Appalachian Community Histories – Frakes, Bell County: South America, Henderson Settlement, and a Community Kept in the Records
Frakes sits in southern Bell County, close to the Kentucky and Tennessee line, in a country of ridges, forks, narrow roads, family cemeteries, and school memories. On a map, it appears as a small unincorporated place. In the records, it carries a larger story. The federal Geographic Names Information System identifies Frakes as a populated place in Bell County, Kentucky, with feature ID 508032. The Kentucky Geological Survey places Frakes among Bell County’s valley communities and gives its elevation as about 1,445 feet.
Before the name Frakes settled over the community, this part of the county was remembered by another name: South America. The name did not point to a foreign country. It pointed to distance. It described a section of Bell County that felt cut off from the easier roads, schools, and towns of the region. Harvey H. Fuson’s History of Bell County placed South America among the districts and family neighborhoods of the county, naming Partins, Madons, Fusons, Davis families, and others in the section near the Whitley and Bell County line.
The older name is important because it explains why Frakes became more than a post office name. It became tied to a school, a mission, a church, and a long effort to connect a remote mountain community to education and public service. Even in Fuson’s county history, Henderson Settlement School was located at “Frakes, South America, Bell County, Kentucky,” a phrasing that shows how the older district name and the newer community name overlapped in local memory.
The Mountain Setting
The land shaped the story before any institution did. The USGS published a Frakes topographic quadrangle in 1952, and later USGS and US Topo maps continued to record the ridges, streams, roads, and settlement patterns around the community. Wayne L. Newell’s geologic mapping of the Frakes Quadrangle and part of the Eagan Quadrangle also placed the community within the studied coalfield and mountain geology of southeastern Kentucky.
That physical setting matters because Frakes was never simply an isolated dot on a map. It was a valley community held between difficult slopes and long travel routes. Roads, schools, churches, and clinics carried more weight in such places because distance could decide whether a child continued school, whether a doctor could arrive, or whether a community remained mostly on its own.
Hiram Frakes and the Road to Henderson Settlement
The turning point in the written history of Frakes came in 1925. According to Henderson Settlement’s own history, Reverend Hiram Frakes was serving as a Methodist pastor in Pineville when he observed a murder hearing in the Bell County courtroom. The institutional story remembers the case as part of a pattern from the Laurel Fork Valley, where witnesses were unwilling or unable to bring clear testimony into court. The moment moved Frakes toward the people of that valley. Henderson Settlement’s history also says that elementary schools existed in the area, but the nearest high school was about thirty miles away.
Berea College Special Collections, which holds the Henderson Settlement School records, gives the strongest archival frame for this story. Its finding aid states that Methodist minister Hiram Frakes founded Henderson Settlement in 1925 as a community center and educational institution in southern Bell County, a few miles northeast of Jellico, Tennessee. Berea’s historical note also records the South America name and the isolation of the area.
Frakes did not build the settlement alone. Local landholders made the work possible. Scott Partin donated sixteen acres, while Bill Henderson donated sixty-eight acres. Bertha Reil, a graduate of the Chicago Training School, came as the first teacher. By the fall of that first year, thirteen students were meeting in an old plank house belonging to the Partin family.
The school was first called Partin Settlement School, but its name soon changed to Henderson. Berea’s finding aid explains that the name honored both Bill Henderson, who gave the largest land donation, and Bishop Theodore Henderson of the Ohio Methodist Conference, who supported Frakes’s work from the beginning.
From Linda to Frakes
The community’s post office history helps explain how the modern name took hold. Robert M. Rennick’s work on Bell County post offices states that the post office was established as Linda on April 10, 1908, with James H. Hamblin as postmaster, and was renamed Frakes on June 1, 1936. Henderson Settlement’s own decade history confirms the change, noting under July 1936 that the post office name had been changed from Linda to Frakes, effective June 1, 1936.
That name change came after more than a decade of work by Hiram Frakes and the settlement. By then, the school and mission had become one of the defining institutions of the valley. The naming of the post office after Frakes joined a local postal record to a larger community memory.
A School, a Church, and a Community Center
Henderson Settlement quickly became more than a small classroom. By 1935, its own records described a growing school and community program. A 1935 entry said Henderson Settlement School had opened in 1925 with thirteen students and that by the 1935 to 1936 school year it had 180 enrolled. The same record noted that the school had begun only with grades for the first three years, opened its first high school class in 1928, and had three high school graduates in 1932, all of whom entered college.
The settlement also carried religious and civic life. In 1935, Henderson records described Frakes Chapel and a new tabernacle used for religious services, school work, and community programs. The dedication drew Governor Flem D. Sampson, Congressman John M. Robsion, and a large crowd, according to the settlement’s decade history.
By 1936, Henderson Settlement School was reporting 220 enrolled students, including forty-seven in high school, and the wider school district included about 500 children. That same year, Henderson records connected the new Frakes name to the post office, the building of Frakes Chapel, and a road-building effort that local leaders hoped would improve access to the settlement.
In 1938, the school’s records again emphasized educational growth. Henderson Settlement reported 219 enrolled students, twenty-five high school graduates, and twenty students who had entered college or were teaching in their home communities. For a place once defined by distance from high school access, those numbers became part of the settlement’s own measure of change.
Roads, Health Work, and Daily Life
One of the clearest themes in the Frakes story is access. Henderson Settlement’s records repeatedly return to the problem of roads. In 1936, a note about a tonsil clinic remembered that a few years earlier, doctors and nurses from Middlesboro could not reach the settlement by automobile. They traveled to Chenoa on a hand car and then came on by mule and wagon. By 1937, the records noted that the State Highway Department had taken over nine miles of unfinished road from the top of the mountain to Henderson Settlement, and later that year the road from Middlesboro was described as passable regardless of weather conditions.
Health work was part of the mission from an early date. Berea’s historical note says Henderson Settlement’s later community work included a primary care clinic, volunteer fire department, crafts marketing outlet, and lending library. It also notes that after World War II, as roads improved and county schools took on more responsibility for public education, the settlement’s boarding facilities shifted toward child care and dependent children.
That shift shows why Frakes cannot be understood only as a school story. Henderson Settlement changed as the community changed. Education remained important, but the work widened into health, child care, social service, and community support.
Frakes in Photographs and Public Memory
Frakes also survives in visual records. The Clark Family Photography Collection at the Portal to Texas History includes 1941 photographs connected to Hiram Frakes, the Sunny View Methodist Church, and a Bell County wedding photographed by Joe Clark. One record shows Parson Hiram Frakes waiting at the church steps, and another shows Gilbert Dove and Hazel Petrey being married by Preacher Hiram Frakes. The collection identifies the images as primary sources and connects them to Life Magazine’s July 28, 1941 feature, “Life Magazine Goes to a Kentucky Wedding.”
Those photographs matter because they show Frakes and its surrounding communities as lived places, not just as school reports or map entries. They preserve faces, clothing, church life, and ceremony. They also show how a remote Bell County community entered a national visual record during the middle of the twentieth century.
The Kentucky Historical Society marker for Henderson Settlement gives the public-history version of the story in a short form. It states that Reverend Hiram M. Frakes founded the Methodist settlement in 1925 and that it began in a cabin with thirteen students before becoming an institution for spiritual and educational development.
The Records Behind the Community
For researchers, Frakes is best approached through several names and record trails. The community appears as Frakes, Linda, South America, Laurel Fork Valley, and Henderson Settlement. The strongest archive is the Henderson Settlement School records at Berea College Special Collections. That collection includes photographs and microfilmed records documenting the history and operation of the United Methodist Church-related Henderson Settlement School and child-care program in Bell County from 1925 to 1984.
The Berea finding aid also notes that the collection includes operational records, historical sketches, publications, and 769 photographic reproductions. It is open for research in the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room at Hutchins Library, Berea College.
Other records build out the story. Post office records trace the transition from Linda to Frakes. USGS and Kentucky Geological Survey maps place the community in its physical setting. County deed books can help verify the land gifts and later property transfers. Census records, cemetery records, church records, and school records can help reconstruct the Henderson, Partin, Hamblin, Powers, Madon, Fuson, and other family networks tied to the area.
Frakes Today
The educational thread did not disappear. NCES identifies Frakes School Center at 29 Henderson Settlement Loop in Frakes, serving Bell County students in prekindergarten through eighth grade. The modern school stands as part of a longer story in which public education, mission education, and community service have overlapped in the same mountain valley for generations.
Frakes is not a large town in the usual sense. Its importance comes from the way its records gather around a place that once seemed far from everything. South America became Linda. Linda became Frakes. Henderson Settlement grew from a small school in a donated house into one of Bell County’s best-documented mountain institutions.
The story of Frakes is the story of distance, but it is also the story of what people did with that distance. Families gave land. Teachers came. A pastor stayed. Students walked, boarded, studied, graduated, and left records behind. Roads improved. Clinics, churches, schoolrooms, and community programs followed. In the history of Bell County, Frakes remains one of the clearest examples of how a remote Appalachian community can be found through maps, post offices, school records, photographs, and the memory of a settlement that began with thirteen students in 1925.
Sources & Further Reading
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “Henderson Settlement School Records, 1925–1984.” Berea College Special Collections and Archives, Berea, Kentucky. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/530
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “Historical Sketches and Publications, 1925–1981.” Henderson Settlement School Records. Berea College Special Collections and Archives, Berea, Kentucky. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/92261
Bell County Clerk’s Office. “Records.” Bell County Clerk, Pineville, Kentucky. https://bellcountyclerk.ky.gov/records/
Bell County Clerk’s Office. “Deeds.” Bell County Clerk, Pineville, Kentucky. https://bellcountyclerk.ky.gov/records/deeds/
Clark, Joe. “Photograph of Preacher Hiram Frakes Waiting on the Church Steps.” Clark Family Photography Collection. The Portal to Texas History, University of North Texas Libraries. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc489569/
Feely, Michael. “Marketing Mountain Missions: Methodist Home Missions and Appalachian Settlement Schools.” Methodist History 58, no. 2, October 2019. https://archives.gcah.org/bitstream/10516/10365/1/Methodist-History-2019-10-Feely.pdf
Fuson, Harvey H. History of Bell County, Kentucky. Bell County Historical Society, 1947. https://kygenweb.net/bell/area/bell_history2.htm
Henderson Settlement. “History.” Henderson Settlement, Frakes, Kentucky. https://www.hendersonsettlement.com/history.html
Henderson Settlement. “Henderson Settlement Methodist Mission, 1925–1934.” Henderson Settlement, Frakes, Kentucky. https://www.hendersonsettlement.com/uploads/5/7/8/5/5785108/1925-1934.pdf
Henderson Settlement. “Henderson Settlement Methodist Mission, 1935–1944.” Henderson Settlement, Frakes, Kentucky. https://www.hendersonsettlement.com/uploads/5/7/8/5/5785108/1935-1944.pdf
Henderson Settlement. “Henderson Settlement Methodist Mission, 1945–1954.” Henderson Settlement, Frakes, Kentucky. https://www.hendersonsettlement.com/uploads/5/7/8/5/5785108/1945-1954.pdf
Henderson Settlement. “Henderson Settlement Methodist Mission, 1955–1964.” Henderson Settlement, Frakes, Kentucky. https://www.hendersonsettlement.com/uploads/5/7/8/5/5785108/1955-1964.pdf
Kentucky Historical Society. “Henderson Settlement.” Historical Marker Database, Marker Number 1286. https://history.ky.gov/markers/henderson-settlement
Kentucky Historical Society. “Cemeteries in Kentucky Database: Bell County.” Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/LIB/id/384/
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Land Office.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. https://www.sos.ky.gov/land/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Educational Television. “Settlement Schools of Appalachia.” KET Education. https://education.ket.org/resources/settlement-schools-appalachia/
Kentucky Geological Survey. Bell County, Kentucky. County Report 7, Series 12. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 2010. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc181_12.pdf
National Center for Education Statistics. “Frakes School Center.” CCD School Search. U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Bell County, Kentucky.” KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/bell/post_offices/post_offices.htm
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813126316/kentucky-place-names/
Rogers, Burton B. Settlement Institutions of Southern Appalachia. Washington, D.C.: ERIC Clearinghouse, 1969. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED051924.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Frakes, Kentucky.” Geographic Names Information System, Feature ID 508032. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/gaz-record/508032
United States Geological Survey. Frakes, KY, 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1952. https://store.usgs.gov/assets/MOD/StoreFiles/DenverPDFs/24K/KY/KY_Frakes_1952_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. US Topo 7.5-Minute Map for Frakes, Kentucky. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 2013. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Frakes_20130312_TM_geo.pdf
Newell, Wayne L. Geologic Map of the Frakes Quadrangle, and Part of the Eagan Quadrangle, Southeastern Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-1249. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1975.
Author Note: Frakes stands out because its story survives through so many kinds of records: maps, school papers, post office history, church memory, photographs, and family names. The older South America name reminds us how distance shaped daily life in this part of Bell County before roads, schools, and community institutions changed the valley.