Appalachian Community Histories – Nix Branch, Breathitt County: The Stream, Cemetery, Mine, and Road Name That Remained
Nix Branch is not the kind of place that announces itself in the old records as a town. It does not appear as an incorporated municipality, and it is not best understood as a post office community like many better documented Breathitt County places. Its history is quieter than that. It is the history of a creek, a road, a cemetery, a land description, a bridge, and a name that stayed alive because people still needed it to describe where they lived, worked, traveled, and buried their dead.
The branch lies in the lower Troublesome Creek country of Breathitt County, near Clayhole, Hardshell, Kentucky Route 476, and the hollows that drain toward Troublesome Creek. In the records it appears in several forms, including Nix Branch, Nix’s Branch, and Nixes Branch. Those small changes matter. Anyone researching the place has to search all three, because older deeds, court opinions, cemetery records, maps, and road documents did not always settle on one spelling.
The best starting point is the map record. Modern GNIS derived map listings identify Nix Branch as a stream in Breathitt County on the Haddix, Kentucky quadrangle. Topographic references place it at about 37.4659258 degrees north latitude and 83.2679539 degrees west longitude, with an elevation near 781 feet. Those numbers give the branch a precise place on the map, but they do not tell the whole story. The history of Nix Branch is found in the way that small geography was used by families, roads, mines, cemeteries, and county records.
On the Haddix Quadrangle
The Haddix quadrangle is one of the most important sources for understanding Nix Branch. The 1954 U.S. Geological Survey 7.5 minute map and later versions preserve the older landscape of the area before many modern digital maps flattened local memory into road numbers and address lines. In mountain communities, the quadrangle map often functions like a historical witness. It shows creeks, hollows, ridges, roads, schools, cemeteries, houses, and place names in relation to one another.
For Nix Branch, the Haddix map record helps show that this was not just a modern road name. It was a physical stream and a named piece of the lower Troublesome Creek landscape. The nearby names matter too. Clayhole, Hardshell, Caney Creek, Miller Branch, Hayes Branch, Russell Branch, Fugate Fork, and other neighboring places form the surrounding geography. Nix Branch belongs to that same pattern of eastern Kentucky naming, where a creek name could carry the memory of a family, a settlement cluster, a school district, a cemetery, or an older land boundary.
That is one reason the branch is important even without a post office. In Appalachia, a community did not have to be incorporated to be real. Many places were known by the creek, the family, the church, the cemetery, the coal opening, or the bend in the road. Nix Branch fits that older pattern.
The Troublesome Creek Setting
Breathitt County was created on April 1, 1839, and named for Governor John Breathitt. The county lies in Kentucky’s Eastern Coal Field, a region where steep ridges, narrow stream valleys, timber, coal, and creek roads shaped daily life. Troublesome Creek is one of the county’s major waterways, and the lower Troublesome Creek country has long been tied to settlement, family landholding, and later coal development.
Local history and genealogy material places Nix’s Branch among the named branches below and around Haddix, Hays Branch, Harvey Bend, Fugate Fork, and other lower Troublesome Creek places. One useful genealogical account says Nix’s Branch was once called Harvey’s Branch. That claim should be treated as a clue rather than a final conclusion, but it is a strong lead. It points researchers toward deeds, land grants, and family records under both names.
This is often how holler history works. A branch may be renamed in common speech before it is renamed on a map. A family that once owned the land may disappear from the later road name but remain in old deeds. A cemetery may keep one name while a road sign uses another. For Nix Branch, the possible Harvey’s Branch connection is worth following through the Breathitt County Clerk’s deed books, Kentucky land patent records, and Robert M. Rennick’s place name materials.
Nix Branch Road and the Modern Map
Modern road records show that the name remains active. U.S. Census Bureau TIGER road data for Breathitt County includes Nix Branch Road as a local road feature. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Breathitt County road mapping also helps place Nix Branch Road in relation to KY 476, Hardshell, Clayhole, Caney Creek, and Troublesome Creek.
Bridge records make the connection even clearer. National Bridge Inventory derived data identifies Structure No. 013C00067N as Nix Branch over Troublesome Creek in Breathitt County. That bridge record is valuable because it ties the name Nix Branch directly to the crossing of Troublesome Creek. It confirms that in modern infrastructure records, Nix Branch is not simply an informal family name. It is part of the official transportation geography of the county.
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet contract records add another layer. In 2016, KYTC contract materials described a Breathitt County project to replace a bridge on KY 476 over Caney Creek between Hardshell Caney Creek Road and Nix Branch Road. That kind of record may seem ordinary, but for a small holler it matters. Road and bridge documents are often the modern public records that keep small place names visible after schools, post offices, and coal operations have closed.
Land on Nixes Branch
One of the strongest historical records for the older name appears in a Kentucky Court of Appeals opinion, Hardin v. Brewer, issued in 2019. The case involved land and mineral interests in Breathitt County. In the opinion, the property description refers to land “on the Bear Hollow of Nixes Branch of Troublesome Creek.” It also points to specific Breathitt County deed book references, including Deed Book 156 and Deed Book 165.
That wording is important. It shows that Nixes Branch was used as a formal land description, not only as a spoken local name. It also places Bear Hollow within the Nixes Branch and Troublesome Creek geography. For researchers, the court opinion is a doorway into older county records. Deeds, mineral deeds, wills, partition records, and commissioner sale papers may preserve family names and land boundaries that do not appear on maps.
This is also where the history of Nix Branch becomes a property history. The branch was not just water moving down a hollow. It was a way to describe ownership. It marked where mineral rights could be separated from surface rights. It helped define where one family tract ended and another began. In places like Breathitt County, those land descriptions could survive for generations.
Coal and the Nix Branch Name
Nix Branch also appears in coal and water related records. The Federal Register of March 8, 1988, includes a notice referring to Nix Branch Mine, Mine I.D. No. 15-14352, located in Breathitt County, Kentucky. That notice is one of the clearest federal records tying the Nix Branch name directly to mining.
The available notice does not by itself tell the whole story of the mine. It does not provide a community narrative, and it should not be stretched beyond what it says. But it proves that by the late twentieth century, Nix Branch was a recognized mining related name in official federal records.
Another important source is the 1991 U.S. Geological Survey Water Resources Investigations Report by Clyde J. Sholar and Pamla A. Wood, titled Evaluation of the Drought Susceptibility of Water Supplies Used in the Kentucky River Basin in 1988. In a table of water supply reservoirs in the Kentucky River basin, the report lists an impoundment on Nix’s Branch in the North Fork Kentucky River hydrologic unit. The associated water system is identified as Arch on the North Fork, and the storage amount is listed as unknown.
That entry connects Nix’s Branch to the water infrastructure of the coalfield. It also places the branch inside a larger Kentucky River basin story. In the mountain coal counties, small branches could carry more than runoff. They could carry mine drainage, supply water, sediment, road crossings, and flood risk. The Nix’s Branch impoundment entry shows that the branch belonged to that larger environmental and industrial landscape.
James M. Hodge’s 1918 Kentucky Geological Survey report, Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties, should also be used for background. The report does not appear to be indexed under Nix, but it covers the surrounding coal country, including Troublesome Creek and nearby branches. Hodge’s work is useful because it records the early twentieth century coal geography of the North Fork region before later mining and road changes altered the landscape.
The Cemetery on the Branch
Cemetery records add another piece of the story. Nix Branch Cemetery, also found as Nixes Branch Cemetery and Stacy Cemetery, is listed near Clayhole in Breathitt County. Find a Grave and genealogy cemetery listings are not final proof by themselves, but they are useful leads. They point researchers toward family clusters, death certificates, stone readings, funeral home records, and local cemetery books.
A cemetery on a branch often preserves what maps cannot. It may show which families lived there, which surnames stayed, which children died young, which veterans returned home, and which households remained tied to the hollow after work and roads changed. If the Nix Branch cemetery is also known as Stacy Cemetery, that alternate name may point toward a family land connection or a later community name used by descendants.
The cemetery should be checked against Breathitt County death certificates, Kentucky vital records, and any cemetery surveys held by local historical or genealogical groups. For a place like Nix Branch, cemetery evidence may be one of the best ways to move from geography into family history.
What Can Be Said with Care
The safe conclusion is that Nix Branch was a small but well documented Breathitt County stream and holler locality near Clayhole, Hardshell, KY 476, and Troublesome Creek. It was not best documented as a town. Its record is stronger as a stream, road, land description, cemetery locality, mining reference, and water supply reference.
The name appears in different forms, and those spellings should be preserved rather than forced into one modern version. Nix Branch is the modern map and road form. Nix’s Branch appears in hydrology and local history material. Nixes Branch appears in legal land description. Each form belongs to the record.
The strongest future research path begins in the Breathitt County Clerk’s office. Deed Book 156 and Deed Book 165, named in Hardin v. Brewer, should be checked first. From there, researchers should search for Nix, Nixes, Nix’s, Harvey, Bear Hollow, Troublesome Creek, and related family surnames in deed indexes, mineral deeds, wills, commissioner sales, and tax records. The Kentucky Secretary of State Land Office should be searched for older patents and surveys in the Troublesome Creek area, especially if the Harvey’s Branch tradition is being tested.
A Place Kept by Use
Nix Branch survives in the records because people kept using the name. They used it to cross Troublesome Creek, to describe land, to mark roads, to identify a mine, to manage water, and to locate graves. That is often the truest record of an Appalachian place.
Not every community leaves behind a post office cancellation or a town charter. Some leave a road sign, a creek name, a cemetery, a deed book, and a bridge number. Nix Branch is one of those places. Its history is not large in the usual public sense, but it is rooted in the ordinary documents that shaped life in the mountains. For Breathitt County, that makes it worth remembering.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Geological Survey. “Nix Branch, Breathitt County, Kentucky.” Geographic Names Information System derived listing. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.topozone.com/kentucky/breathitt-ky/stream/nix-branch-3/
U.S. Geological Survey. Haddix, KY, 1:24,000 Scale Topographic Quadrangle. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1954. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Haddix_708793_1954_24000_geo.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “topoView.” National Geologic Map Database. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Mixon, Robert B. Geologic Map of the Haddix Quadrangle, Eastern Kentucky. Geologic Quadrangle 447. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1965. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-haddix-quadrangle-eastern-kentucky
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Breathitt County State Primary Road System Map. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, revised November 2024. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Breathitt.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Call No. 104, Contract ID 161018, Breathitt County, KY 476 Bridge Replacement Proposal. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, 2016. https://transportation.ky.gov/Construction-Procurement/Proposals/104-BREATHITT-16-1018.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Scour Assessment Package 3.” Procurement Bulletin 2018-03. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, 2017. https://transportation.ky.gov/ProfessionalServices/Procurement%20Bulletins/2018-03%20%28Sept.%202017%29/Scour%20Assessment%20-%20Package%203.xlsx
Federal Highway Administration. “Nix Branch over Troublesome Creek, Structure No. 013C00067N.” National Bridge Inventory derived data. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://data.ydr.com/bridge/kentucky/breathitt/nix-branch-over-troublesome-creek/21-013C00067N/
United States Census Bureau. TIGER/Line Shapefiles and Geodatabases, Roads, Breathitt County, Kentucky. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html
United States Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Petitions for Modification: Nix Branch Mine, I.D. No. 15-14352, Breathitt County, Kentucky.” Federal Register 53, no. 45, March 8, 1988. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1988-03-08/pdf/FR-1988-03-08.pdf
Sholar, Clyde J., and Pamla A. Wood. Evaluation of the Drought Susceptibility of Water Supplies Used in the Kentucky River Basin in 1988. Water Resources Investigations Report 91-4105. Louisville, KY: U.S. Geological Survey, 1991. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/1991/4105/report.pdf
Hodge, James M. Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties. Frankfort, KY: State Journal Company, 1918. https://archive.org/details/coalsofnorthfork00hodgrich
Hodge, James M. Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001659084
Hardin v. Brewer, 2018-CA-000421-MR. Kentucky Court of Appeals, November 15, 2019. https://law.justia.com/cases/kentucky/court-of-appeals/2019/2018-ca-000421-mr.html
Breathitt County Clerk. Deed Book 156 and Deed Book 165. Breathitt County Clerk’s Office, Jackson, Kentucky. https://breathitt.countyclerk.us/
Breathitt County Clerk. “Welcome to Breathitt County.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://breathitt.countyclerk.us/
Breathitt County Fiscal Court. “About.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.breathitt.org/about
Commonwealth of Kentucky. “Breathitt County.” Kentucky.gov. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://kentucky.gov/government/Pages/AgencyProfile.aspx?Title=Breathitt+County
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Kentucky Land Office.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://sos.ky.gov/land/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Patent Series Overview.” Kentucky Land Office. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://sos.ky.gov/land/non-military/patents/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Virginia and Old Kentucky Patent Series.” Kentucky Land Office. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://sos.ky.gov/land/non-military/patents/vaky/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Heritage Council. “Welcome.” State Historic Preservation Office. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://heritage.ky.gov/Pages/index.aspx
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813101798/kentucky-place-names/
Morehead State University. “Robert M. Rennick Kentucky Place Name Collection.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/robert_rennick_collection/
Morehead State University. “Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/
Rennick, Robert M. “Kentucky Place Name Derivations.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, Morehead State University, 1986. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/157/
Kentucky Historical Society. “Finding Kentucky Place Names in Family History Research.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/kentucky-ancestors/where-in-kentucky-is
Find a Grave. “Nix Branch Cemetery.” Clayhole, Breathitt County, Kentucky. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2532007/nix-branch-cemetery
LDSGenealogy.com. “Breathitt County KY Cemetery Records.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/Breathitt-County-Cemetery-Records.htm
Bowling, Bollings, and More Surnames Family. “Early Lower Troublesome Creek Settlers, Breathitt County Ky.” July 18, 2016. https://bowlingbollingsandmoresurnamesfamily.wordpress.com/2016/07/18/early-lower-troublesome-creek-settlers-breathitt-county-ky/
Genealogy.com. “Re: Samuel Haddix RW Pension.” Haddix Family Genealogy Forum, August 21, 2008. https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/haddix/307/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: This article follows a small Breathitt County place name through maps, court records, road records, mining notices, and cemetery clues. Nix Branch was not a town in the usual sense, but its name remained important to the people who lived, worked, crossed, and buried their dead along Troublesome Creek.