Appalachian Community Histories – England Hill, Boyd County: From the Chadwick Tract to a Big Sandy Community
Just south of Catlettsburg, where the hills rise abruptly from the Big Sandy River corridor, England Hill occupies a place that can be easy to pass without realizing how long its name has appeared in the documentary record. Roads, houses, churches, an old school site, cemeteries, railroad cuts, and the wooded slopes above the river form the modern landscape, but beneath them is a history stretching back to the first years of Kentucky statehood.
England Hill never became an incorporated town. It developed instead as one of the communities surrounding Catlettsburg, tied economically and socially to the river town while retaining an identity of its own. That identity proved remarkably durable. The name appeared in nineteenth-century local history, early twentieth-century court cases, census records, school documents, church minutes, federal maps, banking records, and eventually the name of its own fire district.
Most intriguing of all is a historical mystery that has never been completely resolved. An 1887 history states that part of a great tract of early Kentucky land became what was then known as England Hill. The same author separately wrote that the “England Hill property” was once held by English owners who finally sold it in 1870. The connection seems tempting, but the surviving evidence does not yet prove that those owners gave the hill its name.
Before England Hill Was in Boyd County
To understand England Hill, it is necessary to begin before Boyd County existed.
Boyd County was created in 1860 from portions of Carter, Greenup, and Lawrence counties, with Catlettsburg serving as the county seat. That means the earliest property records connected with England Hill are scattered among the records of predecessor counties rather than concentrated entirely in Boyd County. The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives confirms both Boyd County’s 1860 creation and its origins from those three counties.
One of the best surviving narratives of this early period was written only twenty-seven years after Boyd County was established. In 1887, Catlettsburg historian William Ely published The Big Sandy Valley: A History of the People and Country from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. Ely’s work must be treated as a nineteenth-century local history rather than as an official land record, but he wrote near the events he described and had access to families whose memories reached back into the settlement period.
His account places Colonel John Shortridge among the important early settlers of the lower Big Sandy. According to Ely, Shortridge was of English ancestry, had served during the Revolutionary War, and arrived in the Sandy country around 1792. He settled several miles above Catlettsburg in territory that would later become part of Boyd County.
The story becomes particularly important for England Hill when Ely describes a huge tract extending from Horse Branch, below the mouth of the Big Sandy, toward Blaine. The land, according to his account, had been forfeited for unpaid taxes. The Shortridge family then entered into an arrangement with David White to redeem it. Ely wrote that White traveled to Frankfort in 1798 and paid $64.50 in taxes, after which the property was divided.
The amount sounds almost insignificant today, but the land involved was anything but small. Ely described a broad domain stretching through an important section of the lower Big Sandy country.
John Chadwick and the Land That Became England Hill
After the property was recovered, the Shortridges and White divided it among members of their families. John Chadwick had married one of Colonel Shortridge’s daughters, connecting him directly to the family that controlled part of the tract.
Ely then made the statement that provides perhaps the clearest documentary starting point for the history of England Hill. He wrote that John Chadwick received the portion “now known as England Hill,” with his land extending up Chadwick Creek. The stream itself, Ely said, took its name from Chadwick.
That wording is important. Ely was writing in 1887, so his statement does not establish that people were already calling the place England Hill in 1798. What it does establish is a claimed chain between the late eighteenth-century Shortridge and White transaction, John Chadwick’s property, and the tract recognized as England Hill by the time Ely wrote his history.
The landscape still preserves part of that early story. Chadwick Creek remains a recognizable geographic feature in the area, one of several creek valleys running through the hills south and west of Catlettsburg. The persistence of that name alongside England Hill demonstrates how the first generation of landholding families left their mark on local geography long after individual farms had been divided.
For historians, the next step is buried in courthouse and state archive records. Boyd County deed books survive from 1860 onward, while earlier transactions have to be traced through Greenup, Carter, Lawrence, and state land records. The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives holds Boyd County deeds beginning in 1860 along with nineteenth-century tax assessment books, making it possible in principle to reconstruct much of the later ownership chain.
The Mystery of the English Owners
Ely left another tantalizing clue elsewhere in The Big Sandy Valley.
While writing about longtime Catlettsburg resident Elba Ulen, Ely noted that Ulen had served as an early sheriff of Greenup County and handled public business in the Sandy region. More importantly, Ely wrote that Ulen managed the “England Hill property” after it was placed under a local agent and continued doing so until its English owners sold the property in 1870.
The statement immediately raises the obvious question. Was England Hill named because the property belonged to people living in England?
It is possible, but Ely never actually says so.
His two references establish several things. John Chadwick had received land that Ely identified in 1887 as England Hill. At some later point, property described by Ely as the England Hill property came under the control of English owners. Elba Ulen served as a local manager, and those owners sold the property in 1870. What remains missing is the deed or other document that identifies those owners and establishes when the name England Hill entered regular use.
There is another intriguing clue. A 1917 obituary in the Big Sandy News reported that Emma Carter had been born in Staffordshire, England, in 1836 and immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1848. The obituary said that the family settled “on England Hill near Catlettsburg,” where they remained for many years.
Because that description was written in 1917, it cannot prove that residents already called the community England Hill in 1848. The newspaper may simply have used the familiar 1917 place name to explain where the family had settled decades earlier. Still, the presence of an English immigrant family on the hill adds another interesting piece to a puzzle already involving absentee English property owners.
The most reliable answer may still be waiting in the Boyd County deed books. A transaction around 1870 involving Ulen, the property owners, or their representatives could identify exactly who held the tract. Until that deed chain is established, the safest conclusion is that the historical record confirms English ownership but does not yet prove the origin of the community’s name.
From Property Name to Community Name
By the beginning of the twentieth century, England Hill was no longer simply the name of an old tract of land. It had become a recognized community and political place.
A Kentucky Court of Appeals decision concerning the disputed 1909 Boyd County election referred specifically to “Country precinct, No. 14, known as England Hill.” The court discussed England Hill alongside established Catlettsburg precincts such as Courthouse, Patten Mill, Hampton City, and Arigo. Whatever the precise boundaries of the community may have been, its name had become formal enough to identify an election precinct.
The 1920 census provides even stronger evidence. Surviving census citations identify England Hill as the census place for numerous Boyd County residents, and contemporary genealogical transcriptions preserve households listed along Big Sandy Road within England Hill. Among the families appearing in indexed records were multiple Hensley households, along with Adams, Justice, and other familiar eastern Kentucky surnames.
By that point England Hill had developed the essential characteristics of an Appalachian community that existed without municipal incorporation. People could describe themselves as being “of England Hill,” government enumerators could use the name, election officials recognized an England Hill precinct, and newspapers used the place naturally without needing to explain where it was.
That can be seen in ordinary newspaper reporting as well. In 1917, when William Hardy and Clay Sprouse were killed in a railroad accident at Catlettsburg, the Big Sandy News identified Sprouse simply as being “of England Hill.” The wording suggests readers already understood exactly what place the newspaper meant.
Railroad Tracks Beneath the Hill
England Hill’s location made transportation part of its history almost from the beginning. Catlettsburg sat at the meeting of the Ohio and Big Sandy rivers, while railroad lines eventually squeezed through the narrow ground between the river and steep hillsides.
That geography could be dangerous.
On May 12, 1910, Chesapeake & Ohio Railway engineer Richard Dwyer was operating the second engine of a freight train through England Hill when the train entered a railroad cut. According to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, earth and rock had fallen from one side of the cut and accumulated across the tracks. The locomotives struck the obstruction, derailing both engines and several cars. Dwyer was thrown beneath his locomotive and died from his injuries.
The resulting lawsuit, Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. v. Dwyer’s Administratrix, eventually reached Kentucky’s highest court. Testimony centered partly on whether the railroad should have anticipated the landslide. Evidence for Dwyer’s estate suggested that loose earth and overhanging rock had created a dangerous condition for months, while the railroad argued that there had been no adequate warning that the slope would give way.
Beyond the legal questions, the case preserves a remarkably detailed picture of England Hill’s terrain. The railroad ran through a cut with banks rising above the trains, illustrating how transportation routes had to be forced through the restricted space between the Big Sandy and the surrounding Appalachian hills.
The river was equally important. Later U.S. Army Corps of Engineers navigation charts placed the England Hill Lower Daymark at Big Sandy River mile 1.7 and the England Hill Upper Daymark at mile 1.9. The community’s name therefore entered the vocabulary of federal river navigation as well as county government and local life.
Cemeteries and Generations on the Hill
Communities are often easier to find in cemeteries than on maps, and England Hill is no exception.
The Boyd County cemetery survey identifies Dale Cemetery on Paddle Creek at England Hill. Research files associated with the cemetery include a photograph from 1952, a Kentucky Historical Society form, at least fourteen identified graves, additional unidentified burials, and a 1968 rough plat of the cemetery. A 1952 funeral notice from the Ashland Daily Independent also identified Dale Cemetery as a burial location.
Neal Cemetery, sometimes spelled Neel, is likewise associated with England Hill and Paddle Creek. The cemetery survey describes a large number of graves whose identities are no longer known and cites a 1932 newspaper account identifying the cemetery as the burial place of Civil War veteran William Elliott.
Such burial grounds are more than collections of family names. They show that England Hill was not merely a twentieth-century roadside suburb that grew outward from Catlettsburg. Families had established themselves in the hills and creek valleys long enough for burial grounds to become landmarks in their own right.
The number of unidentified graves also illustrates one of the challenges of reconstructing local Appalachian history. Buildings disappear, roads are widened, farms are subdivided, and family cemeteries can become overgrown. In places such as England Hill, the documentary record survives partly because local historians, genealogists, cemetery surveyors, and families recorded sites before more evidence disappeared.
England Hill School and the Golden Bears
For much of the twentieth century, one institution probably did more than almost any other to give England Hill a shared community identity: its school.
A surviving photograph preserved by Boyd County KYGenWeb shows the England Hill sixth-grade class of 1948-49. It is the kind of ordinary school photograph that becomes increasingly valuable with time, preserving students from a community whose school would eventually vanish from the district roster.
Federal mapping confirms the school’s presence. The 1953 U.S. Geological Survey Catlettsburg quadrangle identified both England Hill and England Hill School. The map shows how the school sat amid a landscape shaped by Paddle Creek, Chadwick Creek, the river corridor, roads, and steep terrain. A 1957 edition continued to identify England Hill School.
England Hill even possessed a school athletic identity. The Kentucky High School Athletic Association’s historical school list records England Hill of Catlettsburg as the Golden Bears, with blue and yellow as its colors.
The later history of the school requires some care because online accounts sometimes tell different stories about its relationship to Cooper School. Boyd County Public Schools provides the strongest institutional account. Its history explains that small rural schools were gradually consolidated into larger elementary schools such as England Hill Elementary. Later, according to the district, England Hill disappeared as its students were divided between newly constructed Eidson Elementary and Cooper Elementary. By the 1966-67 school year, the district listed Cooper and Eidson but no longer listed England Hill Elementary.
Geographic records also distinguish historical England Hill School from Cooper School as separate mapped locations. That distinction makes it risky to repeat the simplified claim sometimes found online that England Hill School was merely renamed Cooper without additional school board records or contemporary newspaper evidence.
Whatever the precise administrative transition, generations of children carried the England Hill name through classrooms, school photographs, athletic teams, and family memories.
A Church Becomes a Community Landmark
Religion became another major thread connecting England Hill residents.
England Hill Free Will Baptist Church traces its founding to 1943, when, according to the congregation’s own history, the church was established to meet a spiritual need in the England Hill area. The congregation states that its original building had previously been a feed store at Hitchens, Kentucky. The structure was dismantled and reconstructed in England Hill after a tent revival helped inspire the creation of the church.
Within less than a decade, the congregation had become important enough to host a statewide denominational gathering.
The original minutes of the Kentucky State Association of Free Will Baptists record that its thirteenth annual session convened at England Hill Freewill Baptist Church in Catlettsburg from June 20 through June 22, 1952. The booklet even included a photograph of the church and named its pastor, Reverend C. C. Lett. Ministers arrived from communities across eastern Kentucky, western West Virginia, Virginia, and Ohio.
Those minutes provide one of the best primary snapshots of mid-century England Hill. For several days, a relatively small Boyd County community became the meeting place for a regional religious association whose ministers came from Louisa, Paintsville, Wheelwright, Virgie, Wise, Coeburn, Kenova, Huntington, and many smaller communities.
The England Hill name continued to appear in later denominational records. Minutes from 1966 listed ministers with the location “Paddle Creek-England Hill, Catlettsburg, Ky.,” a useful reminder that local geography was often understood through both community names and creek valleys.
The church remains associated with England Hill today, carrying one of the community’s oldest continuously visible institutional names.
Roads and a Changing England Hill
The middle decades of the twentieth century transformed England Hill much as they transformed communities throughout Appalachia. Better roads increased mobility, automobiles changed where people could live, older farms were divided, and the space between rural community and suburban neighborhood became increasingly difficult to define.
Historic U.S. Geological Survey maps provide unusually useful snapshots of that transition. The 1953 Catlettsburg quadrangle shows England Hill, its school, nearby streams, the railroad, and the principal transportation corridor at a moment before later highway development reshaped the surrounding area. The 1957 map preserves much the same landscape only a few years later.
By the 1970s, England Hill Road and U.S. 23 had become sufficiently important commercial identifiers to appear in federal banking records. Federal Reserve records show the Third National Bank of Ashland establishing its South Catlettsburg Branch at U.S. 23 and England Hill Road in September 1977.
That address says something important about the community’s evolution. The old hill settlement had become attached to a busy transportation corridor serving the Ashland, Catlettsburg, Kenova, and Huntington area. Yet the older name survived the changes in roads, schools, property ownership, and development.
England Hill did not disappear into a generic suburban landscape. Its name remained attached to roads, institutions, residences, churches, government districts, and landmarks.
The England Hill Fire District
One of the clearest modern expressions of England Hill’s separate community identity has been its fire district.
The England Hill Volunteer Fire Department became an institution serving the unincorporated territory around the community. Its name eventually appeared not only on fire equipment and a station but also in governmental documents, court filings, and one of the most significant modern legal disputes involving the boundary between England Hill and Catlettsburg.
That dispute began after the City of Catlettsburg adopted Ordinance No. 10-2016 on December 12, 2016. The ordinance annexed portions of U.S. 23 and property belonging to R&J Development Company. The England Hill Volunteer Fire District challenged the annexation in Boyd Circuit Court in March 2017.
The case offers a rare legal window into the modern geography surrounding England Hill. Court records describe water and sewer lines running along the U.S. 23 corridor, a sanitary lift station, office space, retail development, and the relationship between municipal territory and the fire protection district. The fire district argued in part that the annexation amounted to an improper corridor annexation, while Catlettsburg defended the expansion.
The Boyd Circuit Court ruled for Catlettsburg, and the Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment on June 21, 2019. The appellate court concluded that existing Kentucky Supreme Court precedent controlled the dispute and upheld the annexation.
The importance of the case extends beyond municipal law. More than two centuries after the Shortridge and White land transaction described by William Ely, England Hill was still distinct enough that a governmental body bearing its name could go to court over the changing boundary between the unincorporated community and neighboring Catlettsburg.
What the Name England Hill Has Survived
The documentary history of England Hill is unusually rich for a community that was never incorporated.
Its story begins with early Kentucky land, families such as the Shortridges and Chadwicks, and a tax redemption that William Ely dated to 1798. It passes through unidentified English landowners and an 1870 property sale, nineteenth-century families, railroad cuts, elections, censuses, cemeteries, schools, churches, highways, banks, fire protection, and annexation.
Some pieces remain frustratingly incomplete. The identity of the English owners mentioned by Ely still deserves to be established through deeds. The exact point when residents first began calling the place England Hill remains uncertain. The transition from England Hill Elementary to the later Cooper and Eidson arrangement deserves deeper research in school board minutes and contemporary newspapers.
Yet the larger story is already visible.
England Hill developed not around a courthouse square or incorporated town government, but around land, roads, families, schools, churches, and the geographic realities of the Big Sandy Valley. It stood close enough to Catlettsburg to depend on and interact with the city, yet far enough outside its boundaries to preserve a separate name and local identity.
That may be the most important part of England Hill’s history. Appalachian communities have never needed incorporation papers to become real places. Sometimes a creek, a school, a cemetery, a church, a railroad cut, and generations of families are enough.
In England Hill’s case, they have kept the name alive for more than a century, while the land beneath it carries a documented history reaching back to the closing years of the eighteenth century.
Sources & Further Reading
Boyd County Clerk’s Office. “Clerk’s Office.” Boyd County, Kentucky. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://boydcountyky.gov/189/Clerks-Office.
Boyd County Fiscal Court. “Fire Department.” Boyd County, Kentucky. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.boydcountyky.gov/206/Fire-Department.
Boyd County Public Library. Boyd County Cemetery Records and Location Materials. Ashland, KY: Boyd County Public Library. https://www.thebookplace.org/media/document/173.
Boyd County Public Library. “Winder Room for Genealogy and Local History.” Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.thebookplace.org/index.php/research-learn/genealogy-local-history.
Boyd County Public Schools. “History of BCPS.” Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.boyd.kyschools.us/district/district-information/history-of-bcps.
Catlettsburg Sesquicentennial Committee. Times Remembered: Catlettsburg, Kentucky, Sesquicentennial Edition, 1849–1999. Catlettsburg, KY: Catlettsburg Sesquicentennial Committee, 1999. https://www.catlettsburgky.gov/about.
Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. v. Dwyer’s Administratrix. 157 Ky. 590, 163 S.W. 752 (Ky. 1914). https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/chesapeake-ry-co-v-901851950.
Collins, Lewis. History of Kentucky. Vol. 2. Covington, KY: Collins & Co., 1874. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Collins-historical-sketches-of-Kentucky-History-of-Kentucky-Vol-II-part-11.htm.
Ely, William. The Big Sandy Valley: A History of the People and Country from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. Catlettsburg, KY: Central Methodist, 1887. https://www.loc.gov/item/24020324/.
England Hill Volunteer Fire District, Inc. v. City of Catlettsburg. No. 2018-CA-000472-MR (Ky. Ct. App. June 21, 2019). https://law.justia.com/cases/kentucky/court-of-appeals/2019/2018-ca-000472-mr.html.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Changes Among Operating Banks and Branches, 1977. Washington, DC: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 1977. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/fdic/caobb/fdic_caobb_1977.pdf.
Filson Historical Society. “Kentucky & Indiana Newspapers Collection.” Louisville, KY: Filson Historical Society. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://filsonhistorical.org/research-doc/kentucky-indiana-newspapers/.
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. Inventory of County Land Records. Frankfort: Commonwealth of Kentucky. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Documents/Inventory_Land_Records.pdf.
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Kentucky County Formation Chart.” Frankfort: Commonwealth of Kentucky. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Kentucky-County-Formation-Chart.aspx.
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “State Archives Research Room and Genealogical Research.” Frankfort: Commonwealth of Kentucky. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/FAQ.aspx.
Kentucky General Assembly. House Bill 191. Frankfort: Commonwealth of Kentucky. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/recorddocuments/bill/22RS/hb191/orig_bill.pdf.
Kentucky Heritage Council. Catlettsburg Elementary School National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Frankfort: Kentucky Heritage Council. https://heritage.ky.gov/historic-places/national-register/Documents/Boyd%20County%2C%20Catlettsburg%20Elementary%20School%2C%20final.pdf.
Kentucky High School Athletic Association. “All-Time Kentucky School List.” Lexington: Kentucky High School Athletic Association. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://khsaa.org/all-time-kentucky-school-list/.
Kentucky Historical Society. Kentucky Cemetery Records Project: Boyd County. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/LIB/id/847/.
Kentucky Public Service Commission. Big Sandy Water District Response to Commission Order. July 24, 2019. https://psc.ky.gov/PSCSCF/2019%20cases/2019-00187/20190724_Big%20Sandy%20Water%20District%20Response%20to%20Commission%20Order.pdf.
Kentucky State Association of Free Will Baptists. Minutes of the Thirteenth Annual Session of the Kentucky State Association of Free Will Baptists. England Hill Freewill Baptist Church, Catlettsburg, KY, June 20–22, 1952. https://onemag.org/kentucky/1952Kentucky.pdf.
Kentucky State Association of Free Will Baptists. Minutes of the Kentucky State Association of Free Will Baptists. 1966. https://onemag.org/kentucky/1966Kentucky.pdf.
Kentucky Supreme Court. Minutes of the Supreme Court of Kentucky. October 2019. https://apps.kycourts.net/Supreme/Minutes/MNT102019.pdf.
Klaiber, Teresa Martin. Boyd County Cemetery Location Guide. Boyd County, KY. https://kygenweb.net/boyd/Cemeteries/Boyd%20County%20Cemetery%20Location.htm.
KYGenWeb. “Boyd County, Kentucky, 1920 Census Surname Index.” Accessed September 29, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/boyd/surnames/surname3/.
KYGenWeb. “Boyd County Elementary Schools.” Accessed September 29, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/boyd/Schools/elementaryschools/.
Original Kentucky State Association of Free Will Baptists. Annual Minutes. 1982. https://onemag.org/kentucky/1982Kentucky.pdf.
“Emma Carter.” Big Sandy News, June 8, 1917. Reproduced by the Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society. https://www.lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries/2-uncategorised/366-obit-1917.
“Clay Sprouse.” Big Sandy News, 1917. Reproduced by the Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society. https://www.lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries/2-uncategorised/366-obit-1917.
“Pricy Angeline Ely.” Big Sandy News-Recorder, 1934. Reproduced by the Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society. https://lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries?id=378&layout=edit.
Big Sandy News. Obituary recording burial at Neal Cemetery, England Hill. March 1, 1940. Reproduced by the Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society. https://lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries?id=384&layout=edit.
Stewart v. Wurts. 143 Ky. 39, 135 S.W. 434 (Ky. 1911). https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/stewart-v-wurts-902198225.
TopoQuest. “Catlettsburg, Kentucky USGS Topographic Map.” Accessed September 29, 2026. https://topoquest.com/map/usgs-24k/kentucky/catlettsburg/7675.
United States Army Corps of Engineers. Ohio and Big Sandy River Navigation Charts. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-D103-PURL-gpo56564/pdf/GOVPUB-D103-PURL-gpo56564.pdf.
United States Census Bureau. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920: Boyd County, Kentucky, Enumeration District 12. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 1920. https://www.number-one.org/~rigg/ThomasRigg/g1/p716.htm.
United States Environmental Protection Agency. Consent Agreement and Final Order. Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. https://yosemite.epa.gov/OA/RHC/EPAAdmin.nsf/Filings/A1A695007CA114308525764F00669D2B/$File/CAFO.pdf.
United States Geological Survey. Catlettsburg Quadrangle, Kentucky-West Virginia. 1:24,000. Surveyed 1953; published 1955. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey. https://store.usgs.gov/product/267306.
United States Geological Survey. Catlettsburg Quadrangle, Kentucky-West Virginia. 1:24,000. Surveyed 1957; published 1958. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey. https://store.usgs.gov/product/266688.
United States Geological Survey. Catlettsburg Quadrangle, Kentucky-West Virginia. 1:24,000. 1968 ed. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey. https://store.usgs.gov/product/60863.
Wright, Hazel “Betty,” and Charles R. W. Cole. History and Program Commemorating the Founding of the City of Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Catlettsburg, KY, 1949. https://boonecomogen.org/libraryRecords.php?le=f3_c1&nr=50&page=53&scl=baa&srch=&st=T.
Author Note: This article grew from an effort to trace how England Hill developed from early landholdings outside Catlettsburg into a community with its own school, church, cemeteries, and institutions. Several questions remain open, especially the identity of the English owners mentioned in William Ely’s 1887 history, and additional deeds, photographs, school records, or family materials from readers could help complete the story.