Appalachian Community Histories – Bee Lick, Pulaski County: William E. Perkins, Country Commerce, and the Changing Postal Map
In the northern reaches of Pulaski County, near the meeting point of Lincoln, Rockcastle, and Pulaski counties, Bee Lick developed into a small agricultural community whose history reflects the importance of country stores, rural post offices, and family connections in nineteenth-century Kentucky. Located approximately twenty miles northeast of Somerset, the settlement took its name from Bee Lick Creek, a waterway that local tradition associated with the abundance of honeybees once found along its banks. Although Bee Lick never developed into a large town, its surviving historical records reveal a community with merchants, craftsmen, religious leaders, and families whose connections to the surrounding countryside continued long after its post office disappeared.
Bee Lick’s position near three county boundaries presents an unusual challenge for understanding its history. When the community first acquired a post office in 1861, it was officially located in Lincoln County, where it remained for more than two decades before the postal establishment moved into Pulaski County in 1887. Its residents maintained connections with nearby Crab Orchard, Woodstock, Bandy, and other settlements, while agricultural products moved through regional markets and the developing railroad system.
By the early twentieth century, changes in postal service and transportation had begun reshaping many of Kentucky’s smaller rural communities. Bee Lick lost its post office in 1910, but the community itself survived, retaining its schools, churches, farms, and family connections into the following generations.
Bee Lick Creek and the Origins of the Community
The earliest history of Bee Lick is closely tied to the geography of northern Pulaski County and the surrounding countryside. The settlement developed near Bee Lick Creek in an area where the boundaries of Lincoln, Pulaski, and Rockcastle counties converged, creating a community whose residents and institutions were historically associated with more than one county.
Kentucky place-name historian Robert M. Rennick traced the community’s name to the creek, which had reportedly received its designation because of the numerous honeybees found along its banks. The explanation belongs to the local naming tradition documented by Rennick rather than to a surviving account written when the creek was first named. Nevertheless, it reflects a pattern common throughout Kentucky, where streams, natural resources, and recognizable features of the landscape provided names for emerging settlements.
The surrounding countryside offered opportunities for farming and small-scale commerce, although its location away from the larger towns required residents to maintain connections with outside markets. The roads leading toward Crab Orchard were particularly important because they provided access to established businesses and, eventually, railroad transportation.
Bee Lick’s early settlement history remains less thoroughly documented than its postal history. Surviving nineteenth-century records establish that the community was functioning by the beginning of the Civil War, but identifying its earliest families, original landowners, and first permanent buildings requires further investigation of Lincoln and Pulaski County land records.
The Establishment of the Bee Lick Post Office in 1861
Bee Lick acquired an official place in Kentucky’s postal network on January 29, 1861, when John Bobbitt established its post office in Lincoln County. The date places the establishment of the office during the final months before the outbreak of the American Civil War, a period when Kentucky’s transportation networks and rural communities were becoming increasingly important to regional communication.
Rennick’s research identifies Bobbitt as the community’s first postmaster and records that the office remained in Lincoln County until 1887. The original federal post-office directory, revised to September 1, 1870, independently confirms that Bee Lick was officially classified as a Lincoln County post office alongside Crab Orchard, Stanford, Waynesburg, and several other communities.
The establishment of a post office was an important development for a rural settlement. Before the expansion of regular postal service, residents often depended upon distant towns or travelers to carry correspondence, while merchants needed dependable communication with suppliers and customers. Having a recognized postal address provided Bee Lick with a more permanent place in the region’s commercial and administrative networks.
The office’s original location also explains why portions of Bee Lick’s nineteenth-century history are more easily found in Lincoln County records than in those maintained by Pulaski County. Its later association with Pulaski County did not erase those earlier connections, particularly for families who owned land or conducted business near the county boundaries.
William E. Perkins and the Growth of Commerce at Bee Lick
Among the individuals most closely associated with Bee Lick’s nineteenth-century commercial history was William E. Perkins, a merchant whose business eventually connected the community with the expanding economy of Somerset.
Born in Pulaski County on November 7, 1852, Perkins was the son of Willis G. and Patsey Montgomery Perkins. He grew up in a farming family and received his education in the common schools and at Masonic College in Somerset. His family’s connections to Lincoln and Pulaski counties placed him within the regional network of merchants and agricultural families that supported the development of smaller settlements.
According to the biographical history preserved in Pulaski County Fact Book II, Perkins entered business in 1872 when he formed a partnership with J. E. Bobbitt and opened a general store at Bee Lick. Bobbitt died in 1874, leaving Perkins to continue operating the business independently for more than a decade. The surviving account identifies the partners and records their business relationship, although it does not establish whether J. E. Bobbitt was related to John Bobbitt, who had established the community’s post office in 1861.
Perkins’s general store became one of the documented commercial establishments in Bee Lick during the late nineteenth century. Country stores served important functions in communities where residents had limited access to larger towns, supplying merchandise while providing farmers with opportunities to obtain goods and participate in regional trade.
Perkins remained at Bee Lick until 1885, when he relocated to Somerset. The following year, he entered the hardware business with George P. Sallee, establishing the firm of Sallee and Perkins. Their business carried hardware, stoves, farm implements, and other merchandise, allowing Perkins to continue the commercial career that he had begun in the smaller community.
His move to Somerset illustrates the economic connections between Bee Lick and the county’s growing commercial centers. Merchants could establish themselves in rural settlements before expanding their businesses into larger towns, while the families they had served continued to depend upon the regional commercial networks that connected the countryside with Somerset and Crab Orchard.
Bee Lick in the 1881 Kentucky State Gazetteer
One of the most detailed surviving descriptions of nineteenth-century Bee Lick appears in R. L. Polk and Company’s Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1881 and 1882. The directory identified Bee Lick as a rural post office in Lincoln County, approximately twenty miles southeast of Stanford, and described Crab Orchard as its principal shipping point. The directory placed Crab Orchard ten miles north of the community along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and noted that agricultural produce was marketed from the surrounding countryside.
William E. Perkins was serving as postmaster when the directory was compiled, with mail arriving twice each week. His combined responsibilities as merchant and postmaster reflected an arrangement common in smaller rural communities, where commercial establishments frequently provided space for postal operations and became regular gathering places for local residents.
The directory also identified several residents whose occupations reveal the variety of services available in Bee Lick. Mrs. Martha Albright operated a hotel, while M. G. Bryant practiced medicine and W. H. Collier worked as a distiller. R. C. Reynolds was listed as a blacksmith, and Galen Rogers and Wyatt Warren were identified as coopers, craftsmen who made and repaired wooden barrels and similar containers.
These establishments suggest that Bee Lick’s economy extended beyond its surrounding farms. The presence of a distiller and two coopers is particularly noteworthy because wooden barrels were essential for storing and transporting many agricultural and commercial products, while blacksmiths provided tools, repairs, and metalwork needed by farmers and travelers.
Religious life was also represented in the directory. The Reverend John Abbott and the Reverend W. S. Reynolds were identified as Baptist ministers, while the Reverend J. W. Barron was associated with the Christian denomination. Their presence indicates that the community had access to multiple religious traditions, although the directory does not identify the specific congregations or church buildings in which these ministers served.
Taken together, the directory’s entries provide a picture of Bee Lick during one of the better-documented periods of its history. Rather than an isolated collection of farms, the settlement had developed into a functioning rural service center whose residents participated in commerce, skilled trades, religious activities, and the agricultural economy of the surrounding counties.
The Move to Pulaski County and the Final Years of the Post Office
Bee Lick’s postal history entered a new phase in 1887 when M. J. Reynolds relocated the post office from Lincoln County into Pulaski County. Rennick’s research identifies Reynolds with the move, which transferred the office’s official county designation while preserving the community’s established name.
The relocation did not necessarily indicate that the entire settlement had moved. Bee Lick occupied an area close to multiple county boundaries, and the precise location of a rural post office could change when a new postmaster assumed responsibility for its operation or when postal facilities moved to another establishment. In Bee Lick’s case, the change placed its post office under Pulaski County for the remainder of its existence.
A particularly interesting reference to the community survives in the Congressional Record for February 26, 1896. During proceedings in the United States House of Representatives, Congressman David G. Colson introduced H.R. 6584, a private bill proposing a pension for Hannah Debord of Bee Lick, Pulaski County.
The proposed legislation was referred to the Committee on Invalid Pensions. Although the congressional entry does not establish whether Debord eventually received the requested pension, it provides a precisely dated record of a Bee Lick resident and demonstrates that the community’s Pulaski County postal designation was in use during the 1890s.
Bee Lick continued operating as a post office into the opening decade of the twentieth century. By that time, the surrounding countryside included other small postal communities, including Bandy, whose office opened in 1901 approximately three miles south of Bee Lick near the junction of what are now Kentucky Routes 39 and 70.
In February 1910, Bee Lick’s post office permanently closed, ending nearly forty-nine years of postal service under the community’s name. The closure marked the end of an important local institution, but it did not mean that the families, farms, and neighborhood connections associated with Bee Lick had disappeared.
Bee Lick on the Historical Maps of Pulaski County
Historical maps provide evidence of Bee Lick’s continued identity after the disappearance of its post office. A 1911 Rand McNally map of Pulaski County identified the settlement as Beelick near the northern county boundary, placing it within a network of neighboring communities that included Bandy, Clarence, Woodstock, and other rural settlements.
The map is especially valuable because it was published shortly after the post office closed. Its continued use of the community’s name demonstrates that Bee Lick remained a recognized geographical location even though its independent postal designation had ended.
Additional evidence survives in the United States Geological Survey’s Woodstock topographic map, surveyed in 1952 and published in 1954. The detailed map identified Bee Lick and Bee Lick Creek while recording the surrounding roads, streams, schools, churches, and rural settlements that characterized the countryside during the middle of the twentieth century.
Among the schools identified on the Woodstock quadrangle was Thompson School, an institution whose connection to Bee Lick is confirmed by later family records. The map also preserved the locations of nearby communities such as Bandy and Woodstock, providing a geographical picture of the area at a time when small country schools and churches remained important parts of rural life.
The surviving maps illustrate the difference between the disappearance of a postal institution and the disappearance of a community. Although Bee Lick no longer appeared in federal postal directories as an independent office, its name remained attached to the surrounding landscape, where families continued to farm and maintain relationships with neighboring settlements.
Thompson School, Liberty Baptist Church, and Twentieth-Century Community Life
The history of Bee Lick during the twentieth century is particularly well illustrated by the surviving family account of Ruby Arney McWilliams, whose obituary provides information about the community’s schools, churches, and agricultural traditions.
Born in Bee Lick on August 15, 1914, Ruby was the daughter of Burgess G. and Mattie Farthing Arney and the youngest of seven children. She attended Thompson School, which served children in the surrounding community during the years when small rural schools provided much of the educational infrastructure in northern Pulaski County.
On December 25, 1934, Ruby married Clyde McWilliams, and the couple established their life together in the Bee Lick and Bandy farming community. They remained married for nearly fifty-nine years before Clyde’s death in November 1993, spending much of their lives maintaining the agricultural and family traditions of the area.
Ruby’s account is also significant for what it reveals about religious life in Bee Lick. She was a longtime member of Liberty Baptist Church, where she sang and taught Sunday School classes before eventually relocating to Somerset and becoming a member of Ferguson Baptist Church.
Her obituary identifies Liberty Baptist Church Cemetery as her burial place and explicitly locates it within the Bee Lick community of northern Pulaski County. This connection establishes the cemetery as an important source for further historical research, particularly for identifying families who lived in the area during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Ruby died on January 25, 2012, at the age of ninety-seven. Her surviving family history demonstrates that Bee Lick’s identity endured long after the closure of its post office, with residents maintaining connections through agriculture, education, religious institutions, and the generations of families who continued to regard the community as home.
Bee Lick’s Place in Pulaski County History
The history of Bee Lick reflects the experiences of many small communities in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, where local identity developed through a combination of agriculture, commerce, religious institutions, and access to transportation networks. Its location near three county boundaries created a settlement whose historical records are scattered across multiple jurisdictions, while its early dependence upon Crab Orchard connected local farmers and merchants to markets beyond their immediate countryside.
The establishment of the post office in 1861 provided Bee Lick with an official identity, but the commercial directory of 1881 and 1882 reveals that the community had developed into considerably more than a place where residents collected their mail. Its general store, hotel, physician, distiller, blacksmith, coopers, and ministers represented the everyday institutions and occupations that sustained rural communities throughout nineteenth-century Kentucky.
Although Bee Lick’s post office closed in 1910, subsequent maps and family records demonstrate that the community continued to exist. Thompson School educated local children, Liberty Baptist Church provided a religious gathering place, and farming families maintained connections with Bandy, Woodstock, Somerset, and the surrounding countryside.
Today, Bee Lick’s history survives through the records of the families who lived there, the historical maps that preserved its location, and the original federal and commercial documents that recorded its development. Its story is an example of how a relatively small rural community could maintain a recognizable identity across generations, even as the institutions that first placed it on the map gradually changed or disappeared.
Sources & Further Reading
R. L. Polk & Co. Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881–1882. Vol. 3, pt. 1. Detroit: R. L. Polk & Co., 1881. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Kentucky-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-1881-1882-Vol-III-pt-1-part-7.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881–1882. Vol. 3, pt. 2, occupational indexes. Detroit: R. L. Polk & Co., 1881. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Kentucky-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-1881-1882-Vol-III-pt-2-part-25.htm
United States Post Office Department. List of Post Offices in the United States. Revised to September 1, 1870. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1870. Kentucky entries transcribed by KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/allky/counties/post-offices-1870.html
United States Congress. Congressional Record. 54th Cong., 1st sess., February 26, 1896, 2190. House Resolution 6584, proposed pension for Hannah Debord of Bee Lick, Pulaski County, Kentucky. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1896-pt3-v28/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1896-pt3-v28-6-2.pdf
Rand McNally & Co. Pulaski County, Kentucky. Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1911. Digitized 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. Woodstock Quadrangle, Kentucky. 7.5-minute topographic map. Surveyed 1952, published 1954. https://pastmaps.com/map/woodstock-pulaski-county-ky-usgs-topo-1952-p1954
United States Geological Survey. USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection. National Geologic Map Database, TopoView. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/
United States National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1955. Record Group 28, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1126. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
United States National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971. Record Group 28, National Archives Microfilm Publication M841. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
United States Bureau of the Census. United States Federal Census Records, 1860–1930. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/online-resources
Kentucky Historical Society. Kentucky Newspapers on Microfilm: Counties Nelson–Robertson. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society. Includes historical Somerset newspapers, 1854–1922, reel 98-0038. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/api/collection/LIB/id/1469/download
Pulaski County Public Library. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. Somerset, KY. Historical census records, court records, deeds, tax lists, wills, marriage bonds, and newspapers. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/
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: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 388. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/388/
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Pulaski County: Post Offices & Place Names.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 284. Morehead State University, 1939. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/284/
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 123. Morehead State University, digitally published 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/123/
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813101798/kentucky-place-names/
Pulaski County Fact Book II. Chapter 9, “Biographical Sketches.” Transcribed by KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/fact_book/nine.htm
Elbon, David C. “Bee Lick.” Kentucky Atlas & Gazetteer. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-bee-lick.html
Pulaski Funeral Home. “Ruby McWilliams.” Obituary, January 25, 2012. https://www.pulaskifuneralhome.com/obituaries/1378877
Morehead State University. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection. Morehead, KY: Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/
Author Note: Bee Lick’s history reminds us that even the smallest rural communities have stories worth preserving, from their earliest post offices and country stores to the families who carried their traditions forward. If you have photographs, family records, or memories of Bee Lick, Thompson School, or Liberty Baptist Church, I encourage you to share them so that future generations can better understand this corner of northern Pulaski County.