Appalachian Community Histories – Frost (Mt. Zion), Greenup County: A Rural School, Post Office, and Historic Church
In northern Greenup County, Kentucky, not far from the Ohio River and the communities of South Shore and South Portsmouth, lies Frost, a small settlement whose history reaches beyond the years when it maintained its own post office. Although Frost never developed into a large municipality, its church, school, cemetery, and postal service made it a recognizable community in the countryside of northeastern Kentucky. Its history is also closely connected to another name, Mt. Zion, which appears in local histories and remains associated with the church and cemetery near the old settlement.
The relationship between these two names is preserved in Nina Mitchell Biggs and Mabel Lee Mackoy’s 1951 History of Greenup County, Kentucky. Their book includes a section devoted to “Frost (Mt. Zion),” treating the settlement as one of the county’s historic villages alongside places such as Fullerton, Limeville, South Portsmouth, and Wurtland. The inclusion is particularly meaningful because Biggs had firsthand connections to Frost, having spent ten years teaching at its local school.
Today, Frost’s history can be reconstructed through a combination of nineteenth-century maps, postal histories, twentieth-century topographic surveys, cemetery records, and the writings of local historians. Together, these records reveal a community whose identity was maintained through institutions that served generations of Greenup County families.
Mt. Zion and the Early Settlement of the Area
The countryside surrounding Frost was part of the broader development of Greenup County, which was established from Mason County in 1803. The Ohio River provided an important transportation corridor for settlement and commerce, while the interior of the county developed around farms, churches, mills, and small communities connected by local roads. Frost belonged to this rural landscape, although the precise date when the settlement first acquired its identity remains uncertain.
One of the most useful early documents for investigating the area is the 1876 Map of the Counties of Greenup, Carter and Boyd and a Part of Lawrence, prepared by C. Schenk and W. C. Mitchell for the Kentucky Geological Survey. The map predates Frost’s reported establishment as a post office and records portions of the county’s nineteenth-century landscape, including settlements, waterways, and some property ownership. It provides a contemporary geographical reference for examining the development of the Mt. Zion area before Frost became an established postal name.
Mt. Zion Church became an important institution in the community’s history, and its significance is reflected in the cemetery that surrounds it. Local burial records associate the area with several generations of families, including the King, Lawson, Hitchcock, and other families whose names appear in genealogical and cemetery collections. The surviving evidence establishes a strong historical connection between the Mt. Zion congregation, its burial ground, and the surrounding neighborhood, although the precise founding date of the original church requires further examination of congregational records.
The community’s early history also survives in the records of smaller family burial grounds. A cemetery location guide maintained by the Greenup County Public Library identifies an old Fuqua family cemetery in the Mt. Zion community, drawing upon historical material collected by Evelyn Jackson. According to that account, the cemetery was destroyed and a subdivision was subsequently built over the graves. Although additional land and burial records would be necessary to establish the full circumstances, the account illustrates how development has altered parts of the community’s historic landscape.
The Frost Post Office and the Growth of a Rural Community
By the late nineteenth century, Frost had become sufficiently established to receive a post office bearing its name. A historical postal database developed from the research of Richard W. Helbock and Cameron Blevins places the beginning of Frost’s postal service in 1888 and its discontinuance in 1915. These dates identify an approximately twenty-seven-year period during which Frost appeared in the country’s postal network, although the original federal appointment records should be consulted to determine the precise dates of operation and whether any temporary interruptions occurred.
The existence of the post office is also supported by a contemporary commercial publication. Rand McNally’s 1895 Enlarged Business Atlas and Shippers’ Guide included Frost among Kentucky’s postal settlements, according to a later index of the publication. The entry identifies postal service but does not list railroad service for Frost itself. This distinction is important because the nearby Ohio River corridor had access to rail transportation, while smaller settlements away from the railroad depended upon their connections to larger communities.
The federal postal system offers one of the most promising ways to recover additional information about Frost’s nineteenth-century residents. The United States Post Office Department maintained records identifying the establishment and discontinuance of individual offices, the appointment of postmasters, and, in many cases, changes in office locations. Its surviving site-location reports can also contain information about surrounding roads, waterways, and neighboring post offices. The relevant Greenup County records are preserved in National Archives microfilm publications M841 and M1126.
Robert M. Rennick’s Greenup County: Post Offices, published in 2000 and preserved digitally by Morehead State University, provides another specialized reference for investigating Frost. When examined alongside the original federal records, his research can help establish the postmasters who served the community and the circumstances surrounding the end of its independent postal service.
The reported discontinuance of the Frost post office in 1915 did not mark the disappearance of the settlement. Historic maps and later local accounts continued to preserve its name, while the community’s church, school, and cemetery maintained connections that extended well beyond its years as a postal location.
Frost School and Education in the Community
Education formed another part of Frost’s local history. Like many rural settlements in Greenup County, Frost maintained a neighborhood school during an era when children often attended small institutions situated within walking distance of their homes. These schools served communities that were geographically separated from larger towns and frequently became important gathering places for local families.
Frost School appears among the educational institutions identified on the United States Geological Survey’s 1926 Greenup topographic map. The map places it within the broader network of rural schools that once served the county, providing a contemporary geographical record of its existence during the early twentieth century.
The school is especially significant because of its association with Nina Mitchell Biggs, one of Greenup County’s most important local historians. According to a biographical account published in Kentucky Women Remembered in 1977, Biggs taught at Frost School for ten years. Her experience connected her directly to the community whose history she would later help preserve in print.
The same biography records an unusual chapter in the school’s later history. In 1968, Biggs moved from her old farmhouse into a home constructed using the former Frost schoolroom. The building where she had once taught consequently became part of her residence during the final period of her life, preserving a physical connection between the historian and the community’s educational past.
Although the available records do not establish the exact year when Frost School ceased operating, the reuse of its building demonstrates that at least part of the former institution survived beyond its educational function. For a settlement of Frost’s size, the transformation of a schoolroom into a residence provides a particularly tangible link between its earlier community life and the changes that followed.
Mt. Zion Church and Frost Cemetery
While postal boundaries and school districts changed, Mt. Zion Church and its cemetery continued to preserve the community’s historical identity. The relationship between Frost and Mt. Zion is especially apparent in local cemetery records, which identify Mount Zion Cemetery as another name for Frost Cemetery.
The Greenup County Public Library’s cemetery location guide lists the burial ground as Kentucky Historical Society cemetery number 197 and identifies it as “Mount Zion Cemetery,” also known as “Frost Cemetery.” Information recorded by Kenny Carroll, Carl Barker, Elwood Tackett, and Vicki Evans in 2004 places the cemetery around Mount Zion Church, a short distance from U.S. Route 23 along Kentucky Route 1043.
The cemetery provides a record of families whose connections to the area extended beyond the boundaries of the settlement itself. Burial indexes identify members of the King, Lawson, Hitchcock, and other families, illustrating the relationship between Frost, neighboring communities, and the wider Greenup County countryside. Some records also associate the cemetery with families from Fullerton and South Portsmouth, demonstrating how a rural churchyard could serve residents of several nearby settlements.
One example of this wider connection appears in a preserved obituary for William Hunt, a longtime Fullerton resident and former cattle dealer who died in 1922. The obituary, reproduced in a genealogical collection, reported that his funeral would take place at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Fullerton before his burial in the Frost cemetery. His funeral arrangements provide a contemporary example of how the burial ground served families beyond the immediate Mt. Zion neighborhood.
For historians and descendants, the cemetery also preserves evidence that is sometimes unavailable in written community histories. Original gravestone inscriptions can establish dates, identify family relationships, and help reconstruct the generations who lived around Frost. When combined with nineteenth-century census schedules, county marriage records, and property deeds, these inscriptions provide a starting point for tracing the lives of residents whose names might otherwise be absent from the historical record.
Nina Mitchell Biggs and the Preservation of Frost’s History
Much of Frost’s surviving historical identity is connected to the work of Nina Mitchell Biggs, whose long life extended across a century of changes in Greenup County. Born in Greenup on September 28, 1867, Biggs spent much of her life in the county and developed an enduring interest in preserving its history.
Her accomplishments were particularly remarkable given the circumstances of her education. A 1977 biographical account records that she received her high school diploma at the age of sixty-eight, decades after she had begun her working and family life. In 1951, when she was eighty-four, she and Mabel Lee Mackoy published History of Greenup County, Kentucky, a substantial work documenting the county’s early settlement, institutions, transportation, industries, churches, schools, military history, families, and villages.
Their inclusion of Frost under its alternate name, Mt. Zion, helped preserve the settlement’s place within the county’s wider history. Unlike a historian who knew the community only through courthouse documents or newspaper accounts, Biggs had the additional perspective of having taught at Frost School for a decade.
She continued her historical work into advanced age, publishing A Supplementary Edition of a History of Greenup County in 1962. This additional volume expanded upon the earlier history and preserved further information about the county’s people and institutions. Her writings became sufficiently important to local researchers that the Greenup Woman’s Club sponsored a combined reprinting of the histories in 1975.
Biggs also authored a separate work titled A History of Mt. Zion Church and Mt. Zion Area, reportedly written as a fundraising project for her church. Although a complete publicly accessible copy of this work has not been verified, its existence is particularly significant for Frost because it suggests that Biggs devoted an entire publication to the church and neighborhood with which she was personally associated.
Her life came full circle through that association. After spending her later years in the residence constructed from the former Frost schoolroom, Biggs died on September 28, 1969, her 102nd birthday. She was buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery, becoming part of the same community history she had spent decades recording.
Frost on the Maps of the Twentieth Century
Historic maps provide additional evidence that Frost remained a recognized place after its reported postal discontinuance. The United States Geological Survey’s mapping of the Greenup region during the early twentieth century identified the settlement and documented the surrounding network of roads, schools, streams, and neighboring communities.
The 1926 Greenup map includes Frost School, while a later edition of the Greenup quadrangle published in 1930 identifies Frost among the settlements of the region. Together, these maps are valuable because they record the community during a period when its independent postal service had reportedly ended but its local identity remained recognizable.
Historical maps must nevertheless be interpreted with care. The appearance of a place name does not establish its population, the number of occupied buildings, or the extent to which its local institutions remained active. For Frost, these questions require additional evidence from contemporary newspapers, federal census records, school reports, and county documents.
The continued preservation of its name in federal geographical records, however, demonstrates that Frost was not entirely absorbed into the histories of larger neighboring communities. Its identity endured in the records of the landscape itself.
The Historical Legacy of Frost
Frost represents a part of Greenup County’s history that is easily overlooked when attention is concentrated on larger communities along the Ohio River. Its documentary record tells the story of a rural neighborhood that possessed the institutions necessary to establish and maintain a local identity, including a post office, school, church, and cemetery.
The surviving evidence is unusually personal because of Nina Mitchell Biggs. Her experience as a teacher at Frost School, her histories of Greenup County and the Mt. Zion area, and her eventual burial in the community’s cemetery connect several generations of Frost’s history through the life of one resident.
The community’s history is also preserved in less obvious places. The 1876 geological survey map documents the countryside before Frost acquired its reported postal identity, while later federal maps record its development during the twentieth century. The county library’s cemetery guide preserves the alternate name Frost Cemetery, along with references to other burial grounds that have been altered or lost. Meanwhile, federal postal records and contemporary commercial directories offer opportunities to recover the names and activities of people who lived there during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Frost’s story illustrates how a settlement can retain its historical identity even after its administrative institutions disappear. The post office no longer operates, and the former schoolroom found another purpose, but the community’s name remains connected to its churchyard, historical maps, and the writings of one of Greenup County’s most dedicated historians.
For the families whose ancestors attended Frost School, worshipped at Mt. Zion, received their mail through the Frost post office, or were buried in its cemetery, those surviving records preserve the history of a place that was once an important center of their everyday lives.
Sources & Further Reading
Biggs, Nina Mitchell, and Mabel Lee Mackoy. History of Greenup County, Kentucky. Louisville, KY, 1951. Digitized by FamilySearch. https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/
Biggs, Nina Mitchell. A Supplementary Edition of a History of Greenup County. New York: Vantage Press, 1962. https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/714770-a-supplementary-edition-of-a-history-of-greenup-county
Barker, Carl Roger, Vicki Evans, Kathleen Virgin-Kenney, and Elwood Tackett, compilers. Greenup County, Kentucky, Cemetery Locator Guide. Greenup County Genealogy and Historical Society. Updated January 9, 2015. https://www.greenuplib.org/_files/ugd/9d7006_7fa3d76bb5bf4ae4a404c9bec0a7ee0b.pdf
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. “US Post Offices: Data Biography.” 2021. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/
Greenup County Public Library. “Genealogy and Local History.” Accessed September 26, 2026. https://www.greenuplib.org/genealogy
Jackson, Evelyn, and Mildred Dupry. “Greenup County: Place Names.” 1960. County Histories of Kentucky, Morehead State University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M841. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M1126. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Search Census Records Online and Other Resources.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/online-resources
National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. “Nina Mitchell Biggs.” In Kentucky Women Remembered. 1977. Transcribed by Kim Mohler, Greenup County Genealogy Trails. https://genealogytrails.com/ken/greenup/bios1.html
Rand McNally and Company. Rand McNally & Co.’s Enlarged Business Atlas and Shippers’ Guide. 25th ed. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1895. https://search.worldcat.org/title/62623263
Rennick, Robert M. “Greenup County: Place Names.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 71. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/71/
Rennick, Robert M. “Greenup County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 201. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/201/
Rennick, Robert M. “Northeastern Kentucky Post Offices.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 160. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1998. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/160/
Rennick, Robert M. “Place Names Beginning with the Letter F.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=rennick_ms_collection
Russell Times. “Greenup County: Historic Souvenir Edition.” County Histories of Kentucky, Morehead State University ScholarWorks. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/
Schenk, C., and W. C. Mitchell. Map of the Counties of Greenup, Carter and Boyd and a Part of Lawrence. Kentucky Geological Survey, 1876. Kentucky Historical Society Digital Collections. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Maps/id/200/
United States Geological Survey. Greenup, Kentucky–Ohio. Topographic map, 1:62,500. Surveyed in 1910, 1913, and 1926. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/62500/KY_Greenup_803570_1926_62500_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. Greenup, Kentucky–Ohio. Topographic map, 1:62,500. 1930 edition. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/62500/KY_Greenup_708778_1930_62500_geo.pdf
University of Kentucky Libraries. “Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program.” Historical newspaper collection and microfilm inventory, including Greenup County newspapers. https://kdnp.uky.edu/splash/kdnpcsv.html
Works Progress Administration and Historical Records Survey. “Greenup County.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 35. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1936. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/35/
Author Note: Frost is one of those small Appalachian communities whose history survives through its churches, schools, cemeteries, and the families who called it home. I wanted to preserve its story and recognize Nina Mitchell Biggs, whose personal connection to Frost helped keep this part of Greenup County’s history from being forgotten.