Appalachian Community Histories – Anco, Knott County: Post Office, Coal Camp, and Yellow Creek Community
Anco sits in the historical record as one of the small Knott County places whose name says a great deal in very few letters. Local post office research places it at the head of Yellow Creek, about two miles from the meeting of Yellow Creek and Carr Fork Creek and about six miles south southwest of Hindman. The Anco post office was established on October 6, 1922, and the name came from Anderson Combs, the first postmaster. In that sense, Anco followed a familiar eastern Kentucky pattern. A post office gave a scattered mountain settlement a fixed name, and the name preserved the memory of the person who first handled the mail there.
The name also fits the style of other place names in the upper Kentucky River coalfields. Robert M. Rennick’s work on Kentucky post offices is one of the key guides for understanding these communities, and a review of his Upper North Fork Valley post office survey specifically notes Anco as an acronymic name drawn from Anderson Combs. The same discussion compares Anco to other coalfield names built from people, companies, or initials, including Wisco for the Wisconsin Coal Company.
The Yellow Creek Setting
Anco’s geography was never separate from its history. The place belonged to the Yellow Creek and Carr Fork world south of Hindman, close to Sassafras, Wiscoal, Vicco, and the coal camps that developed along the creek bottoms and rail spurs. Modern gazetteer data identifies Anco as a populated place in Knott County at about latitude 37.245 and longitude -83.06, appearing on the Vicco United States Geological Survey map. That may sound like a simple map entry, but for a small unincorporated community, that kind of geographic record is part of how the place remains visible after the post office and coal operations fade.
Sassafras helps explain the neighborhood around Anco. KYGenWeb’s Knott County towns page places Sassafras on Carr Fork of the North Fork of the Kentucky River and notes that the Sassafras post office eventually moved near the mouth of Yellow Creek. Wiscoal, another nearby coal town, was on Yellow Creek and was named for the Wisconsin Coal Company. Together, Sassafras, Anco, and Wiscoal formed a small coalfield corridor where names, companies, rail lines, and post offices overlapped.
Coal Companies and the Making of Anco
The strongest reason Anco appears in so many records is coal. The Knott County coal mine lists preserved by KYGenWeb identify Knott Coal Corporation at Anco, with dates from 1923 to 1958 and about 200 miners. The same list places Knott Coal Corporation at Sassafras from 1922 to 1924, Perkins Bowling Coal Corporation at Sassafras from 1921 to 1924, Wisconsin Coal Corporation at Sassafras from 1919 to 1924, and Wisconsin Coal Corporation at Wiscoal from 1930 to 1952. These entries show Anco not as an isolated hollow, but as part of a larger Yellow Creek mining district.
Kentucky Department of Mines annual reports strengthen that picture. Search indexed Kentucky Geological Survey copies of the 1924 and 1925 state mine reports place Knott Coal Corporation, Perkins Bowling Coal Company, and Wisconsin Coal Corporation in the Knott County mine tables, with Anco appearing in the indexed entries. The state reports are especially important because they were not later nostalgia or local memory. They were official mining records made while the companies were operating.
Water, Washing Coal, and the Industrial Camp
One of the clearest official snapshots of Anco’s mining life comes from the United States Geological Survey’s 1956 report, Public and Industrial Water Supplies of the Eastern Coal Field Region, Kentucky. In the Knott County section, the report lists Anco under Blue Bird Mining Company and Knott Coal Corporation. Blue Bird Mining Company used water from a mine two miles north of the Sassafras post office, with storage in a 3,000 gallon steel tank, and the report states that the water was used for washing coal.
The same USGS report gives a fuller entry for Anco and Knott Coal Corporation. It describes a mine 1.6 miles northeast of the Sassafras post office, identifies the water bearing strata as coal in the No. 4 seam of the Breathitt formation, and records 35,000 gallons of storage in three wooden tanks. The average yearly distribution was listed as 17,500,000 gallons, with an average daily pumpage of 70,000 gallons when in operation. The purpose was coal washing, with water pumped from the mine into storage tanks, then through the washing plant, and finally discharged into a nearby stream.
That entry gives Anco a working texture that a map alone cannot provide. It shows tanks on the hillside, mine water being moved by pump, a coal washing plant in operation, and the Breathitt formation beneath the camp. Anco was not just a name on Yellow Creek. It was an industrial place where coal, water, geology, and labor met every day.
The Railroad Spur
Coal camps needed transportation, and Anco’s record includes a railroad connection. The Kentucky Abandoned Railroad Corridor Inventory identifies a line from Sassafras to Anco and Allock, 4.8 miles long, in Perry and Knott Counties. The inventory connects the corridor with CSXT and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad network and gives a likely abandonment period in the 1990s.
That short corridor says much about the purpose of the place. It tied Anco into the same rail and coal hauling system that linked other camps in the Carr Fork and Yellow Creek area. Allock, Sassafras, Wiscoal, Vicco, and Anco were not large towns in the courthouse sense, but coal railroads gave them an economic map of their own. The line existed because coal had to move out of the mountains.
Anco in Federal Records
Federal census geography also recognized Anco. The National Archives 1950 Census search index for Knott County describes a part of Magisterial District 2 as outside the unincorporated places of Anco and Wiscoal. That wording matters because it shows that by 1950 Anco was not merely a local nickname. It was a recognized unincorporated place used to define census enumeration geography.
This is one of the reasons small places like Anco can be researched through indirect records. The community may not have had a city government, courthouse, or incorporated boundary, but it left traces in post office records, census enumeration descriptions, mine reports, railroad inventories, water supply studies, topographic maps, death certificates, and coal company records.
Lives Behind the Company Name
The people of Anco appear most clearly when the records move from companies to individuals. Kentucky death certificate transcriptions preserved by KYGenWeb mention Anco as a residence or informant location in several cases. Maneuell Combs’ 1939 death certificate transcription lists his residence as Anco. Earnest Woods’ 1926 death certificate transcription identifies him as a mining engineer connected with Ashless and Knott Coal Corporation, with W. B. Hopkins of Anco as informant. Samuel M. Kelley’s death certificate transcription lists his occupation as coal miner for Knott Coal Corporation and gives the informant as Will Kelley by W. B. Hopkins of Anco.
Those entries should be treated as leads until the original certificates are checked through Kentucky vital records, the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, FamilySearch, or Ancestry. Still, they point toward the lived community behind the coal listings. Anco was a place of postmasters and miners, engineers and informants, company payrolls and family grief. The documentary record is industrial, but the human story is there between the lines.
What Anco’s Records Preserve
Anco’s history is not the story of a county seat, a battlefield, or a famous tourist stop. It is the story of an Appalachian coal camp that became visible because mail, coal, water, railroads, and federal recordkeeping all had reasons to name it. The post office gave it a name in 1922. The mines gave it work. The railroad gave it an outlet. The Census Bureau gave it geographic recognition. The USGS gave it an industrial snapshot at midcentury.
For historians, Anco is valuable because it shows how small coal communities can be reconstructed from scattered official records. A single post office entry tells where it was and who named it. Mine reports and coal camp lists show the companies that worked there. A water supply report shows the washing plant and tanks. A railroad inventory shows the spur that connected it to the wider coal network. Death certificates bring individual residents back into the story. Together, those sources preserve a place that might otherwise be reduced to a name on an old map.
Sources & Further Reading
Rennick, Robert M. “Knott County: Post Offices.” Morehead State University, County Histories of Kentucky, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/237/
Rennick, Robert M. “Knott County: Post Offices.” PDF. Morehead State University, County Histories of Kentucky, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1235&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rennick, Robert M. “Kentucky River Post Offices.” Morehead State University, Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, 2003. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/159/
Baker, John Augustus, and William Evans Price. Public and Industrial Water Supplies of the Eastern Coal Field Region, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Circular 369. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/cir369
Baker, John Augustus, and William Evans Price. Public and Industrial Water Supplies of the Eastern Coal Field Region, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Circular 369. PDF. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956. https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1956/0369/report.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1925. Frankfort, KY: State Department of Mines, 1926. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals. Annual Report. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006206733
Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals. Annual Report. Google Books, 1927. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report.html?id=utEJrP6WcNoC
Kentucky Mine Mapping Information System. “Annual Reports.” Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. https://www.minemaps.ky.gov/Maps/AnnualReports
National Archives and Records Administration. “Enumeration District Search: Knott County, Kentucky.” 1950 Census. https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Knott&page=1&state=KY
U.S. Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” National Geospatial Program. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
U.S. Geological Survey. “topoView.” National Geologic Map Database. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
University of Texas Libraries. “Kentucky Historical Topographic Maps.” Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kentucky/
YellowMaps. “Vicco Topographic Map, Kentucky, 1:24,000 Scale.” https://www.yellowmaps.com/usgs/quad/37083b1.htm
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
Kentucky Open GIS Data. “Kentucky Geographic Names Information System.” https://opengisdata.ky.gov/datasets/ky-geographic-names-information-system-gnis
Kentucky Open GIS Data. “GNIS: Populated Places.” https://opengisdata.ky.gov/maps/c839ecf831424e25bae5c91b6d3a86a4
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Kentucky Abandoned Railroad Corridor Inventory. https://transportation.ky.gov/BikeWalk/2019%20Grant%20Applications/KY%20Abandoned%20Railroad%20Corridor%20Inventory.pdf
KYGenWeb. “Knott Co., KY Cities & Towns.” https://kygenweb.net/knott/area/cities-towns.htm
KYGenWeb. “Knott Co., KY Coal Mines.” https://kygenweb.net/knott/area/coal-mines.htm
Coal Education Development and Resource. “Knott County, Kentucky Coal Camps.” CoalEducation.org. https://www.coaleducation.org/coalhistory/coaltowns/coalcamps/knott_county.htm
KYGenWeb. “Death Certificate: Maneuell Combs.” Knott County, Kentucky Death Certificates. https://kygenweb.net/knott/records/death_certificates/c_death_certificates/combs_maneuell.htm
KYGenWeb. “Death Certificate: Earnest Woods.” Knott County, Kentucky Death Certificates. https://kygenweb.net/knott/records/death_certificates/w_death_certificates/woods_earnest.htm
KYGenWeb. “Death Certificate: Samuel M. Kelley.” Knott County, Kentucky Death Certificates. https://kygenweb.net/knott/records/death_certificates/k_death_certificates/kelley_samuel_m.htm
Combs &c. Research Group. “Kentucky Death Index: Combs, M.” https://combs-families.org/combs/records/ky/ky-dc-m.htm
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Kentucky Coal Resource Information.” University of Kentucky. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsmap/kcrim/
Danilchik, Walter. Geologic Map of the Hindman Quadrangle, Knott and Perry Counties, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map, 1976. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/
HometownLocator. “Anco Populated Place Profile, Knott County, Kentucky.” https://kentucky.hometownlocator.com/ky/knott/anco.cfm
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Knott, Kentucky.” https://arc.gov/states_counties/knott/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: I like these small coal-camp histories because they show how much of Appalachian history survives in post office records, maps, mine reports, and family records. Anco may look small on a map, but its records connect it to coal work, railroads, water systems, and the daily lives of Knott County families.