309/petitions-for-modification
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. “Harlan Cumberland Coal Co.” August 23, 1996. https://fmshrc.gov/decisions/alj/08231996/harlan-cumberland-coal-co
CoalCampUSA. “Totz, KY.” CoalCampUSA. https://www.coalcampusa.com/eastky/harlan/totz-kentucky/totz-kentucky.htm
Weiner, Deborah R. “A History of Jewish Life in the Central Appalachian Coalfields, 1870s to 1970s.” PhD diss., West Virginia University, 2002. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/2405/
The Harlan Daily Enterprise. Harlan, Kentucky. Historical newspaper archive. https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-harlan-daily-enterprise/1379/
Author Note: Edgar L. Bradley’s story is a good example of how a small postal record can preserve the beginning of a mountain community. In Harlan County, even a post office application can tell us something about coal camps, rail stops, and the people who helped bring them into the official record.