Appalachian Community Histories – Grigsby, Perry County: Lotts Creek, Grigsby Branch, and a Community Kept in the Record
Grigsby is one of those Perry County places that does not leave behind a long printed narrative of itself. Its history has to be reconstructed from maps, postal records, deeds, census schedules, geological reporting, and later court cases. Even so, those records are enough to show that Grigsby was never just a stray name on a hillside. It was a real Lotts Creek community, tied to the Grigsby family, marked by a branch, a post office, a school, and land that became valuable enough to draw mineral contracts and lawsuits.
A place that still appears on the map
One of the strongest things about Grigsby is that official maps keep confirming its existence. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Perry County State Primary Road System map, revised in February 2025, labels Grigsby among Perry County communities, and the Highway District 10 map revised in March 2023 does the same. The same continuity appears in federal mapping. The 2016 US Topo for Hazard North includes Grigsby in its place-name text, while the 1972 Hazard North quadrangle shows Grigsby and also preserves Grigsby Cemetery in the map text. Taken together, those maps show not a vanished guess, but a place that remained fixed enough to stay on the landscape across decades.
A near-primary locator source from 1914 makes that footprint even clearer. In Results of Spirit Leveling in Kentucky, the U.S. Geological Survey recorded a point at “Grigsby, 260 feet north of mouth of Grigsby Branch, on north bank of Lots Creek.” That kind of surveying note matters because it places Grigsby not just as a family name in memory, but as a surveyed locality tied to the branch and creek system on the ground.
The Grigsby family on Lotts Creek
The deeper history of the place runs back into the settlement era of what later became Perry County. A surviving transcription from the old Floyd County land records reports that on 3 January 1804, 200 acres on Lotts Creek were granted to William Grigsby. Because Perry County did not yet exist, those earliest Lotts Creek records have to be traced through predecessor counties, but the land certificate is still an important marker showing Grigsby family claims on the creek very early in the nineteenth century.
By 1880, the family was still being located through branch names and deed boundaries. A Perry County deed abstract from 30 May 1880 describes land beginning at the mouth of the left hand fork of “Dan K. Grigsby’s Br.,” a branch of Lotts Creek. That is a strong clue for place history because it shows how a family name had become part of the local geography itself. The branch was not simply near the Grigsbys. It was one of the ways land on Lotts Creek was described and divided.
Post office, branch, school, and community identity
Postal history helps turn that family landscape into a recognizable community. Robert M. Rennick’s Perry County postal work identifies Grigsby as a Perry County post office and, in the La Posta version of his research, places it on present Route 1088, a short distance up Grigsby Branch from Lotts Creek and about half a mile east of Lotts Creek Community Church. The same postal-history snippet connects the office to a family of Grigsbys descended from Thomas Grigsby, one of the early settlers associated with “Danger Nick” Combs. That placement matters because it anchors the community not only to a surname but to a precise stretch of road and creek.
Historic map indexes add to that footprint. One Hazard North historical map index preserves not only Grigsby, but also Grigsby Branch, Grigsby Post Office, and Grigsby School. That is exactly the sort of evidence that helps with a small Appalachian place. It shows that Grigsby functioned as more than a point name. It had the supporting features that usually marked a lived-in rural community.
Grigsby in the census record
The federal census also shows that Grigsby was not just an old title left on a map. In the 1910 Lotts Creek precinct transcription, multiple Grigsby households appear close together, including Leslie Grigsby, David Grigsby, Luke P. Grigsby, Balis Grigsby, William Grigsby, and other Grigsby kin. Read alongside the Lotts Creek setting of the precinct, the schedules show a family-centered settlement pattern that fits what the deeds and postal history suggest.
The same pattern continues into 1920. The Lotts Creek precinct index for the 1920 Perry County census still lists several Grigsbys, including Berry, Docia, Jane, and William, while the full Lotts Creek census transcription also includes Grigsby households in that precinct. For a place with a thin narrative paper trail, that continuity across census years is important. It shows that Grigsby remained a lived community on Lotts Creek into the early twentieth century, not simply a short-lived name that flashed and disappeared.
Coal, deeds, and the growing value of the land
Like many Perry County places, Grigsby’s later history is partly the history of land becoming mineral land. A Kentucky court summary in Trimble v. Kentucky River Coal Corporation states that on 11 August 1887 J. C. Eversole made a contract with four Grigsby men to buy the coal, minerals, oils, gases, and mining rights under their property. That one notice says a great deal. By the late nineteenth century, the Grigsby lands on Lotts Creek were already being folded into the wider story of eastern Kentucky mineral acquisition.
That process did not end quickly. In Kentucky River Coal Corp. v. Grigsby, decided in 1954, the Court of Appeals described a boundary dispute on Lotts Creek involving the heirs of B. F. Grigsby, Jr. and coal that had been mined from the disputed tract. The opinion reached back to deeds from 1874 and a 1906 mineral conveyance to Slemp Coal Company. Even a small case like that shows how Grigsby land passed from family farm boundaries into the legal and industrial world of coal ownership.
A community that lasted into living memory
The mid-twentieth-century local newspaper record suggests that Grigsby remained a functioning family place long after its earliest postal and deed history. In the Hazard Herald of 10 March 1958, a deed notice records “Vilas Grigsby to Ralph and Joyce Grigsby” involving property on Lotts Creek. That is not a grand historical event, but it is exactly the kind of everyday record that keeps a place-history honest. It shows Grigsby still living as a local family landscape, with land on Lotts Creek still moving within the same surname line.
Why Grigsby still matters
Grigsby matters because it shows how many Perry County communities actually worked. Some places grew into towns with company stores, depots, and long newspaper coverage. Others, like Grigsby, stayed smaller and more kin-based. Their histories survive in quieter forms: branch names, cemetery labels, post office surveys, census pages, courthouse boundaries, and the occasional newspaper deed notice. Put together, those records show Grigsby as a Lotts Creek community rooted in the Grigsby family from the early settlement period forward, preserved on maps into the present, and woven into the same land and mineral history that shaped so much of Perry County.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Geological Survey. Hazard North, KY 7.5-Minute Topographic Quadrangle. 2016. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Hazard_North_20160607_TM_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. Hazard North, Kentucky 1:24,000-Scale Quadrangle. 1972. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/KY_Hazard_North_708846_1972_24000_geo.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System: Perry County, Kentucky. Revised February 2025. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Perry.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Perry County State Primary Road System Lists. July 1, 2025. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Perry.pdf
Marshall, R. B. Results of Spirit Leveling in Kentucky, 1896 to 1913, Inclusive. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 554. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0554/report.pdf
Hodge, James Michael. Report on the Coals of the Three Forks of the Kentucky River, Beginning at Troublesome Creek on North Fork; at Beginning Branch on Middle Fork; at Sexton Creek on South Fork; and Extending to the Heads of the Respective Forks. Frankfort, Ky.: Continental Printing Company, 1910. https://books.google.com/books/about/Report_on_the_Coals_of_the_Three_Forks_o.html?id=ZxZGAQAAMAAJ
Hodge, James Michael. Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties. Frankfort, Ky.: State Journal Company, 1918. https://archive.org/details/coalsofnorthfork00hodgrich
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County – Post Offices.” Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/273/
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Perry County, Kentucky. Part II.” La Posta: A Journal of American Postal History 34, no. 3. https://www.lapostapub.com/Backissues/LP34-3.pdf
Combs &c. Families of Floyd County, Kentucky. Entry for William Grigsby land grant on Lotts Creek, 3 January 1804. https://combs-families.org/combs/records/ky/floyd/
Combs &c. Families of Perry County, Kentucky 1880. Deed abstract dated 30 May 1880, PC-DBE:385-6. https://combs-families.org/combs/records/ky/perry/1880.htm
Genealogy Trails. “1910 Census Dist. 4 Pct. Perry County, KY.” https://genealogytrails.com/ken/perry/1910dist4lottscrkhhs.html
Genealogy Trails. “1910 Perry Co. KY Pct. 4 Excluding Hazard Lotts Creek Index.” https://sites.rootsweb.com/~kyperry3/1910dist4lottscrkindex.html
USGenNet. “Lotts Creek Pct. 11 – 1920 Perry County KY Census.” https://usgennet.org/usa/ky/county/perry/census/1920/lotts11.html
The Hazard Herald. March 10, 1958. https://archive.org/stream/kd9833mw2f06/kd9833mw2f06_djvu.txt
Kentucky River Coal Corp. v. Grigsby, 263 S.W.2d 926 (Ky. 1954). CaseMine. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/59149fc2add7b0493466ebc9
Trimble v. Kentucky River Coal Corporation. CaseMine. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914cd53add7b04934811969
FamilySearch Catalog. The Grigsby Family of Knott and Perry Counties of Kentucky. https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/768280
Kentucky HometownLocator. “Grigsby Populated Place Profile / Perry County, Kentucky Data.” https://kentucky.hometownlocator.com/ky/perry/grigsby.cfm
Author Note: Places like Grigsby matter to me because so much Appalachian history survives in scattered records instead of full town histories. I hope this piece helps preserve one more Lotts Creek community that deserves to stay visible.