Appalachian Community Histories – East Bernstadt, Laurel County: Swiss Colony Roots, Coal Camps, and Railroad Memory
East Bernstadt sits in northern Laurel County, only a few miles above London, but its history does not belong to one simple category. It was a coal community, a railroad junction, a school community, and part of one of the most unusual immigrant settlement stories in Kentucky. The Kentucky Atlas describes East Bernstadt as a Laurel County community about five miles north of London, “mainly a coal town,” home to many Swiss immigrants, and once a junction of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Rockcastle River Railway. The same source notes that the Mullins post office opened in 1881 and was renamed East Bernstadt in 1904.
Like many Appalachian places, East Bernstadt was not built around one courthouse square or one founding ceremony. Its story grew out of roads, post offices, churches, school records, mines, timber lines, family farms, and names that changed as the community changed. The older Bernstadt settlement west of London and the East Bernstadt coal and railroad community north of London were connected by Swiss families, work, worship, and memory, but they were not quite the same place. That distinction matters because East Bernstadt’s history is best understood as part of a broader Laurel County network that included Bernstadt, Altamont, Pittsburg, Camp Ground, Hazel Patch Creek, the L&N line, and the roads running toward London and the Rockcastle country.
The Swiss Colony Comes To Laurel County
The story begins in 1881, when Kentucky was trying to attract European immigrants to settle land that many native Kentuckians considered difficult or worn out. The Kentucky Historical Society marker for Swiss Colony Bernstadt states that the colony was founded in 1881 and became Kentucky’s largest foreign colony. It also names the Swiss farm crisis, high land prices, Paul Schenk, Otto Bruner, and Karl Imobersteg as central parts of the venture.
Jan Sparkman’s study, “Bernstadt: The Last Swiss Colony,” places the settlement within Kentucky’s Bureau of Immigration efforts. Sparkman describes the Bernstadt colony as the final attempt by Swiss immigrants to develop an independent colony in the United States and connects the project to Kentucky’s desire to draw European immigrants after the state had been largely bypassed by earlier migration patterns.
The National Register nomination for the First Evangelical Reformed Church gives one of the strongest official summaries of the settlement’s significance. It states that the Swiss immigration effort at Bernstadt was the first systematic planned emigration project from a foreign country to Kentucky during that period and was probably the largest recruited enterprise of its kind in the state. The same nomination says Otto Bruner and Paul Schenk, working with Kentucky state geologist John R. Proctor, began examining Kentucky and Tennessee in 1880 and had selected Laurel County by mid 1881.
Why The Swiss Chose Laurel County
To outsiders, the choice of Laurel County might seem surprising. The ground was not the rich Bluegrass of central Kentucky. The hills were high, the soil could be thin, and much of the land had to be cleared and improved. But to the Swiss promoters and settlers, the area offered what they needed: affordable land, water, railroad access, and a climate that seemed promising for farming and dairying.
The National Register nomination notes that the Swiss settlers praised the climate and water supply, especially the springs that held up even in dry weather. It also points to the heavy summer dew and grass growth as useful for cattle and cheesemaking. Railroad access mattered too, because it tied the colony to Louisville and other markets. Land price was another factor. Within a year of the company beginning its project, the Swiss settlers had secured about 39,000 acres, and by 1882 there were about 562 people in the settlement.
That early optimism shaped Bernstadt and the nearby communities for generations. The Swiss brought old world customs, German language traditions, farming habits, church organization, and family networks into the Laurel County hills. Some families came for land. Others found work in coal, timber, or railroading. Over time, those lines blurred. The same family might have one branch tied to a farm, another to a mine, and another to a church or schoolhouse.
Churches, Schools, And Memory
Religion became one of the strongest anchors of the Swiss settlement. The First Evangelical Reformed Church at Bernstadt was organized on July 24, 1884, construction began in October of that year, and the building was dedicated on August 1, 1891. By April 1902, the congregation had reached 196 members, including 123 adults and 73 children.
The old frame church survived as one of the clearest physical reminders of the Swiss colony. The National Register nomination describes it as a building from 1884 with board and batten walls, a gabled roof, and its original church bell. More importantly, it identifies the church as one of the few surviving unaltered structures from the original Swiss settlement.
East Bernstadt also developed Catholic ties through St. Sylvester’s. Local and secondary histories connect the Catholic Swiss families in the East Bernstadt area to Father Joseph Volk, who established St. Sylvester’s in 1888. That church gave the Catholic side of the Swiss community its own center of worship and family memory.
The story of East Bernstadt is also preserved in school records, yearbooks, cemetery files, naturalization records, oral histories, and local newspapers. These sources matter because they show the community from the inside. They record names, marriages, deaths, schoolchildren, church events, land transfers, and the small notices that often reveal more about daily life than official histories do.
From Swiss Farms To A Coal Town
East Bernstadt’s identity shifted as coal and rail development grew in northern Laurel County. The Kentucky Atlas calls East Bernstadt “mainly a coal town,” and that phrase captures the way the community came to be remembered in the twentieth century.
Coal work in the wider area began before East Bernstadt carried its modern name. A Diamond Jubilee edition of The Sentinel-Echo described Laurel County as having the first coal field in southeastern Kentucky and highlighted the Cross Mountain Mine near East Bernstadt. The same newspaper section described major coal operations beginning in 1882 at Altamont and listed companies and operations tied to the area, including East Bernstadt Coal Company, Swiss Mining Company, Altamont Coal Mining Company, and others.
That connection between Swiss settlement and coal work may seem unusual at first, but it makes sense in the history of Appalachia. Families came for farms, but the mountains also held timber and coal. Railroads opened access. Markets pulled men into wage labor. A settlement promoted for vineyards, dairying, and small farms became part of a mining and transportation landscape.
The Railroad Junction
Railroads gave East Bernstadt much of its twentieth century importance. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad connected the area to London, Livingston, and larger regional markets. The Rockcastle River Railway added another layer by tying East Bernstadt to timber country toward Bond in Jackson County.
A 1935 Kentucky Court of Appeals case, Pennington v. Black, gives a valuable primary legal record of the Rockcastle River Railway. The case states that the Bond-Foley Lumber Company owned a large area of timberland in Jackson County and that members of the company organized the Rockcastle River Railway Company. During 1913 and 1914, the railway acquired a forty-foot right of way from East Bernstadt in Laurel County to Bond in Jackson County, a distance of about sixteen miles.
The same case explains the purpose of the line clearly. Although the railway did general common carrier business, its primary purpose was to remove lumber from timber owned by the Bond-Foley Lumber Company near Bond. When the timber supply was exhausted, passenger and freight revenue could not justify continued operation. The railway decided to abandon the line in 1932.
That court record gives East Bernstadt more than a passing railroad reference. It shows the community as a gateway between the L&N line and the timber interior. Coal, timber, passengers, freight, mail, and legal disputes all passed through that railroad landscape.
A Place Found In Records
East Bernstadt’s history is scattered across many kinds of records. That is common for Appalachian communities that were never large incorporated towns. Post office records trace the change from Mullins to East Bernstadt. Church records trace Swiss Protestant and Catholic families. Cemetery records preserve surnames that connect Bernstadt, East Bernstadt, Pittsburg, London, and the surrounding ridges. Newspapers show local events, accidents, school notices, business activity, and community memory.
The University of Tennessee’s Swiss Colonies in Tennessee and Kentucky Collection is especially important for researchers. Its finding aid states that the collection contains research, interview transcriptions, correspondence, licenses, land grants, wills, deeds, blueprints, and maps documenting Swiss settlement in Tennessee and Kentucky during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One file is specifically titled “The colony Bernstadt, in Laurel county, Kentucky.”
Paul Schenk’s 1886 German-language work, Die Kolonie Bernstadt im Laurel Co., Kentucky, am Beginne ihres sechsten Lebensjahres, is one of the most important early sources for the colony. Google Books identifies the work as published in 1886 and tied to Kentucky’s Bureau for Geology and Immigration. WorldCat also identifies the 1940 English translation, The Colony Bernstadt in Laurel County, Kentucky, at the Beginning of Its Sixth Year, published by The Sentinel-Echo in London, Kentucky.
Those sources are not just background reading. They are the backbone of serious East Bernstadt and Bernstadt research. They show how the colony was promoted, how settlers described the land, how the community organized itself, and how later descendants remembered the founding generation.
East Bernstadt In Modern Memory
East Bernstadt is also remembered through more recent events. On March 2, 2012, a deadly tornado struck the Laurel County area near the community. The National Weather Service in Jackson, Kentucky confirmed an EF2 tornado in Laurel County that touched down about 5.2 miles west of East Bernstadt and lifted about 3.6 miles north northeast of East Bernstadt. Estimated winds reached 125 miles per hour, the path was seven miles long, and the tornado caused six fatalities.
NOAA’s Storm Events Database describes East Bernstadt as one of the hardest hit areas in the March 2, 2012 eastern Kentucky outbreak. The database states that the East Bernstadt tornado was rated EF2 and caused six fatalities, most of them when several trailer homes were picked up and destroyed.
For a community already shaped by immigration, coal, railroads, schools, and churches, the tornado became another layer of memory. It reminded Laurel County that history is not only found in the nineteenth century. It is also made in the lives of families who rebuild after disaster.
Why East Bernstadt Matters
East Bernstadt matters because it shows how Appalachian history often refuses to fit one category. It was not only a coal town. It was not only a Swiss settlement. It was not only a railroad junction. It was all of those things at once.
Its story begins with Kentucky trying to draw European immigrants into the hills. It continues through Swiss farm families building churches, schools, and homes. It shifts into coal and timber work as railroads changed the economy of northern Laurel County. It survives in old post office names, court cases, cemetery rows, school records, church bells, newspaper clippings, and family stories.
East Bernstadt is a reminder that Appalachian communities were never isolated from the wider world. Swiss promoters, Kentucky state officials, German-language books, coal operators, railroad companies, timber firms, Catholic priests, Protestant congregations, local teachers, miners, and farm families all left their mark on this small Laurel County place.
To drive through East Bernstadt today is to pass through more history than the road first reveals. Beneath the modern community is Mullins post office, the Swiss colony, the L&N junction, the Rockcastle River Railway, the coal camps, the churches, the schoolchildren, the families who stayed, and the memory of those who came from across the ocean and made a home in the Kentucky hills.
Sources & Further Reading
Balmer, Hans Friedrich. Die Kolonie Bernstadt, Kentucky, in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und ihrem gegenwärtigen Stande: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Schweizerkolonien, mit Benutzung der Berichte der Herren K. Imobersteg, Adolf Ott und Paul Schenk. 1884. https://books.google.com/books/about/Die_Kolonie_Bernstadt_Kentucky_in_ihrer.html?id=8FAVAAAAYAAJ
Schenk, Paul. Die Kolonie Bernstadt im Laurel Co., Kentucky, am Beginne ihres sechsten Lebensjahres. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Bureau for Geology and Immigration, 1886. https://books.google.com/books/about/Die_Kolonie_Bernstadt_im_Laurel_Co_Kentu.html?id=e_JRPIMTkGsC
Schenk, Paul. The Colony Bernstadt in Laurel County, Kentucky: At the Beginning of Its Sixth Year. London, KY: The Sentinel-Echo, 1940. https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/idurl/1/608077
Sparkman, Jan. “Bernstadt: The Last Swiss Colony.” Swiss American Historical Society Review 58, no. 3 (2022). https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol58/iss3/3/
Kentucky Historical Society. “Swiss Colony Bernstadt.” Historical Marker No. 843. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/swiss-colony-bernstadt
Jones, Calvin P. National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: First Evangelical Reformed Church. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1979. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/2946f078-e31a-4472-ae01-3fa55b0795c2
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives. “The Colony Bernstadt, in Laurel County, Kentucky.” Swiss Colonies in Tennessee and Kentucky Collection, MS-0017. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/14075
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives. “List of Tradesmen in Colony at Bernstadt, Kentucky, 1881.” Swiss Colonies in Tennessee and Kentucky Collection, MS-0017. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/14081
Rennick, Robert M. “Laurel County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2004. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/389/
Rennick, Robert M. “Laurel County.” County Histories of Kentucky. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=kentucky_county_histories
Historical Records Survey. Inventory of the County Archives of Kentucky: Laurel County. Louisville, KY: Historical Records Survey, 1938. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/23019
Laurel County Public Library. “Library Digital Archive.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.laurellibrary.org/browse/digital-resource/library-digital-archive/
Laurel County Historical Society. “Local Resources Available.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.laurelkyhistory.org/resources
Laurel County Historical Society. Laurel County Reference Section. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://moose-chameleon-frlp.squarespace.com/s/Laurel-County-Reference-Section.pdf
FamilySearch. “Laurel County, Kentucky Genealogy.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Laurel_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
FamilySearch. “The Mountain Echo.” FamilySearch Catalog. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/445035
KyGenWeb. “Laurel County KyGenWeb Excerpts from the Mt. Echo, 1892.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/laurel/mtecho/1892.html
Andes, Ernest L. “Laurel Has First Coal Field in Southeastern Kentucky.” The Sentinel-Echo, Diamond Jubilee Edition. https://kygenweb.net/laurel/news/51843032.pdf
Miller, Arthur M. Coals of the Lower Measures along the Western Border of the Eastern Coal Field. Bulletin 12. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1910. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/s_3/KGS3BN121910.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. “Eastern Kentucky Coal Field.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/geoky/regioneastern.htm
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “East Bernstadt, Kentucky.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-east-bernstadt.html
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Laurel County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/21125.html
Loyal Jones Appalachian Center, Berea College. “Laurel Co., Ky.” LJAC Digital Access. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://ljacatc.berea.edu/pawtucket/index.php/Detail/places/75
Pennington v. Black. Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1935. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914cc8fadd7b0493480b74d
National Archives and Records Administration. “ICC Railroad Valuation Records.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/transportation/railroad-valuation
National Weather Service, Jackson, Kentucky. “Summary of the March 2, 2012 Tornadoes.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.weather.gov/jkl/20120302_tornadoes
National Centers for Environmental Information. “Storm Events Database: Event Details, East Bernstadt Tornado, March 2, 2012.” NOAA. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/eventdetails.jsp?id=365794
GCatholic.org. “Oratory of St. Sylvester, East Bernstadt, Kentucky, USA.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://gcatholic.org/churches/usa-05/58356
“Rev. Paul Joseph Volk, 1841–1919.” Western Kentucky History and Genealogy. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://wckyhistory-genealogy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Volk-Rev.-Paul-Joseph-1841-1919.pdf
Laurel County Clerk. “Records.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://laurelcountyclerk.ky.gov/records/
Commonwealth of Kentucky. “Laurel County.” Kentucky.gov. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://kentucky.gov/government/Pages/AgencyProfile.aspx?Title=Laurel+County
Author Note: East Bernstadt’s history shows how one Laurel County community could hold Swiss immigration, Appalachian coal work, railroad development, church life, and disaster memory in the same landscape. I hope this article helps readers see East Bernstadt not as a small place on the map, but as a community with records, families, and stories worth preserving.