Appalachian Community Histories – Princess, Boyd County: From Princess Furnace to Big Run Coal and Clay
Princess, Kentucky, is the kind of Appalachian community that can disappear into the landscape if its history is measured only by population. It never became a large town. It did not develop a courthouse square, a major commercial district, or the kind of downtown that left rows of brick buildings behind. Yet for more than a century, Princess sat inside several of northeastern Kentucky’s most important industrial stories.
The railroad reached the area before the Civil War. An experimental iron furnace rose there during the last years of the Hanging Rock iron era. Coal mines later spread into the hills, company houses appeared beside the tracks, and the Big Run Coal Company turned Princess into a recognizable mining settlement. There were schools, churches, a post office, railroad facilities, miners’ cabins, a company commissary, and eventually a brick and clay operation whose influence lasted long after the furnace that gave Princess much of its early identity was gone.
The name even became larger than the community itself. By the twentieth century, federal geologists were using “Princess” for an entire coal reserve district covering roughly 1,350 square miles of northeastern Kentucky. They made clear, however, that the district took its name from the small mining community in northwestern Boyd County.
Princess was small, but the industries that passed through it were anything but insignificant.
A Railroad Through the Hills
The industrial history of Princess began before the famous furnace.
During the 1850s, the Lexington and Big Sandy Railroad attempted to build a rail connection between the Bluegrass and the northeastern Kentucky iron country. Work advanced westward from Ashland, and in November 1857 a locomotive with two cars reportedly traveled from Ashland through the newly completed tunnel later known as Princess Tunnel. The train returned carrying two carloads of charcoal iron for shipment by river. The line reached Coalton soon afterward, although the financial crisis of 1857 helped stall the larger dream of a completed route across the state.
That early railroad matters to the story of Princess because it meant the area was tied to Ashland’s industrial economy before Princess developed into a coal settlement. Iron, timber, coal, workers, machinery, and eventually passengers could move through a valley that had previously depended on roads, creeks, and wagon traffic.
After the Civil War, the eastern portion of the railroad continued expanding. Track reached Rush in 1872, and in 1880 the eastern division became the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway. A year later its western construction connected with the line approaching from the direction of Lexington near Denton, creating the long-sought rail connection between Ashland and central Kentucky.
By then, however, another industrial experiment had already placed the name Princess into Kentucky’s iron history.
Princess Furnace
In 1876 and 1877, Thomas W. Means and his associates constructed Princess Furnace near the railroad about ten miles from Ashland. Means was already one of the most experienced ironmasters in the region. A contemporary Kentucky biographical work described the new furnace while it was being constructed and emphasized an important feature of the operation: Princess was designed to burn stone coal rather than relying entirely on the charcoal that had fueled so many older Hanging Rock furnaces.
The change reflected the transformation occurring across northeastern Kentucky’s iron industry. For decades, furnaces had consumed enormous quantities of timber converted into charcoal. The Kentucky historical marker for Princess later noted that the nearby Buena Vista Furnace had already consumed the charcoal timber associated with thousands of acres of land. Princess represented an effort to move toward mineral coal in an industrial region increasingly shaped by railroads and underground mining.
Princess Furnace entered blast in 1877.
Unlike many later descriptions that reduce its history to its short lifespan, contemporary industrial reporting allows a glimpse of the furnace while it was actually operating. On October 13, 1877, the Engineering and Mining Journal reported that the coal mines at Princess Furnace were producing about 2,000 bushels per day. Miners were being paid forty-five cents per ton for screened coal.
Two months later, the same journal offered an even more revealing assessment. In December 1877 it reported that Princess Furnace was making an “excellent grade of iron” and was giving satisfactory results in quantity as well. The report discussed Princess alongside the larger network of iron and coal operations around Ashland, Coalton, Rush, and the neighboring furnaces.
Those contemporary observations complicate the simple idea that Princess Furnace was an immediate technical failure. At least during part of 1877, observers in the iron and mining industry believed it was producing good iron in acceptable quantities.
Its life nevertheless proved remarkably short.
The recognized Princess Furnace made its final blast in 1878, barely a year after entering production. Later specialist histories of the Hanging Rock iron region place its dismantling several years afterward. The furnace equipment was eventually removed from the site, while Princess itself survived.
The furnace disappeared, but the industrial geography that had made it possible remained.
There was still a railroad. There was still coal in the hills. There was still access to Ashland. Most importantly, there was now a place called Princess.
The Furnace Dies, but Princess Remains
By the late nineteenth century, Princess had become more than the location of a vanished iron furnace.
The surviving 1890 special census of Union veterans and widows identifies a Princess precinct containing men and families with names including Ball, Boyd, Clark, Crane, Dixon, Harris, Hart, Hill, Howard, Jones, Kirby, Kirk, Moore, Morris, and Taylor. The list provides a rare snapshot because most of the 1890 federal population census was later destroyed. Princess had clearly become a recognizable geographic community by that time.
Postal and railroad records reinforce that picture. Historical postal data place a Princess post office in operation beginning in the late nineteenth century, while an 1895 Rand McNally shipping guide identified Princess as having a post office, railroad station, and express service. The 1905 Boyd County map in Cram’s Ideal Reference Atlas likewise printed Princess alongside Coalton, Cannonsburg, Rush, Normal, Summit, and other established communities.
The place that survived the furnace did so partly because coal was becoming more important than iron.
Federal geologists surveying northeastern Kentucky in the early twentieth century found extensive workings in the No. 7 coal around Princess. A federal study of the Kenova quadrangle noted that commercial operations on the coal bed began around Princess and extended southward, while the Princess Land and Mining Company ranked among the more important producers in the area. The report stated that mines between Princess and Rush had already been worked for many years and had shipped large quantities of coal.
Another federal coal study recorded a measured section at the Princess Land and Mining Company’s mine. The evidence shows that Princess had moved far beyond the short furnace experiment of the 1870s. Its hills had become part of a mature commercial coal landscape.
Big Run Comes to Princess
The next major chapter began with the Big Run Coal Company.
A regional chronology based on Kentucky’s annual mine reports records the sale of the Princess Land and Mining Company to the Big Run Coal Company on September 1, 1907. David S. Gay became one of the important figures associated with the operation. The same chronology, citing the state’s 1910 mine report, records a major expansion at Princess only a few years later: thirty-six company houses and a two-story brick company store were erected by Big Run.
That construction helped transform Princess from a place where mining occurred into a recognizable company settlement.
The distinction matters. A mine could employ men who walked or rode to work from surrounding farms. A company community created a different relationship between industry and daily life. Houses, stores, transportation, schools, churches, utilities, and employment could all become tied in some way to the industrial operation around which the settlement had developed.
Court records provide unusually detailed evidence of that world.
In 1918, according to testimony later preserved by the Kentucky Court of Appeals, Big Run Coal Company owned approximately 1,700 acres near Princess, much of it containing coal. The company was actively mining there under superintendent John F. Hubbard. The court described Hubbard as running the commissary, maintaining mining equipment, looking after miners’ cabins, and performing the other responsibilities necessary to supervise the operation.
A legal dispute over timber created the case, but the resulting opinion accidentally preserved something much more useful to local history. It documented the physical structure of the Princess coal community.
There was a mine superintendent.
There was a commissary.
There were miners’ cabins.
There was a large body of company land.
There was equipment requiring continuous maintenance.
Princess was not simply a dot beside a railroad by 1918. It was a working coal settlement.
Princess Coal During the First World War
Another court case reveals how Princess coal was connected to national economic pressures during World War I.
Big Run Coal Company v. Matthew Addy Company grew from a dispute over coal contracts and wartime price regulations. The federal appellate court stated plainly that Big Run owned a coal mine at Princess. In May 1918, the company contracted to sell its coal output through March 1919 at a stated price of $2.75 per ton at the mine, subject to changes in federal coal-price regulations.
The legal dispute eventually centered on pricing arrangements, commissions, and federal rules under the wartime Lever Act. For the history of Princess, however, the significance extends beyond the lawsuit itself.
Coal mined in a small Boyd County community had entered a commercial network governed by national wartime price controls. The mine’s production was not merely serving nearby households or furnaces. Its output was being contracted in bulk, marketed through outside companies, and valued within a federally regulated wartime coal economy.
The case also provides a reminder of how deeply northeastern Kentucky communities had become integrated into markets far beyond the immediate hills. Railroad tracks running through Princess connected the mine to Ashland and from there to industrial consumers across a much larger region.
A Hundred Men Underground
Kentucky’s official mine reports make the scale of the operation clearer.
In 1922, the State Department of Mines listed both the Big Run Coal Company and the Princess Coal Company at Princess in Boyd County. Big Run’s superintendent was listed as G. B. McNeal, with M. H. Jauchius as mine foreman. Princess Coal Company appeared separately under superintendent C. F. Bartlett.
Two years later, the state’s 1924 annual report described Big Run’s Princess Mine in considerably greater detail.
It was a drift mine working the No. 7 Coalton seam, which the report measured at forty-four inches thick. Alvin Clemmins was listed as mine foreman. The mine received railroad service from the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway. Haulage combined mules with an electric locomotive, while electric mining machines were used underground. Most strikingly, the report listed approximately one hundred employees.
That single record gives Princess an industrial scale that is easy to underestimate today.
One hundred employees at one mine meant far more than one hundred people affected by the operation. Every miner could represent a household. Those households bought food, attended churches, sent children to school, visited neighboring communities, used the railroad, and depended on a larger network of services.
Mining shaped the rhythm of life.
Shift changes sent men toward the mine. Coal cars moved toward the railroad. Mules still worked beside electric machinery, a reminder that Appalachian mining communities could contain old and new technologies at the same moment. Company houses clustered workers close to the operation, while farms and older family properties remained scattered across the surrounding countryside.
Princess belonged to both worlds.
Life Beyond the Mine
Industrial records tell only part of the story.
Newspapers reveal the people who lived between the mines, railroad, homes, schools, graveyards, and churches.
In January 1913, the Big Sandy News printed correspondence from Princess announcing the death of nine-year-old Jennie Clarke, daughter of Elijah Clarke. The brief notice remembered her schoolmates and the friends who knew her. The same Princess correspondence reported the sudden death of fifty-four-year-old Fred Gesling from heart failure.
In March, another column reported the death of Manda Stewart, sixty-five, after months of illness. The same issue contained the tragic story of four-year-old Abest Terry. A match and a quantity of powder resulted in an explosion that badly burned and injured the boy. After several days of suffering, he died and was buried at the Vint Calvin graveyard.
Such fragments may seem small beside mine-production statistics, but they reveal something the industrial documents cannot.
Princess contained childhood friendships.
It contained funerals and graveyards.
It contained families that knew one another well enough for illness and death to become community news.
It contained children going to school while their fathers, brothers, neighbors, and relatives worked the coal seams around them.
One July 1913 newspaper item described eighteen-year-old Stanton Conley, whose father lived on a farm near Princess. The young man died in a railroad-related accident at a lumber operation near Catlettsburg. His family’s location shows how the Princess community extended beyond the company houses and mine portals into nearby farms tied economically to Ashland and the surrounding industrial corridor.
Princess was a coal community, but its residents cannot be reduced to coal miners.
Churches in the Company Community
Religion also formed part of Princess life.
A denominational history prepared for the Greenup Baptist Association’s centennial recorded a Princess Baptist congregation in Boyd County from 1904 through 1928. The congregation belonged to a network of churches spread across Boyd, Greenup, Carter, Lawrence, and neighboring counties.
The dates are revealing.
The Princess congregation emerged around the same period that coal development was accelerating and survived through the years when Big Run built company housing and expanded mining. Church organization followed community growth.
This pattern appeared repeatedly across Appalachian industrial settlements. Churches provided something company stores and payroll offices could not. They created gathering places for families, funerals, marriages, religious instruction, social relationships, and community identity.
Even after individual congregations disappeared or reorganized, religious life remained part of Princess. Later newspaper and family records continued to refer to churches associated with the community.
The Princess School
Children growing up at Princess also had a local school.
After Kentucky reorganized rural education in the early twentieth century, Princess became one of the small schools incorporated into the Boyd County school system. Regional research using Boyd County Board of Education records places Princess alongside Coalton, Big Run, Rush, Cannonsburg, Meads, Goldenrod, and other schools that served the scattered communities west of Ashland.
The school became one of the clearest symbols that Princess had developed a life independent of any single mine.
A regional chronology drawing from the Ashland Daily Independent records a disaster on October 20, 1942, when the two-room Princess Elementary School burned. Pupils were sent to other area schools, and the building was not immediately replaced during the wartime years.
For a community whose earliest identity had been shaped by furnaces and mines, the loss of a school marked a different kind of transition. By the middle of the twentieth century, the question facing many small Appalachian settlements was no longer whether an industry would establish a community, but whether changing roads, transportation, school consolidation, and declining local employment would allow that community to retain its institutions.
Princess was entering that era.
From Coal to Clay
Coal did not disappear immediately.
Instead, Big Run evolved.
The company was renamed Big Run Coal & Clay Company in 1926, reflecting an industrial operation that increasingly included clay and brick production as well as coal. Court cases from the following decades show the company continuing to own substantial property and conduct business in northeastern Kentucky.
At Princess, the brickyard became part of local memory.
Oral histories and employee recollections collected decades later describe a large industrial engine and generator that once supplied electricity to the mining operation, brickyard, and company houses before broader rural electrification reached the area. When the old engine was dismantled for scrap in the 1950s, it represented the disappearance of another piece of the self-contained industrial infrastructure that had once defined Princess.
Big Run Coal & Clay continued to appear in commercial and industrial records long after the classic coal-camp era. The company’s products entered the building-material market, and federal environmental documentation from the later twentieth century still identified Big Run among Kentucky clay and brick producers.
The hills around Princess even attracted later interest for resources beneath the coal. A 1967 congressional account discussed an underground limestone venture on Big Run property at Princess, where developers attempted to reach limestone hundreds of feet underground before a major roof fall in 1965 damaged equipment and disrupted the project.
The industrial story of Princess had begun with iron, moved heavily into coal, expanded into clay and brick, and eventually reached limestone.
Few communities of its size can claim such a varied extractive history.
When Princess Became the Name of a Coal District
The most unusual legacy of the community may be geological.
By the middle of the twentieth century, federal geologists had adopted Princess as the name for the northernmost major coal reserve district of eastern Kentucky.
The designation can cause confusion because the Princess Reserve District was vastly larger than Princess itself. It included all of Boyd, Carter, Greenup, and Lawrence counties, along with the easternmost portion of Lewis County, encompassing approximately 1,350 square miles. The United States Geological Survey explicitly explained that the district name came from the small mining community of Princess in northwestern Boyd County.
Coal beds across northeastern Kentucky subsequently acquired Princess numbers and terminology. Later geological research examined the Princess No. 5, No. 6, and No. 7 coals and compared them with coal seams in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and other portions of the Appalachian coalfield.
In that sense, the name of a small Boyd County settlement became embedded in the geological vocabulary of northeastern Kentucky.
A community that never grew into a city gave its name to coal seams and a federal reserve district stretching across several counties.
What Princess Tells Us About Appalachian Industrial History
Princess is easy to understand incorrectly if its history is reduced to one object.
It was not simply the location of Princess Furnace.
It was not simply a coal camp.
It was not simply a railroad stop.
Its history was built from the interaction of all three.
The railroad arrived first and opened a transportation corridor through the hills. Princess Furnace followed, attempting to adapt northeastern Kentucky’s old iron industry to an economy increasingly powered by mineral coal. When the furnace closed, coal remained. The Princess Land and Mining Company and later Big Run expanded underground operations. Company houses and a store turned industrial property into a community. Churches and schools followed the families who lived there.
Then the pattern changed again.
Coal mining mechanized. Corporate ownership shifted. Roads improved. The local school disappeared. Company utilities became unnecessary as rural electrification spread. Brick and clay production supplemented the older coal economy. Small schools consolidated into larger institutions. Houses that had once existed because workers needed to live beside a mine became ordinary homes or disappeared altogether.
The physical remains changed, but the name survived.
It survived on maps.
It survived in court records and mine reports.
It survived in the memories of residents who remembered the brickyard and company houses.
It survived in the name Princess Tunnel.
Most unexpectedly, it survived in geology, attached to an entire coal district and a sequence of seams beneath northeastern Kentucky.
Princess demonstrates why unincorporated Appalachian communities deserve the same historical attention as larger towns. Their populations may have been small, but the forces passing through them were immense. Railroads, ironmaking, coal mining, wartime regulation, company housing, rural education, organized religion, electrification, brickmaking, and changing transportation systems all left marks on Princess.
The furnace lasted only a short time.
The community story lasted much longer.
Sources & Further Reading
Ashland Coal & Iron Railway Company: Corporate Records, July 26, 1916–March 13, 1935. 2 vols. Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society Archives, Clifton Forge, VA. https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/collection/data/34899005
Big Sandy News. “Princess.” January 17, 1913. Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society transcription. https://lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries?id=542&layout=edit
Big Sandy News. “Princess.” March 14, 1913. Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society transcription. https://lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries?id=542&layout=edit
Big Sandy News. July 18, 1913. Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society transcription. https://lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries?id=542&layout=edit
Big Sandy News. November 21, 1913. Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society transcription. https://lckghs.com/index.php/en/obituaries?id=542&layout=edit
Big Sandy News. September 10, 1926. Lawrence County Kentucky Genealogical and Historical Society transcription. https://lckghs.com/index.php/en/2-uncategorised/457-obit-1925
Boyd County Clerk. Deed Books and Grantor/Grantee Indexes. Catlettsburg, KY. https://boyd.kycountyclerk.us/search-records-online/
Boyd County Public Library. Genealogy and Local History Collections. Ashland, KY. Includes the Arnold Hanners Tri-State Photograph Collection, Armco Photograph Collection, Boyd County Historical Records Collection, and Early Furnace Records. https://www.thebookplace.org/index.php/research-learn/genealogy-local-history
Cole v. Big Run Coal Co., 199 Ky. 49, 250 S.W. 490 (Ky. Ct. App. 1923). https://openjurist.org/199/ky/49/cole-v-big-run-coal-co
Cram, George F. Cram’s Ideal Reference Atlas. Chicago: George F. Cram Co., 1905. Boyd County map. https://mygenealogyhound.com/maps/kentucky-maps/ky-Boyd-County-Kentucky-1905-map.html
Currens, James C., Linda Jean Bragg, and James C. Hower. Analysis of Coal Samples from the Princess District, Kentucky (Boyd, Carter, Greenup, and Lawrence Counties and Part of Lewis County). Information Circular 18, Series XI. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1986. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kgs_ic/36/
The Engineering and Mining Journal 24, no. 15 (October 13, 1877). Contemporary report on the Princess Furnace coal mines and production. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/The_Engineering_and_Mining_Journal_1877-10-13-Vol_24_Iss_15%28IA_sim_engineering-and-mining-journal_1877-10-13_24_15%29.pdf
The Engineering and Mining Journal 24, no. 25 (December 22, 1877). Contemporary report on Princess Furnace, coal mining, iron production, and neighboring operations. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/The_Engineering_and_Mining_Journal_1877-12-22-Vol_24_Iss_25%28IA_sim_engineering-and-mining-journal_1877-12-22_24_25%29.pdf
History of Greenup Association of Baptists in Kentucky, 1841–1941. 1941. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Archives and Special Collections. https://repository.sbts.edu/bitstream/handle/10392/6069/Tipton-History%20of%20Greenup%20Association-ocr.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1
Huddle, John W., E. J. Lyons, H. L. Smith, and J. C. Ferm. Coal Reserves of Eastern Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1120. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b1120
Kentucky Historical Society. “Princess Furnace.” Historical Marker No. 1135. Frankfort, KY. https://history.ky.gov/markers/princess-furnace
Kentucky Inspector of Mines. Annual Report of the Inspector of Mines, 1907. See especially the record concerning the Princess Land and Mining Company and Big Run Coal Company. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006206733
Kentucky Inspector of Mines. Annual Report of the Inspector of Mines, 1910. See especially p. 179 for Big Run Coal Company housing and company-store development at Princess. https://books.google.com/books?id=BB0AAAAAMAAJ
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1922. Boyd County mine records, including Big Run Coal Company and Princess Coal Company. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/blenkinsoppminereport1922.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1924. Boyd County mine inspections and statistics, including the Big Run operation at Princess. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1924.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1925. Mine inspections, coal seams, railroad connections, and coal analyses for northeastern Kentucky. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/jonesminereport1925.pdf
Kentucky State Department of Mines. Annual Report, 1928. Mining statistics and operational information for the Princess district and surrounding Boyd County mines. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/general/DanielReportMines1928.pdf
Kosanke, Robert M. Palynological Studies of the Coals of the Princess Reserve District in Northeastern Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 839. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/pp839
National Archives and Records Administration. “Ashland Coal and Iron.” Revised Railroad Valuation Maps, Record Group 134, NAID 124218557. https://www.archives.gov/research/cartographic/railroad-list
Patrick, James W., and Charles M. Patrick, eds. A History of Ashland, Kentucky, 1786 to 1954. Ashland, KY, 1954. https://kygenweb.net/boyd/general/History-Ashland/HistoryAshland.pdf
Phalen, William Clifton. Economic Geology of the Kenova Quadrangle, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 349. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b349
Plass, William T. Land Disturbances from Strip-Mining in Eastern Kentucky: 2. Princess Coal Reserve District. Research Note NE-55. Upper Darby, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, 1967. https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/19988
Prewitt, Gay, Coleman Collection, 1777–1993. MSS 207. Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY. See especially the Big Run Coal Company and Gay-Coleman Construction Company material. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/api/collection/LIB/id/2142/download
Rice, Charles L., and J. Hiram Smith. Correlation of Coal Beds, Coal Zones, and Key Stratigraphic Units in the Pennsylvanian Rocks of Eastern Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-1188. 1980. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/mf1188
U.S. Geological Survey. Historic Topographic Maps of the Princess and Ashland Area. topoView. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center. Means Family Papers. Lexington, KY. The collection contains extensive documentation of the Means family’s iron, railroad, river transportation, and business interests. https://uknow.uky.edu/node/29731
University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center. Seaton Family Papers. Lexington, KY. Papers documenting the interconnected Means and Seaton family interests in northeastern Kentucky industry and transportation. https://ukyarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/seaton-family-papers.html
Westbrook, J. B., and Lexington and Big Sandy Railroad. Map of the Lexington and Big Sandy Railroad Showing the Connections, J. B. Westbrook, Chief Engineer. Cincinnati, 1853. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/98688693/
Author Note: Princess is a reminder that some of Appalachia’s smallest communities carried industries far larger than their populations might suggest. This article follows the records left by its furnace, railroad, coal mines, company settlement, school, and churches to preserve the history of a community whose name eventually spread across an entire northeastern Kentucky coal district.