Appalachian Community Histories – Alcalde, Pulaski County: Benjamin F. Hamilton, Pitman Creek, and a Spanish-Named Community
Southeast of Somerset, Kentucky, along Pitman Creek and the road now known as Kentucky Route 769, lies the small Pulaski County community of Alcalde. Its unusual name distinguishes it from the many settlements named for local families, geographical features, churches, and early industries. Alcalde, however, existed as a community before it acquired the Spanish name by which it would become known on postal records and maps. Its earlier identity was Enterprise, a rural locality whose history was closely connected to a neighborhood church and the families living along the surrounding roads and waterways.
The most detailed published account of Alcalde’s naming comes from Kentucky place-name historian Robert M. Rennick, whose extensive research into the state’s communities and post offices included a three-part study of Pulaski County. In the second installment, published in La Posta in 2007, Rennick located the Alcalde post office approximately four and a half to five miles southeast of Somerset. He identified Enterprise as the original locality and traced its later name to Benjamin F. Hamilton, a veteran of the Spanish-American War who established a post office to serve the area in 1907.
The distinction between Enterprise and Alcalde is important because the establishment of a post office did not necessarily mark the beginning of a community. Families, congregations, roads, and neighborhood relationships could develop long before a settlement received an officially recognized postal name. In Alcalde’s case, the surviving postal history provides a firm date for the adoption of its new identity while preserving evidence of the older Enterprise name.
Benjamin F. Hamilton and the Naming of Alcalde
On May 22, 1907, the Alcalde post office officially opened, giving the Enterprise community its own place within the expanding postal network of southeastern Kentucky. Benjamin F. Hamilton had sought to establish an office under the existing name of Enterprise, but the Post Office Department could not accept it because another Kentucky post office already carried that name in Carter County.
Hamilton’s solution was unusual. Having served in the Spanish-American War, he selected Alcalde, the Spanish word for mayor, as the name of the new office. Rennick’s research specifically attributes both the naming and the establishment of the post office to Hamilton, connecting the history of this small Pulaski County settlement to an international conflict that had taken place less than a decade earlier.
There is something distinctive about the way Alcalde acquired its name. The community had not been founded by Spanish settlers, nor was its name derived from a geographical landmark or a prominent local family. Instead, it emerged from the practical necessity of choosing an available postal name and the experiences of a veteran whose military service had introduced him to Spanish terminology.
The federal postmaster appointment registers and surviving post office site reports offer additional opportunities to reconstruct Hamilton’s involvement and the subsequent operation of the office. The National Archives preserves the relevant Kentucky postmaster appointments in Microfilm M841, roll 49, while the site-location reports in Microfilm M1126, roll 231, cover the Pulaski County records. Such documents can establish changes in postal administration and, where surviving reports permit, the relationship between an office, nearby roads, waterways, and mail routes. The individual Alcalde reports require examination before further details about its earliest postmasters or buildings can be established.
Alcalde on the Early Twentieth-Century Map
Within four years of the post office’s establishment, Alcalde had appeared on a commercially published map of Kentucky. Rand McNally’s 1911 map of Pulaski County, reproduced by My Genealogy Hound, identifies Alcalde among the county’s numerous small postal settlements, including nearby Strawberry, Bourbon, and other communities surrounding Somerset.
The map provides contemporary evidence that Alcalde had entered the geographical records of Kentucky by the early twentieth century. Although the map cannot establish the exact size of the settlement or the number of families served by its post office, it places the community within a larger network of rural localities spread across Pulaski County.
For communities such as Alcalde, a post office was particularly significant because residents did not necessarily live around a clearly defined town center. Homes, farms, churches, and other gathering places could be distributed across several miles, while roads and waterways provided the connections that held the neighborhood together. A postal address supplied a recognized name that could appear in correspondence, business records, government documents, and published atlases.
The 1935 Somerset topographic map, preserved in Morehead State University’s Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection, provides another historical reference for studying the area’s changing landscape. Produced by the United States Geological Survey, the map belongs to a period when the Alcalde post office had already been operating for nearly three decades. Comparing historical topographic maps with Rennick’s descriptions and original federal postal records offers a means of reconstructing the relationship between the settlement, Pitman Creek, and its surrounding roads.
New Enterprise Baptist Church and Community Life
The religious history of the Enterprise area predates the establishment of the Alcalde post office. New Enterprise Baptist Church was among the congregations involved in organizing the Pulaski County Association of Missionary Baptists in 1904, three years before Hamilton established the new postal office.
Frank M. Masters documented the association’s beginnings in A History of Baptists in Kentucky. According to his account, the movement toward a separate Pulaski County association began during a meeting at Somerset Baptist Church on May 4, 1904, when members considered organizing a county association rather than continuing within the larger South Kentucky Association. Representatives from twenty-three churches attended a preliminary meeting on July 25, and the new association was formally constituted in Somerset on October 11, 1904.
New Enterprise was listed among its founding congregations, alongside Somerset, Burnside, Bethlehem, New Bethel, Mount Union, and several other churches. Its inclusion establishes the congregation’s participation in an organized religious network before Alcalde appeared in the postal records.
Rennick also identified an Enterprise church as the center of the locality for which Hamilton established the post office, although his published account does not fully explain the historical relationship between that church and New Enterprise Baptist Church. The distinction deserves attention because the surviving records preserve both names, and they should not automatically be treated as interchangeable without examining the original congregational records.
New Enterprise Baptist Church remains an identifiable part of the area’s religious geography. The Lake Cumberland Baptist Association lists the congregation at 4680 Rush Branch Road in the Somerset area, providing a continuing geographical connection to the neighborhood associated with Alcalde’s postal history. Its early associational participation and later appearance in Rennick’s account make the congregation an important starting point for researching the lives of families who inhabited the community during the twentieth century.
The Alcalde Post Office and Its Changing Location
For most of its recorded existence, the Alcalde post office stood along Pitman Creek and what is now Kentucky Route 769, approximately four and a half to five miles southeast of Somerset. Although the office retained its distinctive name for decades, its location was not entirely fixed.
Rennick recorded that shortly before its suspension, the post office moved approximately two-thirds of a mile southeast along the road to a location just beyond New Enterprise Church. This relocation is an important detail because the location associated with Alcalde on a modern map may not correspond precisely with the site occupied by the post office during most of the twentieth century.
For residents, the office represented more than a geographical marker. Rural postal services connected communities to relatives, businesses, newspapers, government agencies, and the wider country. While the surviving published history does not describe every aspect of daily life at Alcalde’s post office, its long existence demonstrates the continuing use of a local postal identity from the early twentieth century into the late 1980s.
The office’s later history also illustrates the importance of distinguishing between different kinds of postal closure. Rennick recorded November 3, 1988, as the date on which the Alcalde post office was suspended. The specialized Jim Forte Postal History index, however, lists Alcalde with the dates 1907 and 1992. The different dates may reflect separate administrative events, such as suspension and formal discontinuance, but the original Postal Service records would be needed to establish the reason for the discrepancy.
Preserving Alcalde’s History Through Postal Records and Local Archives
Although Alcalde’s published history is relatively brief, substantial archival material remains available for investigating the community more closely. Rennick’s original research papers, preserved by Morehead State University, include a Pulaski County place-name collection, while a separate historical survey of Pulaski County post offices and place names is cataloged among the university’s County Histories of Kentucky holdings.
These collections offer opportunities to examine the evidence behind published place-name histories and investigate details that may not have appeared in Rennick’s shorter articles. The distinction between the original research material and the published historical interpretation is especially valuable when attempting to identify former post office sites or explain changes in a community’s name.
The Pulaski County Public Library’s digital archives provide another important resource for reconstructing the human history of Alcalde. The collection includes the Commonwealth, the Somerset Journal, and the Commonwealth Journal, together with historical census records, court documents, deeds, and other material concerning Pulaski County.
These records could help identify the families who received mail through Alcalde, establish their occupations and family relationships, and recover local events that rarely entered published county histories. Newspaper searches under Alcalde, Enterprise, New Enterprise, Pitman Creek, and Rush Branch would be particularly relevant, although individual articles concerning the community must be located and verified before their contents can be incorporated into its history.
Alcalde and the Survival of a Community Name
The disappearance of Alcalde’s post office did not erase the name from the geography of Pulaski County. The community remains identifiable in geographical and topographic reference material, even though its original postal function has ended. The historical Somerset topographic records continue to associate Alcalde with the surrounding landscape of Rush Branch, Pitman Creek, New Enterprise Church, and the rural roads southeast of Somerset.
Its history is particularly revealing because it preserves two identities belonging to the same locality. Enterprise reflects the neighborhood that existed before the establishment of a separate post office, while Alcalde represents the distinctive name selected by Benjamin F. Hamilton in 1907. One name arose from the older community, and the other from an administrative decision shaped by the experiences of a Spanish-American War veteran.
The 1911 Rand McNally map, the early records of New Enterprise Baptist Church, and Rennick’s later postal research preserve different parts of that history. Together, they demonstrate how the story of a small Appalachian community can be recovered from sources that were created for entirely different purposes, including delivering mail, documenting church associations, and identifying places on a map.
Why Alcalde’s History Matters
Alcalde’s history illustrates how the names and identities of rural Appalachian communities developed through relationships between local residents and larger institutions. Its original identity as Enterprise preceded its recognition by the United States Post Office Department, while the Spanish name selected in 1907 connected a small Kentucky settlement to the experiences of an American veteran of an overseas war.
The community’s religious records and historical maps provide evidence of a settlement that existed beyond the boundaries of its postal administration. Its subsequent postal relocation and eventual suspension remind us that an official post office was only one part of a community’s identity, even when that office supplied the name by which the place would be remembered.
Today, Alcalde’s history survives in the landscape southeast of Somerset and in the records left behind by people and institutions whose activities helped establish its identity. It is a reminder that the history of Appalachia cannot be told solely through its larger towns, industries, and famous individuals. It must also include small settlements like Alcalde, where a church, a creek, a country road, and a post office became the foundations of a lasting place name.
Sources & Further Reading
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part 2.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 4 (August–September 2007): 58–65. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-4.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part 1.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 3 (June–July 2007). https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-3.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Pulaski County, Kentucky, Part 3.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 38, no. 5 (October–November 2007). https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP38-5.pdf
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 123. Morehead State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/123/
Rennick, Robert M. “Place Names Beginning with the Letter A.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 6. Morehead State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/6/
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Pulaski County: Post Offices & Place Names.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 284. Morehead State University. Cataloged as 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/284/
Rand McNally & Company. Kentucky. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1911. Pulaski County detail reproduced by My Genealogy Hound. https://mygenealogyhound.com/maps/kentucky-maps/KY-Pulaski-County-Kentucky-1911-Rand-McNally-map-Somerset-Burnside-Science-Hill.html
United States Geological Survey. Somerset, Kentucky. Topographic map, 1935. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/934/
United States Geological Survey. Somerset, Kentucky. Topographic map, 1961. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/719/
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection.” TopoView. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/topoview
United States Post Office Department. Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126, roll 231. Record Group 28, National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
United States Post Office Department. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971. Microfilm Publication M841, roll 49. Record Group 28, National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder: Post Offices by County.” Postal History. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/post-offices-by-county.htm
Masters, Frank M. A History of Baptists in Kentucky. Louisville: Kentucky Baptist Historical Society, 1953. Chapter 34, “The Final Group of District Associations, 1900–1925.” https://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.baptists.masters.chp.34.html
Lake Cumberland Baptist Association. “Our Churches.” Directory entry for New Enterprise Baptist Church, Somerset, Kentucky. https://lakecumberlandbaptist.org/our-churches/
Pulaski County Public Library. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. Historical newspapers, census records, court records, and local archival materials. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/
Kentucky Historical Society. Kentucky Newspapers on Microfilm: Counties Nelson–Robertson. Newspaper holdings catalog, including historical Pulaski County newspapers. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/api/collection/LIB/id/1469/download
University of Kentucky Libraries. “Kentucky Digital Newspapers.” Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program. https://kdnp.uky.edu/splash/kdnpcsv.html
Pulaski County Clerk. “Land Records.” Pulaski County, Kentucky. https://pulaski.kycountyclerk.us/land-records/
Pulaski County Schools. “Records Request Procedures.” Historical school records, including records of former one-room and two-room schools. https://www.pulaski.net/community/records-request-procedures-2-392-1
United States Bureau of the Census. Population Schedules for Pulaski County, Kentucky, 1910–1950. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/online-resources
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Pulaski County.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 56. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/56/
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813101798/kentucky-place-names/
Tibbals, Alma Owens. A History of Pulaski County, Kentucky. 1952. https://books.google.com/books/about/A_History_of_Pulaski_County_Kentucky.html?id=hUh4D_2eUFMC
Forte, Jim. “Pulaski County, Kentucky Post Offices.” Jim Forte Postal History. https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?county=Pulaski&state=KY&task=display
Author Note: Alcalde’s history reminds us that even the smallest Appalachian communities can have remarkable stories behind their names, churches, and post offices. I hope this article encourages readers with family connections to Enterprise and Alcalde to preserve the photographs, documents, and memories that can help tell more of this community’s history.