Appalachian Community Histories – Coin, Pulaski County: A Rural Community and Its Lost Post Office
In the countryside northeast of Somerset, Kentucky, near Shopville and Valley Oak, lies Coin, a small Pulaski County community whose history survives in early twentieth-century maps, postal records, and federal geographical references. Although Coin never developed into a major town, its former post office gave the community a recognizable identity within the national postal system and established a documentary record of its existence during a period of considerable change in rural Kentucky.
Coin’s best-documented history begins in 1902, when a post office bearing its name was established. The office served the surrounding community until 1934, giving Coin approximately thirty-two years of recorded postal history. Its appearance on a 1911 Rand McNally map also confirms that the community was recognized geographically during the early twentieth century, when Pulaski County contained numerous small settlements connected by country roads and local postal facilities.
Unlike larger communities whose histories can be reconstructed through municipal records, business directories, and extensive newspaper coverage, Coin has left a comparatively limited published record. Nevertheless, its postal history and surviving geographical documentation provide a starting point for understanding the settlement and its place within the history of eastern Pulaski County.
A Small Community in Eastern Pulaski County
Coin is located northeast of Somerset, in the general vicinity of Shopville and Valley Oak. The community belongs to a part of Pulaski County where small rural settlements developed around transportation routes, agricultural land, churches, country stores, and the institutions that connected neighboring families.
The geographical relationship between Coin and its surrounding communities is preserved in historical maps. The 1911 Rand McNally map of Pulaski County identifies Coin near Shopville and Valley Oak, placing it among a considerable number of smaller settlements that occupied the county’s eastern countryside. Somerset remained the principal county seat and commercial center, while these smaller communities provided local points of reference for families living beyond the town.
Coin’s exact founding date has not been established. The settlement may have existed before the establishment of its post office in 1902, but the available evidence does not identify its earliest residents, the first homes constructed there, or the circumstances under which its name entered local use.
The United States Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System preserves Coin under feature identification number 507726. Its inclusion in federal geographical records provides an enduring reference for locating the community, even though its former post office has long since disappeared.
The Establishment of the Coin Post Office in 1902
The clearest documented milestone in Coin’s history came in 1902, when the United States Post Office Department established a post office bearing the community’s name. The historical postal database assembled by Cameron Blevins and Richard W. Helbock records the office’s operation from 1902 until 1934, providing a basic chronology of Coin’s place within the federal postal system.
For residents of rural Pulaski County, a local post office could substantially improve their access to correspondence, newspapers, government information, and commercial transactions. Before rural home delivery became widespread, families frequently depended upon post offices in small settlements or nearby commercial centers to receive their mail.
Coin’s establishment came during an important transitional period in American postal history. Rural Free Delivery, which had begun experimentally in 1896, became a permanent service on July 1, 1902. Its expansion brought mail directly to an increasing number of rural households and eventually reduced the need for many small, independently operated post offices. According to the United States Postal Service’s historical account, the national postal network reached its greatest number of offices in 1901, with 76,945 establishments, before gradually contracting as rural delivery expanded.
Coin’s post office therefore opened in the same year that permanent rural delivery began transforming the country’s postal system. Its establishment gave the surrounding neighborhood a distinct mailing identity during a period when the Post Office Department was simultaneously extending service into rural America and reconsidering how that service should be organized.
The original federal appointment registers offer an opportunity to investigate Coin’s earliest postal administration. The National Archives preserves the Post Office Department’s records of postmaster appointments in Microfilm Publication M841, with Pulaski County included on roll 49. These registers record the establishment and discontinuance of offices, changes in their names, and the identities and appointment dates of their postmasters. Coin’s individual entries have not yet been verified for this account, leaving the identity of its first postmaster and the precise circumstances of its establishment unresolved.
Coin on the 1911 Map of Pulaski County
One of the most useful surviving contemporary sources for Coin is the 1911 Rand McNally map of Pulaski County. Published approximately nine years after the establishment of its post office, the map identifies Coin alongside Shopville, Valley Oak, and other settlements in the eastern portion of the county.
The map is particularly valuable because it establishes that Coin was more than an isolated name in a postal directory. By 1911, the community had become sufficiently recognized to appear in a commercially published geographical reference covering the surrounding county.
Historical maps also illustrate the relationship between these smaller settlements and the larger communities that supported regional commerce. Shopville, situated nearby, had developed into an established rural village with stores, milling facilities, wagon-making businesses, and other commercial establishments serving the surrounding countryside. Coin occupied the wider geographical landscape associated with these eastern Pulaski County communities.
However, the 1911 map cannot establish Coin’s population, the number of businesses operating there, or the extent of its residential development. Nor does its appearance identify the precise building used by the post office. Those questions require additional evidence from historical property records, postal site reports, and contemporary local accounts.
The United States Geological Survey’s historical topographic maps provide another means of examining the area. Its Somerset-area maps, including the 1935 edition preserved in Robert M. Rennick’s collection at Morehead State University, offer geographical evidence from the period immediately following Coin’s postal closure. Comparing these maps with the 1911 county map and earlier postal site-location reports could help establish how the surrounding roads and settlements changed during the first half of the twentieth century.
The Discontinuance of the Coin Post Office in 1934
After approximately thirty-two years of operation, Coin’s post office closed in 1934. The closure marked the end of the community’s independently recorded postal history, although it did not necessarily mean that the settlement itself had disappeared. The published postal chronology establishes the year of discontinuance but does not, by itself, explain the particular circumstances behind the decision.
By the 1930s, the expansion of rural mail delivery had already transformed the postal network serving communities throughout the United States. Improvements in transportation and the establishment of rural routes enabled the Post Office Department to serve many households without maintaining separate offices in every small settlement.
The United States Postal Service’s historical account identifies the expansion of rural delivery as a major factor in the nationwide decline of small post offices. Improved roads also changed the way carriers performed their duties, with motor vehicles increasingly replacing horse-drawn transportation during the early twentieth century.
These national developments provide important context for Coin’s closure, but they should not be mistaken for a documented explanation of the local decision. Determining why Coin’s office closed would require examining its original federal records, particularly the postmaster appointment registers and any surviving orders or correspondence relating to its discontinuance.
The Post Office Department’s records of site locations, preserved by the National Archives in Microfilm Publication M1126, may also contain useful information. Depending upon what survives for Coin, these reports could help identify the office’s location, its relationship to surrounding roads and neighboring post offices, and any relocations that occurred during its operation.
The Families and Everyday Life of Coin
Although postal records provide the principal chronological framework for Coin’s history, they reveal relatively little about the families who lived there. The names of the community’s early residents, the businesses they operated, and the churches or schools they attended have not been firmly established through the sources examined for this article.
One important resource for recovering that history is the Pulaski County Public Library’s digital archive, which contains historical newspapers, census returns, court documents, tax records, and other original materials. Among its collections are The Commonwealth, covering 1920 to 1965, and The Somerset Journal, covering 1922 to 1964. Both newspapers span the closing years of Coin’s post office and may contain neighborhood correspondence, postal notices, or references to people who lived in the community.
The federal census records preserved by the library, covering Pulaski County from 1810 to 1930, offer another opportunity to investigate the settlement’s development. Because Coin was not an incorporated town with a separately reported population, identifying its residents would require examining the appropriate enumeration districts and comparing household locations with historical maps and property records.
Earlier landownership patterns could be investigated through Pulaski County’s surviving court and tax records. These documents may eventually help establish which families occupied the surrounding countryside before the establishment of the post office and whether an earlier settlement existed under another name.
Such research is essential to understanding Coin beyond its administrative history. A post office could give a rural neighborhood an official name and connect it to the outside world, but the community itself was formed by the people who lived along its roads, maintained its households, and established relationships with neighboring settlements.
The Uncertain Origin of the Name Coin
One of the unresolved questions surrounding the community is the origin of its unusual name. Although Coin was sufficiently established to appear in the postal records of the early twentieth century and on the 1911 county map, the available evidence does not provide a verified explanation of how the name was selected.
Many Kentucky communities received their names from prominent families, geographical features, businesses, or the preferences of the individuals who applied to establish their post offices. In Coin’s case, however, attributing the name to any particular person, local feature, or event would be speculative without supporting historical documentation.
The original postal appointment and site-location records offer a possible starting point. Identifying the community’s first postmaster and examining any surviving application or early local correspondence might reveal whether Coin was already an established local name in 1902 or was adopted specifically for the new office.
Robert M. Rennick’s extensive research into Kentucky place names provides an additional avenue for investigation. His published reference works, county postal studies, and surviving manuscript collection at Morehead State University preserve information about numerous Kentucky settlements, including communities that no longer possess independent postal facilities. His Pulaski County research materials may contain additional references to Coin that have yet to be established from the documents examined here.
Preserving the History of Coin
Coin’s surviving history illustrates the difficulties of reconstructing the past of small Appalachian communities whose residents rarely appeared in statewide histories or other widely published accounts. Its postal chronology establishes a period of operation from 1902 to 1934, while the 1911 Rand McNally map provides contemporary evidence of the community’s geographical identity.
Together, these records establish Coin’s place within the history of eastern Pulaski County, but they leave much of its human story to be recovered. The people who established its post office, the families who received their mail there, the circumstances surrounding its name, and the reasons for the office’s eventual closure remain important subjects for further historical investigation.
The disappearance of a post office does not necessarily mean the disappearance of the community it served. In places such as Coin, the names preserved on historical maps and in government records can provide a starting point for recovering stories that may otherwise survive only in family collections, cemetery records, and the memories passed between generations.
The continued preservation of those materials offers an opportunity to connect Coin’s documented postal history with the lives of the people who made it a community.
Sources & Further Reading
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. US Post Offices. Historical postal dataset. Harvard Dataverse, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NUKCNA.
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M841, roll 49, Kentucky. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html.
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M1126, roll 231, Kentucky, Powell–Pulaski Counties. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html.
National Archives and Records Administration. Records of the Post Office Department. Record Group 28. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/028.html.
Rand McNally & Company. Map of Pulaski County, Kentucky. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1911. 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. 15-minute topographic quadrangle, 1935. Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/934/.
Works Progress Administration and Robert M. Rennick. “Pulaski County: Post Offices & Place Names.” 1939. County Histories of Kentucky, no. 284. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/284/.
Rennick, Robert M. “Pulaski County: Post Offices.” 2000. County Histories of Kentucky, no. 388. Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/388/.
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. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x1s3p.
Pulaski County Public Library. The Commonwealth. Somerset, KY, 1920–1965. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/.
Pulaski County Public Library. The Somerset Journal. Somerset, KY, 1922–1964. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/.
Pulaski County Public Library. Pulaski County Census Records, 1810–1930. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/.
Pulaski County Public Library. Pulaski County Court Records, 1799–1896. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/.
Pulaski County Public Library. Pulaski County Tax Lists, 1846–1890. Digital Archives of the Pulaski County Public Library. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/.
United States Postal Service. “Rural Free Delivery.” Postal Service History, 2013. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/rural-free-delivery.pdf.
United States Geological Survey. Historical Topographic Map Collection. National Geologic Map Database, topoView. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/.
Blevins, Cameron. Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/.
RoadsideThoughts. “Coin (Pulaski County, KY).” Community profile and historical postal information. https://roadsidethoughts.com/ky/coin-xx-pulaski-profile.htm.
Author Note: Coin’s surviving postal records and historical maps preserve only part of the story of this small Pulaski County community. Readers with family photographs, historical documents, or personal memories of Coin and the surrounding area are encouraged to share them and help preserve its history.