Appalachian Community Histories – Wildie, Rockcastle County: Railroad Families, Christian Churches, and the Sandstone Industry
In the northern hills of Rockcastle County, Kentucky, the community of Wildie developed along a railroad that connected the farms and settlements of the Roundstone Valley with the larger towns of central Kentucky. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the railroad brought employment, passengers, merchants, and new opportunities to a community that would also become associated with one of the county’s important natural resources, a commercially valuable sandstone known as Rockcastle freestone.
Wildie’s history extends beyond its railroad station and stone quarries. Its earliest surviving newspaper accounts describe a community struggling with vigilantism and disputes over alcohol, while later records preserve the experiences of railroad families, traveling preachers, and residents who depended upon passenger trains for transportation. Wildie Christian Church, whose origins date to the railroad’s arrival in the 1880s, became one of the community’s enduring institutions.
The history of Wildie can be reconstructed through nineteenth-century newspapers, Kentucky Central and Louisville & Nashville Railroad records, early geological surveys, historical maps, and the recollections of residents who experienced the community during its railroad years. Together, these sources document the development of a small Appalachian settlement whose connections extended well beyond the surrounding hills.
The Kentucky Central Railroad and the Development of Wildie
Although families lived along the Roundstone Valley before the arrival of the railroad, Wildie’s development as an identifiable transportation community became closely connected with the Kentucky Central Railroad’s expansion into Rockcastle County during the 1880s. The company began extending its tracks southward from central Kentucky toward the Louisville & Nashville Railroad’s Knoxville route near Livingston, undertaking a difficult construction project that required numerous tunnels and a major bridge across the Kentucky River.
Construction of the approximately seventy-five-mile extension began in 1883, and the line was completed in 1885. The new route passed through the country between Berea and Livingston, providing Wildie and the surrounding settlements with direct access to a regional railroad system. In September 1891, the Louisville & Nashville Railroad purchased the Kentucky Central, incorporating its lines into an expanding transportation network connecting Kentucky with Tennessee and other southern markets.
The arrival of the railroad transformed the possibilities available to rural communities along its route. Farmers and merchants could move their products to more distant markets, residents gained access to passenger transportation, and railroad employment provided an alternative to agricultural work. Wildie’s position between Berea and Livingston placed the community along a route that would remain important to generations of Rockcastle County families.
One of the earliest surviving descriptions of the community’s development appears in an August 16, 2007, historical feature published by the Mount Vernon Signal. Drawing upon the history of Wildie Christian Church, the newspaper described how the Kentucky Central purchased its right-of-way through the Roundstone Valley during the mid-1880s and how local families began holding religious meetings in an abandoned railroad commissary known as Shattahan’s. The account provides evidence of an established local community organizing around the railroad during its formative years.
By the following decade, Wildie had developed the facilities expected of a small but established railroad settlement. Rand McNally’s 1895 Enlarged Business Atlas and Shippers’ Guide, as recorded in a later transcription of its Wildie entry, identified a post office, railroad station, and express office in the community. These facilities connected residents to the postal system, provided access to passenger transportation, and allowed packages and commercial shipments to move along the railroad.
Wildie’s Post Office and Its Early Residents
The establishment of a post office provided another important step in Wildie’s development. A compiled historical postal database suggests that the office opened in 1884, although the original federal appointment register would be needed to establish its precise founding date.
By March 1892, the post office was sufficiently established to appear in contemporary newspaper reporting. The Mountain Echo, published in Laurel County, announced on March 25 that E. Woods had been appointed postmaster at Wildie. Although the brief announcement offers little information about Woods or the post office itself, it provides a documented connection between the community and the federal postal system during the late nineteenth century.
For residents scattered across the surrounding farms and hollows, the local post office represented more than a place to collect correspondence. It connected the community with relatives, businesses, newspapers, and government institutions beyond Rockcastle County. Together with the railroad station and express office, it helped make Wildie a point of communication for the surrounding countryside.
The community’s early population and the occupations of its residents can be investigated through federal census manuscripts, county tax assessments, and property records. These documents are particularly important because Wildie was an unincorporated settlement rather than a town with clearly defined municipal boundaries. Its history must therefore be reconstructed through the households, businesses, and institutions associated with the surrounding area.
The Regulators and Violence in Wildie During the 1880s
Wildie’s early history also includes a series of disturbing incidents involving local vigilantes who attempted to enforce their own standards of behavior through intimidation and violence. Contemporary newspapers frequently referred to these groups as regulators or used the term Ku Klux, although the surviving reports do not establish whether the individuals involved belonged to a formally organized Ku Klux Klan chapter.
On June 11, 1886, the Semi-Weekly Interior Journal of Stanford published a report describing vigilante activity at Wildie. The newspaper alleged that several residents, including members of the Pruitt family, had been subjected to violent punishment during an encounter with a group of local regulators. Its account suggested that the group had been operating in the community and targeting individuals whom its members accused of violating local moral standards.
The trouble continued into the following year. On February 11, 1887, the same newspaper described another incident involving a Wildie resident identified as Bale Prewitt, who reportedly operated a drinking establishment that had attracted the regulators’ attention. According to the newspaper, Prewitt had previously been whipped and escaped a subsequent attack, while members of his family were subjected to violence.
The case attracted the attention of local authorities. A February 18 report stated that seven witnesses had appeared before Judge Colyer in connection with the Wildie incident, although the newspaper reported that their testimony had not implicated anyone in the whipping. The surviving articles document allegations of organized intimidation, but they do not establish the identities of every participant or the eventual legal outcome.
In March 1887, Wildie became the subject of a sensational story that spread beyond Kentucky. Several newspapers reported that three vigilantes had been shot and killed while allegedly attacking an elderly woman named Eliza Fish. The reports identified the supposed victims and described a violent confrontation involving local residents and members of the regulator group.
Those accounts, however, were contradicted almost immediately. On March 19, the Elkhart Daily Review published a correction stating that the reported killings had not occurred. The Semi-Weekly Interior Journal followed with its own correction on March 22, explaining that the incident had involved a drunken altercation in which a shot was reportedly fired accidentally, leaving no one injured.
The conflicting newspaper reports provide an important lesson in interpreting Wildie’s early history. Although the earlier accounts document allegations of repeated vigilante attacks and the involvement of local authorities, the supposed killing of three regulators in March 1887 cannot be accepted as historical fact. The correction demonstrates how quickly sensational reports concerning violence in Appalachian communities could spread through the national press before their underlying claims had been verified.
Wildie Sandstone and the Rockcastle Freestone Industry
While the railroad provided Wildie with access to outside markets, the surrounding landscape contained another resource that contributed to the community’s economic development. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sandstone quarrying became an important industry in Rockcastle County, with commercially valuable deposits occurring near Wildie, Langford, and Hummel.
One of the most detailed contemporary examinations of the area’s stone industry appeared in 1922, when geologist Charles Butts published The Mississippian Series of Eastern Kentucky. His investigation of the region’s geological formations identified a distinctive sandstone that he named the Wildie sandstone member because it was especially well developed and extensively quarried in the vicinity of Wildie.
Butts described the sandstone as thick-bedded, fine-grained, bluish in color, and suitable for building purposes. The stone was comparatively easy to work and was known commercially as Rockcastle freestone. When Butts conducted his survey, quarrying operations were active somewhat south of Wildie, demonstrating that the deposit remained an economically useful resource during the early 1920s.
The geological survey also documented the sandstone’s presence in the surrounding countryside. At Hummel Station, just north of the railroad tunnel near Langford, Butts measured a sandstone bed approximately six feet thick. He observed additional exposures near Langford and described how the formation diminished in thickness farther northeast toward Morrill and the Jackson County area.
The survey included photographs of the local geology, including the Louisville & Nashville Railroad tunnel at Hummel and a road cut near the highway bridge at Langford. These images preserved valuable evidence of both the area’s geological formations and the transportation infrastructure that crossed them.
The following year, Charles Henry Richardson published The Building Stones of Kentucky, a geological survey devoted to evaluating the state’s commercially important building materials. Richardson specifically identified the Wildie Quarry, locating it along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and recording its product as Rockcastle freestone. He associated the stone with similar material produced at the nearby Langford quarry.
The two geological reports provide unusually strong documentation of Wildie’s industrial history. They establish that the community’s name became attached to a recognized sandstone deposit and that commercial quarrying was active in the area during the early twentieth century. Although subsequent geological investigations revised aspects of Butts’s original classification, his observations remain valuable evidence of the quarrying industry as it existed in 1922.
Wildie’s railroad location was important to that industry because heavy stone products required dependable transportation to reach markets beyond Rockcastle County. The presence of commercial quarries along the railroad demonstrates how the region’s natural resources and transportation system became interconnected during the county’s industrial development.
Wildie Christian Church and the Religious Life of the Community
Religion occupied an important place in Wildie’s development, with Wildie Christian Church tracing its origins to the period when the Kentucky Central Railroad was being constructed through the Roundstone Valley.
According to the church history published in the Mount Vernon Signal on August 16, 2007, local families initially gathered for religious meetings in an abandoned railroad commissary known as Shattahan’s. Other early worship services were reportedly held at Cedar Hill School on Proctor Hill, while Mrs. Wade Jones conducted Sunday school lessons in her home. These early gatherings demonstrate how the community’s religious life developed before its congregation possessed a permanent building.
In 1893, Isaac and Nancy Ann Phillips reportedly donated land for the congregation’s first church building. Jim Lunceford of Jackson County was credited with performing much of the construction, assisted by local volunteers. Other early preachers associated with the congregation included Green Fish and ministers identified in the church history by the surnames Combs, Masters, and Belew. The reported Phillips donation provides an important lead for further research in Rockcastle County’s original deed records.
The railroad continued to influence the church’s development well into the twentieth century. Around 1910, two women from the congregation attended a revival in another community and were sufficiently impressed by a young preacher named Willie Peal that they invited him to Wildie. Peal reportedly accepted the invitation and continued traveling to the community by train to preach once a month for approximately thirty-five years.
The church history records that Peal received $17.30 for his monthly visits, a detail that illustrates the financial arrangements through which smaller congregations could maintain regular religious services without supporting a full-time minister.
Revival meetings became another important part of the congregation’s history. In 1928, a two-week revival led by a preacher identified as Brother Shropshire reportedly resulted in forty-seven additions to the church. During the early 1950s, meetings conducted by E. Roy Gentry drew large gatherings, with older church members remembering groups of people assembling along a nearby creek for baptisms.
The congregation hired its first full-time minister, Ed Simon, in 1952, and completed a parsonage near the end of 1956. Its subsequent ministers included Dean Davis, Larry Johnson, and David Woods, before Kenton Parkey began his ministry at Wildie in 1972.
As the congregation expanded, its original building underwent a series of improvements that included additional Sunday school rooms and a basement. Eventually, the church determined that it needed a larger facility, and construction began on a new building in January 1975, a short distance from the original site. The new church building became another lasting landmark along Wildie Road.
The church’s history also extended beyond Wildie itself. When Kentucky Christian Assembly Church Camp held its groundbreaking and dedication on October 17, 1965, representatives of Wildie Christian Church participated alongside congregations from Mount Vernon, Brodhead, Livingston, and other neighboring communities. Billy Haitt represented Wildie among the camp’s original trustees, while Jack Parsons and Aster McNew were listed among its original directors.
Passenger Trains and Everyday Life in Wildie
For generations of Wildie residents, the railroad was more than an industrial transportation system. It influenced employment, shopping, family relationships, and the ordinary routines of daily life. The arrival and departure of passenger trains connected the community with nearby towns and provided opportunities that would otherwise have required much longer journeys over rural roads.
Some of the most valuable surviving accounts of that experience appeared in the January 24, 2013, edition of the Mount Vernon Signal, which published firsthand recollections from former Wildie residents Jim Cass and Sarah Poff.
Cass, who was born in 1932, described growing up in a family whose livelihood was closely connected with the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. His uncle John French operated the railroad pumphouse that supplied water to storage tanks, and numerous trains reportedly stopped in the community. Other relatives worked in different railroad occupations, including Cass’s father, who spent thirty-five years in the bridge department after previously working on a section gang.
Cass’s account also illustrates the economic circumstances confronting many railroad families during the Great Depression. He recalled becoming seriously ill with diphtheria as a young child and receiving medicine through the assistance of relatives at a time when his parents had little money. His recollections connect Wildie’s transportation history with the personal experiences of a family that depended upon the railroad for employment and financial security.
Sarah Poff contributed another perspective, remembering the passenger trains that allowed Wildie residents to travel to Berea for shopping. As a child, she would ride the northbound train to Berea, walk from the depot into town, complete her family’s shopping, and return on a southbound train. The schedule gave her approximately an hour to finish her errands before returning to the station.
Poff’s connection with the railroad extended into her adult life. Her husband, J. T. Poff, began working as a brakeman in 1955 and continued in railroad employment until 1988, serving through successive changes in the companies operating the line.
These recollections preserve details that formal railroad histories seldom capture. Passenger schedules shaped the amount of time available for shopping, railroad employees occupied familiar positions within community life, and families developed personal connections with the trains that passed through Wildie. For residents such as Cass and Poff, the railroad was inseparable from their memories of growing up in Rockcastle County.
Changing Transportation and the Twentieth-Century Landscape
As transportation systems changed during the twentieth century, communities such as Wildie gradually became less dependent upon the passenger railroad that had influenced their development. The growing importance of automobiles, improvements to regional highways, and changes in railroad operations altered the ways residents traveled and conducted business.
Wildie’s changing landscape can be examined through a series of historical maps. The United States Geological Survey’s 1953 Wildie quadrangle, prepared from aerial photography and field surveys, provides a detailed geographical record of the community and its surrounding countryside during the middle of the twentieth century. It places Wildie within a wider landscape extending into neighboring Garrard County and preserves the regional setting in which the community’s railroad, roads, and rural settlements developed.
Later geological investigations continued to recognize Wildie as an important geographical reference point. In 1968, the United States Geological Survey published James Louis Gualtieri’s Geologic Map of the Wildie Quadrangle, Garrard and Rockcastle Counties, Kentucky, providing another detailed examination of the geological formations underlying the area. The publication continued the scientific investigation of the same regional landscape that Butts and Richardson had documented several decades earlier.
While Wildie’s early industrial and transportation activities became part of its past, institutions such as Wildie Christian Church continued to connect successive generations with the community’s origins. The church’s historical accounts, together with the memories of former railroad families, preserve a picture of a settlement whose growth depended upon the relationship between its residents, the surrounding landscape, and the railroad.
Remembering Wildie’s Railroad and Quarrying Heritage
Wildie’s history illustrates the importance that small railroad communities held in the development of Appalachian Kentucky. Its location along the Kentucky Central Railroad created connections with Berea, Livingston, and the larger markets of central Kentucky, while the surrounding sandstone deposits supported an industry that attracted the attention of state and federal geologists.
The community’s surviving records also reveal a history that was neither entirely peaceful nor limited to economic development. The newspaper accounts of the 1880s document allegations of vigilante violence and expose the difficulties involved in distinguishing verified events from sensational reporting. The histories of Wildie Christian Church and local railroad families, meanwhile, preserve the ways residents organized their religious and social lives around institutions that were closely connected with the railroad.
Much of Wildie’s history remains scattered across county records, historical newspapers, family collections, and government publications. Original deeds may clarify the establishment of the first church building, federal census records can help reconstruct the occupations and relationships of early residents, and additional railroad documents may reveal more about the employees who worked along the line.
The surviving geological surveys, historical maps, newspaper reports, and firsthand recollections already provide a substantial foundation for understanding Wildie’s place in Rockcastle County history. They preserve the story of a community where trains carried passengers through the Roundstone Valley, quarry workers extracted stone from the surrounding hills, and generations of families built their lives around a railroad that connected their small Appalachian settlement to the wider world.
Sources & Further Reading
Butts, Charles. The Mississippian Series of Eastern Kentucky. Kentucky Geological Survey, 1922, 102–104. https://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/KPS/books/butts1922/butts1922ch05.pdf
Cass, Jim, and Sarah Poff. Letters concerning railroad memories in Wildie. Mount Vernon Signal, January 24, 2013, 4. https://apps.madisonlibrary.org/newspapers/mountvernonsignal/Mount_Vernon_Signal.2013.01.January_2012.pdf
Gualtieri, James Louis. Geologic Map of the Wildie Quadrangle, Garrard and Rockcastle Counties, Kentucky. Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-684. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1968. https://doi.org/10.3133/gq684
Hiatt, Billy. “46 Years on the Corner of Church & Main.” Mount Vernon Signal, January 25, 2007. https://apps.madisonlibrary.org/newspapers/mountvernonsignal/Mount_Vernon_Signal.2007.01.January_2007.pdf
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. Inventory of Land Records. Frankfort: Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Documents/Inventory_Land_Records.pdf
Lexington History Museum. “Covington & Lexington Railroad.” Lexington History Museum Wiki. https://www.wiki.lexhistory.org/wikilex/covington-lexington-railroad
Mount Vernon Signal. “Wildie Christian Has Been Vital Part of Community Since 1880s.” August 16, 2007, A6, A8. https://apps.madisonlibrary.org/newspapers/mountvernonsignal/Mount_Vernon_Signal.2007.08.August_2007.pdf
Mount Vernon Signal. “Wildie Christian Church Welcomes New Minister.” February 9, 2012, A5. https://apps.madisonlibrary.org/newspapers/mountvernonsignal/Mount_Vernon_Signal.2012.02.February_2012.pdf
Rand McNally & Company. Enlarged Business Atlas and Shippers’ Guide. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1895. Extracted Wildie entry available through RoadsideThoughts. https://roadsidethoughts.com/ky/wildie-xx-rockcastle-mentions.htm
Rand McNally & Company. Rockcastle County, Kentucky. Map. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1911. Reproduced by My Genealogy Hound. https://www.mygenealogyhound.com/maps/kentucky-maps/KY-Rockcastle-County-Kentucky-1911-Rand-McNally-map-Mount-Vernon-Livingston-Brodhead.html
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x1s3p
Rennick, Robert M. “Rockcastle County: Post Offices.” 2000. County Histories of Kentucky, no. 387. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/387/
Richardson, Charles Henry. The Building Stones of Kentucky: A Detailed Report Covering the Examination, Analysis and Industrial Evaluation of the Principal Building Stone Deposits of the State. Frankfort: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1923, 97. https://archive.org/details/buildingstonesof00rich
Semi-Weekly Interior Journal (Stanford, KY). “Mt. Vernon Department.” June 11, 1886, 3. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85052020/1886-06-11/ed-1/?sp=3
Semi-Weekly Interior Journal (Stanford, KY). “Mt. Vernon, Rockcastle County.” February 11, 1887, 1. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85052020/1887-02-11/ed-1/?sp=1
Semi-Weekly Interior Journal (Stanford, KY). “Mt. Vernon, Rockcastle County.” February 18, 1887, 1. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85052020/1887-02-18/ed-1/?sp=1
Semi-Weekly Interior Journal (Stanford, KY). “Mt. Vernon, Rockcastle County.” March 22, 1887, 1. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85052020/1887-03-22/ed-1/?sp=1
U.S. Geological Survey. Wildie Quadrangle, Kentucky. 1:24,000. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1953. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/822/
U.S. Post Office Department. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971. National Archives Microfilm Publication M841, Record Group 28. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
Works Progress Administration. “Rockcastle County: Folklore.” 1939. County Histories of Kentucky, no. 372. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/372/
Works Progress Administration. “Rockcastle County: General History.” 1939. County Histories of Kentucky, no. 291. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/291/
Author Note: The history of Wildie reveals how railroads, local industry, religious institutions, and family connections shaped one of Rockcastle County’s small communities. Readers with historical photographs, family documents, railroad records, or additional information about Wildie are encouraged to contribute to the preservation of its history.