Appalachian Community Histories – Missouri Branch, Wayne County: From Preston and Wells Branch to the Railroad and Cabwaylingo
Missouri Branch is the kind of Appalachian community whose history becomes clearer only after learning what earlier generations called it.
Modern maps place Missouri Branch in southern Wayne County, not far from Dunlow and at the entrance toward Cabwaylingo State Forest. Yet someone searching nineteenth and early twentieth century records only for “Missouri Branch” could easily miss much of the community’s earliest documented history. Federal surveys, business directories, railroad records, and later state historic preservation research connect the same general locality with three names: Preston, Wells Branch, and Missouri Branch. The West Virginia Division of Highways eventually summarized the railroad-era place as “Missouri Branch (Wells Branch/Preston).”
That changing name tells much of the community’s story. Preston belonged to the era when small farms, mills, stores, timber work, and the railroad defined the settlement. Wells Branch became important because it was the name of the Norfolk & Western station serving the area. Missouri Branch gradually emerged as the enduring community name, surviving the railroad, the loss of the local school and post office, and the economic transformations of the twentieth century. The source trail also shows that historians need to search all three names to reconstruct the place properly. Pasted markdown
Missouri Branch was never a major incorporated town. It did not need to be. Its history is preserved in the smaller institutions that held rural Appalachian communities together: a railroad platform, water mill, schoolhouse, churches, country stores, family cemeteries, post office, farms, and eventually the Civilian Conservation Corps camps that helped create one of southern West Virginia’s most distinctive public forests.
Before Missouri Branch Was Missouri Branch
Long before automobiles followed paved roads through this part of Wayne County, settlement depended heavily upon the shape of the land.
The branches and forks feeding Twelvepole Creek created narrow corridors between steep ridges. Families established farms where bottomland permitted cultivation, built houses along creek valleys, and relied upon water-powered mills, livestock, gardens, timber, and household production. Traveling any significant distance over the mountains could be difficult, which made creek valleys natural routes for roads and, eventually, railroads.
One of the most revealing descriptions of that older world came from Mrs. Kelly Ferguson of Missouri Branch. In December 1934, as she approached seventy years of age, Ferguson wrote a letter to the Wayne County News recalling the work she had performed since childhood. She remembered hauling corn over a frozen creek to Add Crum’s water mill. She had sheared sheep, carded wool, spun thread, woven cloth, raised cotton, processed flax, made clothing, split rails, cleared ground, plowed, hoed corn, and helped make railroad cross ties.
Her recollection is unusually valuable because it does more than list old occupations. It describes an economy in which a household produced much of what it needed. Clothing could begin with sheep, cotton, or flax and end with garments made in the home. Corn traveled to a local mill rather than arriving as meal from a distant manufacturer. Cash might come from cross ties, timber, or seasonal labor while farming supplied much of the family’s food.
By the time Ferguson wrote her letter, that world was already disappearing.
The railroad had helped change it.
Preston and Wells Branch Station
The Norfolk & Western Railway transformed the Twelvepole Creek valley during the early 1890s as part of its expansion toward Kenova and the Ohio River. Tracks followed the mountain waterways because the valleys offered the most practical path through rugged terrain. Stations, stores, mills, postal communities, and small commercial centers developed beside the new transportation corridor.
In the Missouri Branch area, the early documentary record points most clearly to Preston.
A West Virginia state gazetteer described Preston as a village of about 150 residents on the Norfolk & Western Railway, twenty-five miles south of Wayne. The entry made an important distinction. Preston was the community, but its railroad stop was Wells Branch station. M. V. Crum served as postmaster, while A. W. Crum & Son and Joseph M. Marcum operated general stores. Solomon Mead operated a mill, Ward Lumber Company represented the timber economy, and J. C. Webb served as a justice.
Federal surveyors left even more precise evidence.
The United States Geological Survey recorded a benchmark near Preston as being six-tenths of a mile east of the community and about 800 feet east of Wells Branch station. The marker stood in the abutment of Norfolk & Western Bridge 975, which crossed the mouth of Missouri Branch. In one short government entry, Preston, Wells Branch station, the railroad, and Missouri Branch were all physically tied together.
This helps explain why different sources seem to describe different places. They were recording different pieces of the same local landscape.
A resident might have lived at Preston, boarded a train at Wells Branch station, and traveled beside the stream called Missouri Branch.
Eventually, the last of those names endured.
Timber, Land, and the Railroad Economy
The railroad was important not simply because it moved passengers. It connected southern Wayne County’s forests and farms with distant markets.
One of the strongest surviving primary sources comes from an unlikely place: a West Virginia Supreme Court case.
In Fearon Lumber & Veneer Co. v. Wilson, decided in 1902, testimony concerned a disputed Wayne County land purchase involving valuable timber. Representatives of the company met at “a place called Wells Branch on the Norfolk and Western Railway” before traveling toward the property they hoped to inspect and survey. The resulting court record describes businessmen, local guides, survey problems, wooded land, and the difficulties of reaching property away from the railroad.
The case shows why the station mattered. Wells Branch was not merely a flag on a railroad timetable. It functioned as an access point between outside capital and the surrounding mountain land.
Timber had long been cut in Wayne County, but rail transportation altered the scale and direction of the trade. Lumber companies could reach areas that had previously depended more heavily on waterways and local roads. Cross ties alone created another market for residents such as Kelly Ferguson and her neighbors.
The railroad did not erase the older farm economy. Instead, for a time, the two existed together.
Missouri Branch Becomes the Community
By the 1920s, newspaper references show Missouri Branch operating clearly as a recognized community name.
A particularly unusual story appeared in the Wayne County News in May 1922. On Chapman Salmons’s farm at Missouri Branch stood an apple tree that reportedly produced fruit without normal blossoms and had been bearing for about twenty years. County agricultural officials took enough interest in the tree that propagation rights were reportedly sold to the Gold Nursery Company of Point Pleasant.
The story may seem minor beside railroads and lumber companies, but it reveals something important. Missouri Branch was still fundamentally a farming community. Orchards, small farms, mills, and household labor remained part of daily life even while trains moved through the valley.
At the same time, Wells Branch station remained locally important.
In 1922 prohibition officer William Meade was shot and killed while waiting on the station platform for an evening Norfolk & Western train to Wayne. When the case reached a Wayne County grand jury the following year, the Wayne County News again identified the scene specifically as Wells Branch station.
The old railroad name and the newer community name were therefore being used side by side.
Churches, School, and Community Life
Missouri Branch developed institutions that allowed residents to worship, educate children, bury relatives, trade goods, receive mail, and maintain a community identity without incorporation or a formal town government.
Marshall University’s Regional Photograph Collection preserves evidence for at least two churches associated with Missouri Branch. Fairmount Baptist Church was organized and built in 1902. Bethel United Baptist Church was organized and built in 1923.
A 1925 newspaper account adds another layer to the religious history.
Youngie B. Salmons, a thirty-eight-year-old educator and political figure, had been teaching school at Missouri Branch before illness forced him from the classroom. After his death, funeral services were conducted at Missouri Branch by Rev. H. Maynard, whom the newspaper identified as pastor of the Missouri Branch Baptist Church. Salmons was then buried in the family cemetery.
The precise relationship between the church named in the newspaper and the congregations preserved in Marshall’s photographic collection is not entirely clear from the available records, so they should not automatically be treated as the same institution. What the evidence firmly establishes is that organized Baptist life was deeply rooted in Missouri Branch by the opening decades of the twentieth century.
The Salmons account also confirms a local school.
That school would remain part of Missouri Branch for another generation.
Mrs. Kelly Ferguson Remembers an Older Appalachia
Few sources bring Missouri Branch to life as vividly as Kelly Ferguson’s 1935 letter.
She described herself not as an exceptional person but as a woman recounting the ordinary work of the world in which she had grown up. That is exactly what makes the letter historically important.
At sixteen she remembered moving corn by sled along the frozen creek to Add Crum’s mill. Clothing demanded an entire chain of labor. Sheep had to be sheared. Wool had to be carded, spun, and woven. Cotton was raised locally, picked, and separated from its seeds. Flax also entered household textile production.
Her memories then moved into work traditionally associated with men. Ferguson had made cross ties, built fences, split rails, cut timber, cleared ground, plowed, and worked cornfields. Even near seventy, she told the newspaper that she could still spin, card, weave, and knit.
The letter preserves Missouri Branch before modernization not as an isolated romantic mountain world, but as a demanding working landscape. Families drew livelihoods from soil, timber, livestock, streams, household manufacturing, and whatever cash employment could be found.
Within only a few years of Ferguson’s letter, much of the physical landscape around her would be reshaped again.
The Last Trains on the Twelvepole Line
The railroad that had helped establish Preston and Wells Branch eventually became a victim of its own geography.
The Twelvepole route followed a winding mountain creek. That had made sense when the Norfolk & Western first pushed toward the Ohio River, but heavier trains demanded more efficient routes. After development of the Big Sandy alignment, the older Twelvepole Line became increasingly secondary.
By the Great Depression, the railroad sought permission to abandon a long section between Wayne and Lenore.
The Interstate Commerce Commission approved abandonment in 1933. Contemporary reporting cited in West Virginia transportation research noted opposition from state and county authorities, but the railroad argued that existing and prospective traffic could no longer justify the financial losses associated with continued operation. The final trains ran over the abandoned section on September 1, 1933. Tracks were removed later that year.
For Missouri Branch, this ended roughly four decades in which the railroad had been one of the defining features of the community.
Wells Branch station had connected residents with Wayne, Dunlow, Kenova, and the larger Norfolk & Western system.
Then the trains stopped.
The transportation corridor, however, did not disappear.
When the Railroad Became a Highway
The abandoned railroad grade offered West Virginia something extremely valuable.
Railroad engineers had already performed much of the difficult work necessary to establish a transportation route through the mountains. The grade offered bridges, cuts, approaches, and a comparatively manageable path through country where constructing an entirely new highway could be expensive.
On January 10, 1935, the Wayne County News reported that work had begun widening the old Norfolk & Western right-of-way between Missouri Branch and the Mingo County line for highway use. Around sixty men were employed initially, with local labor being used because transportation for workers was limited. The project formed part of the effort to improve U.S. Route 52.
The transformation was profound.
A corridor originally cut for locomotives began carrying automobiles.
Missouri Branch therefore occupies a landscape shaped by two transportation eras laid almost directly on top of each other. The railroad helped create the community’s earlier commercial geography. Road construction then recycled much of that railroad landscape for the automobile age.
In places throughout the Twelvepole valley, the railroad never truly vanished. Its tracks disappeared, but its route survived.
Missouri Branch and the Civilian Conservation Corps
The railroad’s departure might have marked the beginning of a long decline for Missouri Branch.
Instead, another major federal project arrived almost immediately.
Cabwaylingo State Forest was assembled during the Depression years from thousands of acres in southern Wayne County. Its unusual name combined portions of Cabell, Wayne, Lincoln, and Mingo, the counties the forest was intended to serve. The first major land acquisition occurred during the early 1930s, and Civilian Conservation Corps workers soon began transforming former farms, cutover timberlands, and fire-damaged forests into a managed public landscape.
Missouri Branch became one of the principal gateways to that work.
Camp Anthony Wayne, designated S-61, was established near Missouri Branch in 1935. State records place CCC Company 3532 there from July 4, 1935, until October 20, 1938. Company 1558V, composed of World War I veterans, then occupied the camp until April 11, 1939.
The Wayne County News offered an extraordinary progress report in April 1936.
Camp superintendent C. E. Barrett described telephone lines for fire protection, a fire tower, forest roads, bridges, garages, a blacksmith shop, repair facilities, forestry buildings, hardwood seed collection, planting programs, fire-hazard reduction, recreational improvements, wildlife work, and educational programs for the enrollees. Thousands of evergreen, black walnut, and poplar trees had been planted. Trails and recreational spaces were being constructed while young men received instruction not only in forestry but in subjects such as reading, writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, first aid, and vocational work.
Many of the workers came from Wayne County itself.
Newspaper enlistment lists include Missouri Branch residents Sanford Pilbean, Homer Mills, John Perry, Forest Stamper, and others connected with the local CCC system.
What had been a railroad community was becoming a gateway to one of West Virginia’s important New Deal landscapes.
The Store and Post Office Fire
If the CCC camps represented the expanding presence of government and public investment, the heart of everyday Missouri Branch life could still be found in much smaller places.
One of them was Samuel Herald’s store.
Early on the morning of March 10, 1938, fire destroyed the one-story building at Missouri Branch that housed Herald’s business and the local post office. The loss was estimated at approximately $1,500 and was uninsured. Postal records, stamps, envelopes, unclaimed letters, packages, merchandise, and other contents were destroyed. Records belonging to the Crum Masonic Lodge were lost as well because Herald served as the organization’s secretary.
The fire illustrates how much could be concentrated beneath one roof in a small Appalachian community.
The building was a store, postal center, record repository, and part of the community’s social network. Its loss meant considerably more than the destruction of merchandise.
In a place without a courthouse, municipal building, commercial district, or large downtown, stores and post offices performed many of the functions that formal civic spaces performed elsewhere.
The End of the Missouri Branch School
The next major change came through school consolidation.
For generations, small schools scattered through Appalachian valleys allowed children to attend classes close to home. Missouri Branch maintained a two-room school, and records establish that teaching was occurring there by at least the 1920s.
By the 1950s, Wayne County was moving toward larger consolidated schools served by buses.
On March 18, 1955, approximately 175 children began attending the new six-room school at Dunlow. The new building included modern heating, restrooms, a kitchen, office space, and other conveniences difficult to provide in the older rural buildings. As part of the consolidation, four smaller schools were eliminated, including the two-room school at Missouri Branch. The Board of Education planned to sell the abandoned buildings.
The school’s closure marked the end of another institution that had once given Missouri Branch a distinct center.
Children still lived there. Families still attended churches, traveled the roads, and maintained cemeteries and homes.
But one more reason to gather daily within the community had moved elsewhere.
What Remains
Missouri Branch never disappeared.
Cabwaylingo State Forest ensured that the name remained attached to one of Wayne County’s most recognizable landscapes. Modern state mapping still shows Missouri Branch at the approaches to the forest, while historic CCC structures, cabins, roads, trails, recreation areas, and the Tick Ridge Fire Tower preserve the work begun during the 1930s. State preservation research has documented more than one hundred New Deal-era resources within Cabwaylingo.
The community’s religious history also remains visible. Fairmount Baptist Church and Bethel United Baptist Church survive in archival photographs, linking modern Missouri Branch with congregations organized more than a century ago.
Family cemeteries scattered through the surrounding countryside preserve another layer of history that written documents can only partially reconstruct.
Even the modern highway tells the story.
Travel through this part of Wayne County and the route follows a landscape first shaped by creeks, then by farms and mills, then by the Norfolk & Western, and finally by twentieth century road construction. The modes of transportation changed, but the mountains continually forced each generation back into many of the same narrow corridors.
Why Missouri Branch Matters
Missouri Branch is easy to overlook because its story does not revolve around one famous battle, mine disaster, industrial fortune, or nationally recognized figure.
Its importance comes from something different.
The community preserves, in miniature, several major transformations that reshaped Appalachia.
Its oldest surviving recollections belong to a world of water mills, handwoven clothing, small farms, split rails, livestock, and timber work. The Norfolk & Western then placed Preston and Wells Branch station inside a regional transportation network. Railroad access encouraged stores, lumber activity, travel, and outside investment.
The Missouri Branch name gradually overtook the older designations. Churches, a school, cemeteries, farms, stores, and a post office gave the settlement its own identity. When the railroad disappeared in 1933, its grade was converted into a highway. Almost immediately, the New Deal brought CCC workers into the mountains to build roads, cabins, fire-control systems, recreational facilities, and the infrastructure of Cabwaylingo State Forest.
Then the older institutions began to fade.
The railroad station disappeared. Samuel Herald’s store and post office burned. The two-room school closed during consolidation. Automobile travel reduced the importance of small local commercial centers.
Yet the community name remained.
That survival may be the most Appalachian part of the story.
Preston became Wells Branch in the language of the railroad. Wells Branch became Missouri Branch in the language of the community. Trains gave way to highways. Small farms became forestland. CCC camps became historic sites and recreational facilities.
The institutions changed, but the place endured.
Missouri Branch remains written across the landscape of southern Wayne County, carrying within one small community the history of subsistence farming, timber, railroads, rural schools, churches, the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the roads that eventually replaced the trains.
Sources & Further Reading
Gannett, Samuel S., and David H. Baldwin. Results of Spirit Leveling in West Virginia, 1896 to 1908, Inclusive. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 399. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909. https://doi.org/10.3133/b399.
Marshall, Robert Bradford. Spirit Leveling in West Virginia, 1896 to 1915, Inclusive. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 632. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916. https://doi.org/10.3133/b632. USGS
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Detroit: R. L. Polk & Co., 1904. Entry for Preston, Wayne County. https://ldsgenealogy.com/WV/books/West-Virginia-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-pt-2-part-15.htm. LDS Genealogy
Fearon Lumber & Veneer Co. v. Wilson, 51 W. Va. 30, 41 S.E. 137 (1902). Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. https://openjurist.org/51/wva/30/fearon-lumber-veneer-co-v-wilson. OpenJurist
“Wayne County Again Scores as Being the Home of the Unusual by Producing a Bloomless Apple.” Wayne County News, May 4, 1922. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201922.htm. Waynewv
“2 Indicted for Killing Officer About Year Ago.” Wayne County News, February 15, 1923. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201923.htm.
“Y. B. Salmons Taken in Death.” Wayne County News, January 22, 1925. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn250122.html.
“What Do You Know About Twelve Pole?” Wayne County News, August 27, 1925. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn250827.html.
“Trains Taken From Old Line to Big Sandy.” Wayne County News, June 18, 1925. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201925.htm. Appalachianhistorian.org
Ferguson, Kelly. “Woman Has Done Man’s Work, But Active at 70.” Letter to the editor. Wayne County News, January 3, 1935. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201935.htm. Waynewv
“Work Begun Widening Old Road.” Wayne County News, January 10, 1935. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201935.htm. Waynewv
“Accomplishments of CCC Reviewed.” Wayne County News, April 17, 1936. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201936.htm.
“24 Wayne Youths Accepted for CCC.” Wayne County News, 1936. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201936.htm. Waynewv
“42 Wayne Youths Enlist in CCC.” Wayne County News, July 3, 1936. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201936.htm.
“Fire Destroys Missouri Branch P.O. and Store.” Wayne County News, March 18, 1938. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201938.htm. Waynewv
“175 Pupils Begin Using New Dunlow School.” Wayne County News, March 25, 1955. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201955.htm. Waynewv
Interstate Commerce Commission. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports. Vol. 193. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934, 363–69. Proceedings concerning abandonment of the Norfolk & Western Twelvepole route.
“The Last of the ‘Twelve Pole’ Line.” Norfolk and Western Magazine 11, no. 11 (November 1933): 408–10. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Dunlow-Depot-with-Pictures-Reduced.pdf. Appalachianhistorian.org
Bakic, Tracy D. West Virginia Historic Property Form: Fleming Thru Girder Bridge Repair. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Transportation, Division of Highways, 2013. https://highwaysthroughhistory.com/Content/bridges/FlemingThruGirder/docs/hpi.pdf. Highways Through History
West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. Reconnaissance Historic Resource Survey for Pleasants, Lincoln, Jackson, Mason and Wayne Counties, West Virginia. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, 2017. https://mapwv.gov/shpo/docs/PDFs/ArchitecturalSurveys/RMU-51.pdf. The survey identifies the Floyd Stroud House at Missouri Branch as a circa 1930 resource recommended eligible for the National Register. MapWV
West Virginia Archives and History. “Civilian Conservation Corps Camps in West Virginia.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/greatdepression/ccc.html. The state listing documents Camp Anthony Wayne at Missouri Branch and its CCC companies. West Virginia Culture Archive
West Virginia Division of Forestry. Cabwaylingo State Forest Management Plan. Charleston: West Virginia Division of Forestry. https://wvforestry.com/pdf/Cabwaylingo%20Draft-112910.pdf. The state history documents Camp Anthony Wayne and Camp Twelvepole, including the latter’s location just across the Wayne County line in Mingo County. WV Division of Forestry
Adams, Nancy Ray. “Cabwaylingo State Forest.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Revised February 19, 2024. https://wvencyclopedia.org/entries/767. West Virginia Encyclopedia
Chambers, S. Allen Jr. “Cabwaylingo State Forest.” SAH Archipedia. Society of Architectural Historians. https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WV-01-WA6. Sah Archipedia
Powell, Bob. “April 11, 1939: CCC Finish Work at Cabwaylingo State Forest.” West Virginia Public Broadcasting, April 11, 2017. https://wvpublic.org/story/radio/april-11-1939-ccc-finish-work-at-cabwaylingo-state-forest/. West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Marshall University. “Fairmount Baptist Church, Missouri Branch, Wayne County, W.Va.” Marshall Digital Scholar, Historic West Virginia Churches, identifier 1978/06.0227.digital09. https://mds.marshall.edu/sc_wvc/52/. Marshall Digital Scholar
Marshall University. “Bethel United Baptist Church, Radnor, Wayne County, W.Va.” Marshall Digital Scholar, Historic West Virginia Churches, identifier 1978/06.0227.digital08. https://mds.marshall.edu/sc_wvc/53/. The catalog description identifies the congregation with Missouri Branch and dates its organization and construction to 1923. Marshall Digital Scholar
West Virginia Archives and History. “Place Names in West Virginia.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Entry for Missouri Branch, Wayne County. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamm.html. West Virginia Culture Archive
West Virginia Legislature. Senate Concurrent Resolution 56, “Crum Brothers Memorial Highway.” 2011 Regular Session. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=scr56+intr.htm&billtype=cr&houseorig=s&i=56&sesstype=RS&yr=2011. West Virginia Legislature
West Virginia Legislature. House Concurrent Resolution 25, “Curtis ‘Pap’ and Millie ‘Mammie’ Asbury Bridge.” 2020 Regular Session. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=hcr25+intr.htm&billtype=CR&houseorig=H&i=25&sesstype=RS&yr=2020. This resolution preserves the history of Asbury’s Grocery at the Cabwaylingo Park Road entrance. West Virginia Legislature
Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. Wayne Cemetery Volume Three. Ceredo, WV: Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://wcghswv.org/wayne_cemetery_book3.php?thisPage=wayne_cemetery_book3. Includes the Sol Perry, S. D. Copley, Mills, and other cemeteries in the Missouri Branch and Cabwaylingo vicinity. Wayne County Genealogy Society
Dickinson, Kay Stamper, and Jack L. Dickinson. Last Train to Dunlow: History from the Hollows of Wayne County, West Virginia and the Coming of the N & W Railroad, 1870–1940. 2005. https://books.google.com/books/about/Last_Train_to_Dunlow.html?id=RlyrvgEACAAJ. Appalachianhistorian.org
Kenny, Hamill. West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains. Piedmont, WV: Place Name Press, 1945. https://appalachian-english.library.sc.edu/node/793.html.
United States Post Office Department. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. National Archives Microfilm Publication M841, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html.
United States Post Office Department. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. National Archives Microfilm Publication M1126, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html.
Author Note: Missouri Branch is a good example of how a small Appalachian community can carry several names and several eras of history within the same narrow valley. By bringing together railroad records, newspapers, government surveys, church archives, CCC records, and local recollections, this article preserves the story of Preston, Wells Branch, and the community that ultimately became known as Missouri Branch.