Appalachian Community Histories – Baisden, Mingo County: Schools, Coalfield Life, and Bluegrass Along Gilbert Creek
Three miles southwest of Gilbert, the road following Gilbert Creek passes through a small community whose history is easy to overlook. Baisden, West Virginia, never became an incorporated town, a major railroad center, or one of the large company-built coal camps that dominated the history of southern West Virginia. It developed instead as a rural settlement where homes, schools, farms, timberlands, mineral properties, cemeteries, and a post office gathered along the creek and its mountain branches.
The United States Geological Survey recognizes Baisden as a populated place in Mingo County. Historical maps place it within the Wharncliffe quadrangle, near Baisden Fork and the upper reaches of Gilbert Creek. The federal name record is important because another community called Baisden exists in Logan County, a distinction that has occasionally caused confusion in historical and genealogical research.
Baisden does not have a single courthouse record announcing its foundation. Its history must be pieced together from post-office documents, land deeds, school records, census schedules, newspapers, mineral surveys, gravestones, family memories, and the lives of the musicians who carried the sound of this small Mingo County community far beyond the mountains.
A Community Along Gilbert Creek
Baisden grew in a landscape that shaped nearly every part of community life. Gilbert Creek and its smaller forks created narrow areas where families could build houses, plant gardens, keep livestock, and establish roads. Steep mountains rose quickly from the creek bottoms, limiting the amount of level land and separating one branch from another.
In communities like Baisden, geography influenced relationships. A family living only a few miles away might still be separated by a ridge, a rough trail, or a creek that became difficult to cross after heavy rain. Schools, stores, churches, cemeteries, and post offices therefore became essential gathering places. They gave scattered households a shared identity even when there was no municipal government or clearly marked town center.
Historical USGS maps are among the best records of this changing landscape. Maps covering Gilbert, Wharncliffe, Baisden Fork, and the neighboring branches record roads, schools, houses, streams, trails, mines, and other features that may have disappeared from the modern landscape. The USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection allows different editions to be compared, showing how isolated paths became county roads and how named communities emerged along the waterways.
Baisden should therefore be understood less as a compact town and more as a creek community. Its boundaries were defined by geography, family association, school attendance, mail delivery, and local custom rather than by surveyed municipal limits.
Before Mingo County
Any history of Baisden must begin with an important complication. Mingo County did not exist during most of the nineteenth century.
The West Virginia legislature created Mingo County on January 30, 1895, from the southern portion of Logan County. It remains the youngest county in West Virginia. Consequently, deeds, tax assessments, marriages, estates, court cases, and land surveys involving the future Baisden area before 1895 were recorded in Logan County.
The land along Gilbert Creek had already been occupied and claimed long before the new county appeared. Early settlers followed the waterways because the creek bottoms offered the best available ground for cabins, gardens, livestock, and transportation. Mountain families often controlled several adjoining tracts, with property descriptions referring to trees, rocks, ridgelines, springs, and the mouths of unnamed branches.
Original Virginia and West Virginia land grants may help identify the earliest documented ownership around Gilbert Creek and Baisden Fork. Edgar B. Dyer’s nineteenth-century index to West Virginia land grants includes numerous people bearing the Baisden surname in old Logan County, although those entries cannot automatically be connected to the present Mingo County community. The Baisden family was spread across a much larger section of southwestern West Virginia.
The origin of the community’s name remains uncertain. It may have been associated with a local landowner, family, postal official, or established geographical name, but no surviving source examined so far proves exactly which individual gave Baisden its name. A reliable answer will require comparing early deeds, postal applications, land grants, and contemporary newspaper references.
Until that evidence is found, the name should not be attached to a particular person merely because that person lived in old Logan or Mingo County.
The Post Office Gives the Place a Name
The creation of a post office was often the moment when a scattered Appalachian settlement gained an official identity. A post office placed a community on federal route maps, gave residents a recognized mailing address, and created a central point where letters, newspapers, business notices, government documents, and packages entered the valley.
Modern postal compilations generally place the establishment of the Baisden post office around 1911. That date fits the broader development of the Gilbert Creek area, but it should remain provisional until confirmed in the original federal appointment record.
The National Archives preserves the Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832 to September 30, 1971, as Microfilm Publication M841. These volumes identify post-office establishment and discontinuance dates, postmaster appointments, name changes, relocation information, and, in some cases, the date on which an office received money-order authority.
Another federal collection, Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837 to 1950, may be even more revealing. These reports were completed when new offices were proposed or when existing offices moved. They often identify nearby creeks, roads, railroad stations, stores, mills, post offices, and mail routes. Some include hand-drawn maps showing the precise location of the proposed office.
A surviving Baisden report could settle several unanswered questions. It might confirm when the office opened, identify the first postmaster, reveal where the first building stood, and show how Baisden related geographically to Gilbert and the surrounding settlements.
The post office did more than handle mail. In an unincorporated community, it helped transform the name Baisden from a local description into an address recognized beyond Mingo County.
Baisden School and Life Along the Forks
One of the clearest pieces of evidence for the early community is not a photograph or newspaper article, but a geological drilling report.
A West Virginia Geological Survey file for Central Trust Company Well No. 4324 records that the site was located 2.1 miles northwest of Baisden School. The well was drilled by United Fuel Gas Company during 1931 and completed in January 1932. The document treated the school as a dependable landmark, suggesting that Baisden School was already well known to surveyors, landowners, company officials, and residents.
The school was probably among the most important institutions in the community. Rural schools in southern West Virginia were not simply places where children learned reading, writing, arithmetic, and history. They hosted spelling bees, holiday programs, elections, public meetings, community suppers, and other gatherings. Teachers often knew nearly every family living along the surrounding branches.
Children may have walked several miles to attend, following creek roads or mountain paths in weather that ranged from summer heat to winter snow and floodwater. Attendance could be irregular when older children were needed for farm labor, household work, or paid employment.
A historical Cline School also appears in geographical records for the wider Baisden and Gilbert Creek area. It may have served some of the same families, especially where school districts followed branches and ridges rather than postal boundaries. The names Baisden School and Cline School should both be searched in Mingo County Board of Education minutes, teacher registers, school censuses, property deeds, and consolidation records.
Like many one-room and small rural schools, these institutions eventually lost students to larger consolidated schools. Their buildings may have been demolished, abandoned, moved, or converted into residences. Yet the 1931 drilling record preserves Baisden School at a particular moment, when the schoolhouse was significant enough to help federal and state officials describe the location of an industrial operation.
Land, Coal, and the Search for Gas
The Central Trust Company well file also reveals how the economy around Baisden was changing during the early twentieth century.
The proposed well plat, dated April 6, 1931, identifies Central Trust Company property, neighboring landholders, branches, coal interests, and the boundaries of large mountain tracts. The well was drilled to a total depth of 4,095 feet. The completion record classified it as a dry hole, although gas and saltwater appeared at several depths.
Even an unsuccessful well is historically valuable. It demonstrates that companies were examining the mineral potential of the mountains near Baisden during the Great Depression. The file preserves information about geology, landownership, mineral rights, company activity, and the relationship between industrial surveys and familiar community landmarks.
Coal had already transformed much of Mingo County. Railroads, mines, sawmills, company towns, and outside investment brought dramatic population growth to some valleys. Baisden did not develop into a large company camp on the scale of Matewan, Red Jacket, Thacker, or other mining centers. Nevertheless, its residents lived within the same coalfield economy.
Men from Baisden could work in mines elsewhere along Gilbert Creek or travel to operations in nearby valleys. Others cut timber, farmed small tracts, hauled materials, worked on roads, operated stores, or combined several kinds of labor. Women maintained households, raised gardens, preserved food, cared for children, took in boarders, taught school, worked in stores, and participated in churches and community organizations.
Landownership became increasingly complicated as surface rights were separated from coal, oil, gas, and timber rights. A family might retain a house and garden while a corporation controlled the minerals beneath the property. Deeds, leases, tax books, court cases, and well plats are therefore necessary for understanding how industrial development affected Baisden families.
Families, Cemeteries, and Community Memory
Because Baisden was not normally counted as a separate incorporated place, the federal census does not provide a simple population total for the community. Residents must be located household by household within Stafford Magisterial District and the enumeration districts surrounding Gilbert Creek.
The 1900 census was the first federal population census taken after the creation of Mingo County. The 1910 census provides a view of the area near the time when the Baisden postal identity appears to have emerged. The 1920, 1930, and 1940 schedules document the mature coalfield period, recording occupations, homeownership, literacy, school attendance, wages, education, and movement between communities. Federal census publications confirm that Gilbert was situated within Stafford District, the larger administrative area encompassing the Baisden region.
The West Virginia Vital Research Records collection provides another path into local family history. Mingo County birth, marriage, and death records can be searched by surname, residence, parents, occupation, and place of death. Researchers must also examine Logan County records for events occurring before 1895.
Cemeteries preserve another map of the community. Oak Log Cemetery is associated with Baisden Fork of Gilbert Creek. Nearby burial grounds include the Lester-Cline Cemetery, Stafford-White Cemetery, and other small family cemeteries scattered along the branches.
These cemeteries reveal patterns of kinship that are not visible on highway maps. Generations of families remained connected to the same fork even when descendants moved to Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, or other coalfield communities. A person who left Baisden for industrial work might still return to be buried beside parents and grandparents on a mountain hillside.
Gravestones, however, should be compared with death certificates, obituaries, funeral-home records, church registers, and cemetery deeds. Names were sometimes spelled differently, dates were occasionally incorrect, and unmarked graves may represent some of the community’s poorest or earliest residents.
The Cline Family and Baisden’s Bluegrass Legacy
Baisden’s most significant contribution to Appalachian cultural history came from the Cline family.
Curly Ray Cline was born in Baisden on January 10, 1923. He learned the foundations of fiddling from his father and absorbed the influence of older mountain musicians and radio performers. By the late 1930s, he had entered the professional world of country and mountain music.
Curly Ray’s brothers Ned and Charlie were also musicians. Their cousin Ezra Cline became the leader of the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, one of West Virginia’s pioneering bluegrass groups. The band began performing from WHIS radio in Bluefield in 1938. Its early music retained the sound of an older Appalachian string band before the addition of newer banjo and mandolin styles moved the group more firmly toward bluegrass.
In a 1975 interview, Curly Ray remembered his father as an old-time fiddler and described the family’s music simply as mountain fiddling. He recalled that the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers were organized in Bluefield and performed vocals, fiddle tunes, and twin-fiddle numbers during the group’s early years. His testimony provides a direct connection between the household music of Baisden and the professional radio music that reached listeners across several states.
The group’s membership changed over time, but it eventually included important performers such as Larry Richardson, Bob Osborne, Paul Williams, Melvin Goins, and Ray Goins. The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers recorded for Cozy Records and RCA Victor and performed on radio stations in West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, and Virginia.
Curly Ray remained with the group until 1966. He then joined Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, becoming one of the most recognizable traditional fiddlers in bluegrass. He recorded extensively with Stanley and released 13 fiddle albums under his own name before retiring in 1993. He died in 1997.
Charlie Cline, born in Baisden in 1931, also developed a long career as a fiddler and multi-instrumentalist. The musical achievements of Curly Ray, Charlie, Ned, and their relatives demonstrate that Baisden was not culturally isolated. Radio allowed musicians raised along Gilbert Creek to hear performers from Nashville, Bristol, Knoxville, and other broadcasting centers. In return, the Cline family carried the sound of their own household and community into the developing bluegrass tradition.
The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers were inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2023. Their recognition placed the musical heritage of Baisden within the larger history of West Virginia and American bluegrass.
Baisden in the Wider Mingo Coalfield
While music carried one part of Baisden’s story beyond the mountains, the lives of most residents remained connected to the broader history of Mingo County.
The county became nationally known for coal production, labor organizing, political conflict, and industrial violence. The struggle between coal operators and the United Mine Workers produced armed confrontations, mass evictions, martial law, the Matewan Massacre, and the crisis that contributed to the miners’ march toward Logan County in 1921.
There is no evidence that Baisden served as the center of those conflicts. Its importance lies instead in the experience of ordinary rural families living near the industrial coalfield. Local miners could be affected by wage reductions, mine closures, blacklisting, accidents, strikes, and changes in transportation even when the confrontations occurred many miles away.
The Williamson newspapers carried reports of mine accidents, court cases, land sales, elections, school programs, road construction, deaths, marriages, church gatherings, and political appointments throughout Mingo County. The Mingo Republican was published from 1904 until 1951, while the Williamson Enterprise and Progressive West Virginian covered the years surrounding the likely establishment of the Baisden post office. These newspapers offer one of the best opportunities for recovering the names and daily activities of Baisden residents.
The newspapers must be searched carefully. A brief notice might identify a teacher at Baisden School, a road petition along Gilbert Creek, a church meeting, a postmaster appointment, a mine injury, or a family visiting relatives. Taken individually, such notices may seem insignificant. Gathered over several decades, they can reconstruct the social life of an otherwise poorly documented community.
The History Still Waiting in the Records
Much of Baisden’s history remains unwritten.
The exact establishment date and original location of the post office still need to be confirmed from federal appointment and site-location records. The identity of the person or family for whom the community was named remains uncertain. The dates when Baisden School opened and closed have not yet been established. Its teachers, pupils, and physical appearance are still waiting to be recovered from school-board files and private photograph collections.
Land deeds and tax books could trace the ownership of property along Baisden Fork. Probate records could reveal livestock, tools, furniture, debts, and household possessions. Court cases might document disputes involving roads, boundaries, mineral rights, estates, and injuries. Church registers could identify marriages, baptisms, funerals, and community leaders.
The West Virginia and Regional History Center preserves maps, oral histories, legal papers, photographs, coal records, and family collections relating to Mingo and the neighboring counties. The Paul Salstrom oral histories, for example, discuss farming, timbering, mining, teaching, policing, and railroad development across the region. Such collections provide the wider context needed to understand how communities like Baisden functioned.
The West Virginia State Archives’ Mingo County bibliography points researchers toward county histories, newspapers, pamphlets, clippings, and manuscript collections. Its holdings include references to Gilbert Creek, local schools, county government, mining, and the creation of Mingo County.
The most valuable sources may still be held by families. School photographs, funeral cards, letters, deeds, store ledgers, church books, musical instruments, and handwritten family histories can preserve details found nowhere else.
Why Baisden Matters
Baisden represents hundreds of Appalachian communities whose histories cannot be found in a single book.
Its story is scattered across maps, courthouses, cemeteries, newspapers, school records, federal archives, geological surveys, and family memory. It was a place shaped by the creek, the schoolhouse, the post office, the mineral economy, and the networks of relatives who lived along the surrounding forks.
The 1931 drilling record preserves Baisden School as a familiar landmark. Postal records promise to explain how the community received its official identity. Census schedules and cemeteries preserve the families who lived there. The music of the Cline family connects a small settlement along Gilbert Creek to the history of bluegrass.
Baisden never needed to become a city to leave a historical legacy. Its importance rests in the people who made lives there, raised families there, worked the surrounding mountains, attended its schools, carried its name as a mailing address, and transformed music learned in a Mingo County home into a sound heard across the nation.
Sources & Further Reading
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M1126. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html.
National Archives and Records Administration. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M841. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html.
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/.
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Search for Baisden, Mingo County, West Virginia, feature identification number 1560591. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis.
United States Geological Survey. “topoView.” Historical Topographic Map Collection. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/topoview.
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past.
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Central Trust Company No. 4324 Well, Warfield District, Mingo County, West Virginia.” Well records and location plat, 1931–1932. https://downloads.wvgs.wvnet.edu/BatchInfo/mingo/4705900026docs.pdf.
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Oil and Gas Well Records and Data.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/pipe2/.
West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. “Oil and Gas Well Search.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://dep.wv.gov/SearchDEP/Pages/Oil-and-Gas-Well-Search.aspx.
West Virginia State Road Commission. County Highway Maps for West Virginia. 1937. A&M 4479. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/6604.
West Virginia Geological Survey. Topographic Maps of West Virginia. 1909–1924. A&M 4046. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/3362.
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” United States federal population schedules, 1900–1950. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census.
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://1950census.archives.gov/.
West Virginia Archives and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records.” Birth, marriage, and death records for Mingo and Logan Counties. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Search Birth Records.” West Virginia Vital Research Records. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/va_bcsearch.aspx.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Search Marriage Records.” West Virginia Vital Research Records. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcsearch.aspx.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Search Death Records.” West Virginia Vital Research Records. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/va_dcsearch.aspx.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Mingo County History Sources.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html.
West Virginia Archives and History. West Virginia Historical Records Survey: Mingo County Records. Reels 125–126. Charleston: West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archivescollections.html.
Mingo County Clerk. Deed books, deed indexes, land books, probate records, and property records for Mingo County, West Virginia. Williamson, West Virginia. https://www.mingocountywv.com/.
Logan County Clerk. Deed books, deed indexes, land books, probate records, and property records for Logan County, West Virginia. Logan, West Virginia. https://www.logancounty.wv.gov/.
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://lva-virginia.libguides.com/land-grants.
Dyer, Edgar B. Dyer’s Index to Land Grants in West Virginia. Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Company, 1896. https://archive.org/search?query=%22Dyer%27s+Index+to+Land+Grants+in+West+Virginia%22.
Library of Congress. “The Mingo Republican, Williamson, West Virginia, 1904–1951.” Chronicling America. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86092084/.
Library of Congress. “The Progressive West Virginian, Williamson, West Virginia, 1911–1913.” Chronicling America. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86092086/.
Library of Congress. “The Williamson Enterprise, Williamson, West Virginia, 1907–1911.” Chronicling America. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86092085/.
Library of Congress. “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/.
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Reports of the Department of Mines. Charleston: State of West Virginia, various years. https://archive.org/search?query=%22West+Virginia+Department+of+Mines%22+annual+report.
Salstrom, Paul. Oral Histories with Lincoln County Residents and Other Material. 1988. A&M 3551. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1953.
Keadle, Roy H. Roy H. Keadle Scrapbook. Approximately 1891–1938. A&M 2873. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/977.
Stokes, Samuel Davis. Samuel Davis Stokes Papers. Approximately 1915–1925. A&M 2542. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/606.
West Virginia and Regional History Center. Matewan Massacre Records. 1914–1934. A&M 2962. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1090.
West Virginia and Regional History Center. Matewan Trial Transcript. 1921. A&M 3608. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/2047.
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Mingo County, West Virginia, Collections and Records.” West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/subjects/2211.
West Virginia University Libraries. “West Virginia History OnView.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://wvhistoryonview.org/.
Brumfield, Darrell G., and Flossie Hatfield Smith, comps. Stories About Gilbert, West Virginia, and Surrounding Communities. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1993. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=%22Stories+About+Gilbert%2C+West+Virginia%22.
Smith, Nancy Sue. An History of Mingo County, West Virginia. Williamson, WV: Williamson Printing Company, 1960. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=%22An+History+of+Mingo+County%22.
Smith, Nancy Sue. History of Logan and Mingo Counties, West Virginia, Beginning in 1617. Williamson, WV, 1966. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=%22History+of+Logan+and+Mingo+Counties%22.
Mingo County Genealogical Society. Heritage of Mingo. Williamson, WV: Mingo County Genealogical Society, published beginning in 1985. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=%22Heritage+of+Mingo%22.
Perry, Huey. They’ll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle. New York: Praeger, 1972. Reprint, Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2011. https://worldcat.org/oclc/729231771.
Kenny, Hamill. West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains. Piedmont, WV: Place Name Press, 1945. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001263739.
Brumfield, Darrell G., and Flossie Hatfield Smith, comps. More Stories About Gilbert, West Virginia, and Surrounding Communities. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1995. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=%22More+Stories+About+Gilbert%22.
Myers, Mark S. “Mingo County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Revised April 23, 2026. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1831.
Tribe, Ivan M. “Curly Ray Cline.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. February 8, 2024. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1268.
Tribe, Ivan M. “Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Revised December 29, 2025. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1401.
West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. “Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://wvmusichalloffame.com/hof_lpfiddlers.html.
West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. “Class of 2023.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://wvmusichalloffame.com/virtualhof2023.html.
Author Note: Baisden’s story survives in scattered maps, school references, land records, newspapers, cemeteries, and the music of the Cline family. I hope this article encourages readers with photographs, documents, or family memories of Baisden to help preserve more of the community’s history.