Appalachian Community Histories – Squire, McDowell County: From Brewster to Jacobs Fork Coal and the Norfolk & Western
Squire is easy to pass through without realizing how much of McDowell County’s history is folded into the narrow valley around it. The community never became an incorporated city or one of the county’s great commercial centers, yet surviving records connect it to an older settlement called Brewster, a country store and post office, the construction of the Norfolk and Western Railway’s Jacobs Fork Branch, one of the Pocahontas coalfield’s mining operations, a neighborhood school, and generations of families whose lives were tied to the mines and railroad.
The documentary record is unusually good for a community of Squire’s size. Railroad maps preserve the names of landowners along the valley. State archives hold postcards of the Squire store and local residents. Virginia Tech preserves a precisely dated photograph of the Jacobs Fork Mine tipple at Squire. Federal census officials divided Squire between two enumeration districts in 1940, while later railroad records continued to recognize it as a named station on the Jacobs Fork Branch. Taken together, these sources allow Squire to be followed from a small mountain post office into the industrial world of twentieth-century McDowell County.
When Squire Was Also Brewster
One of the most revealing descriptions of early Squire comes from the 1904–05 West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory. The directory gave Squire a population of about 100 and added an important phrase: it was “also known as Brewster.” It described Squire as a McDowell County post office about thirty miles south of Welch and thirteen miles from Tazewell, Virginia, which it identified as the nearest banking and shipping point. Mail arrived three times a week.
The short business listing tells us even more about what the community looked like before the great coal development along Jacobs Fork. A. C. Christian served as postmaster, operated a general store, and was a justice. G. W. Brewster was a physician, and J. M. Lowe was the constable. Squire was therefore not merely a name applied to a handful of scattered houses. By the opening years of the twentieth century it had a post office, merchant, physician, local law officers, and enough identity for a statewide directory to treat it as a recognizable community.
The reference to Tazewell as Squire’s shipping point is especially significant. Within little more than a decade, railroad construction would begin transforming the Jacobs Fork valley into a coal transportation corridor. In 1904, however, Squire still belonged to an older transportation world in which its strongest commercial connection could point across the Virginia line rather than toward a railroad siding immediately outside the community.
The Brewster name did not disappear immediately either. Later railroad right-of-way records contain numerous members of the Brewster family, including Pearl Brewster and other Brewster landowners, alongside families such as the DeHarts, Hutsons, Asburys, Harmans, Weavers, and Conners. Those records do not by themselves establish exactly why the early community was called Brewster, but they make clear that the name belonged to a family deeply rooted in the landscape through which the railroad would eventually be built.
A. C. “Squire” Christian and the Community’s Name
Hamill Kenny’s classic 1945 study West Virginia Place Names records that Squire was named for A. C. “Squire” Christian, described in later references to Kenny’s work as a local law officer. The 1904–05 directory provides unusually good contemporary support for that tradition because it identifies Christian not only as the postmaster and general-store operator but also as a justice.
That combination of evidence gives the name more substance than a place-name legend repeated generations later. Christian was plainly a central figure in early Squire. Residents received their mail through him, could purchase goods at his store, and encountered him in his capacity as a justice. A title such as “Squire” would have been entirely natural for a local justice in that period.
The surviving evidence does not reveal a simple moment when everyone stopped calling the place Brewster and began calling it Squire. In 1904–05 both names were still recognizable enough for the directory to print them together. The safest conclusion is that the names overlapped before Squire eventually became the dominant postal and community identity.
There is another naming trap worth remembering. The same directory immediately followed its Squire entry with one for Squirejim, a different McDowell County post office. Squirejim had James H. Asbury as postmaster and its own merchants. Historical records for Squirejim should therefore not automatically be folded into Squire’s history merely because the names appear similar.
Before Coal Reorganized the Valley
Squire’s early history is important because it prevents the community from being treated simply as another coal camp created from nothing by an outside corporation. Families were already living along these mountain valleys, owning land, operating stores, practicing medicine, carrying mail, and administering local affairs before the railroad arrived.
The coming of industrial coal did not replace that older landscape all at once. Instead, railroad surveyors began drawing new lines across it. Property boundaries became rights-of-way. County roads had to be altered. Creek crossings required bridges. Parcels belonging to individual families stood beside enormous tracts associated with coal and land corporations.
A surviving Norfolk and Western group of right-of-way plans for the Jacobs Fork Branch captures this transformation almost parcel by parcel. The railroad sought land from Pearl Brewster, John DeHart, R. L. Hutson, W. F. Harman, the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company, and numerous others. Some drawings even dealt specifically with changes to existing county roads, a reminder that railroad construction physically rearranged routes local residents had been using before the coal industry entered the valley on such a large scale.
The Jacobs Fork Railroad Arrives
The decisive industrial change came during the 1910s. Norfolk and Western reporting from 1915 described the Jacobs Fork Branch as under construction from a connection with the Dry Fork Branch at Rift. The first section was planned for approximately 3.93 miles in order to reach operations of the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company. Grading was reported about 75 percent complete. At the same time, the 1.28-mile Cucumber Branch was being built toward other operations of the same company and was already about 90 percent graded.
By the following year, the project had moved from construction to operation. A 1916 report stated that the Jacobs Fork Branch had been completed for 4.01 miles, tracks had reached the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated operations, and coal shipments were being made. The Cucumber Branch had also been completed.
That first completed section did not yet represent the full Jacobs Fork Branch familiar from later railroad records. The line continued to grow as coal development moved farther into the valley. This distinction is especially important for understanding Squire, which later railroad mileage tables placed more than six miles from the Jacobs Fork Branch junction.
By May 1930, Norfolk and Western engineers had prepared a map and profile for a proposed extension from Newhall toward Bishop. The surviving drawing specifically indexes Squire along with Newhall and Bishop, demonstrating that Squire had become part of the railroad geography connecting a chain of mining communities through the narrow valley.
Coal did not simply arrive beside Squire. The railroad connected Squire to a much larger industrial system stretching through McDowell County, into Virginia, and ultimately to distant markets that consumed the Pocahontas coalfield’s fuel.
A Store, Families, and Everyday Squire
Railroad and mining records naturally dominate Squire’s surviving history, but one of the most valuable archival collections shifts attention back toward ordinary community life.
The West Virginia State Archives received five postcards showing members of the Harrison family and the Squire store, dating approximately from 1915 through the 1930s. The collection is small, but its subject matter is unusually important. Rather than another engineering drawing or industrial photograph, the postcards preserve the human scale of Squire during the period when the railroad and coal economy were remaking the surrounding valley.
The presence of a community store fits the pattern established by the much earlier directory. Commerce in Squire did not begin with the mature coal industry. A. C. Christian had already been operating a general store in 1904–05. What changed during the following decades was the size of the economy surrounding these local institutions.
Miners, railroad employees, families, merchants, teachers, and children occupied the same narrow landscape as coal tipples and sidings. Squire may have appeared in company documents because of coal, but people experienced it as home.
The Jacobs Fork Mine at Squire
The clearest surviving visual link between Squire and the coal industry dates to April 10, 1940.
Virginia Tech’s Pocahontas Mines Collection preserves a photograph cataloged as an “East View of Tipple of Jacobs Fork mine, Pocahontas Coal Company, Squire, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Even without viewing the original photograph, its archival description establishes several important facts. A substantial mining installation identified with Jacobs Fork was operating at Squire by 1940, and the mine’s tipple was important enough to be documented in company records with an exact date and location.
The photograph also demonstrates why Squire’s history can become confusing in industrial records. The community was Squire, while the mine was associated with the Jacobs Fork name. Other documents might identify a creek, railroad branch, mining operation, company, postal address, or neighboring camp rather than simply writing “Squire.”
That was common in the southern West Virginia coalfields. The boundaries between a postal community and an industrial operation were seldom as clean as the boundaries of an incorporated town. A miner could live at Squire, work at Jacobs Fork, travel along the Jacobs Fork Branch, and appear in a government document under Big Creek Magisterial District without any contradiction.
Federal coal records from the period also identify the Jacobs Fork Pocahontas operation with the Pocahontas No. 3 seam, reinforcing Squire’s connection to the famous low-volatile coal measures that made the larger Pocahontas field so valuable. The industrial importance of those seams explains why companies and railroads invested heavily in valleys that had been remote only a generation earlier.
Squire Was Larger Than One Census District
The 1940 federal census provides another valuable warning about how Squire should be researched.
Federal enumeration district descriptions divided the community between two sections of Big Creek Magisterial District. Enumeration District 24-22 included part of Squire in territory south and west of Jacobs Fork and east of Dry Fork. Enumeration District 24-24 included another part of Squire along with portions of Brewsterdale and Cucumber.
In other words, there was no single census page or neat administrative boundary containing everyone who considered Squire home. A researcher looking for Squire families in 1940 has to examine more than one enumeration district.
That division also tells us something about the physical character of the community. Squire was spread along a mountain transportation corridor rather than laid out as a compact courthouse town. Creeks, roads, ridges, mine properties, railroad tracks, neighboring camps, and postal identities overlapped.
It is one reason coalfield genealogy can become frustrating. A family could remain in essentially the same part of McDowell County while appearing in different records under Squire, Jacobs Fork, Brewsterdale, Cucumber, Newhall, or simply Big Creek District.
Squire Remains on the Railroad Map
The Jacobs Fork Branch continued to matter long after the first great period of mine construction.
A Norfolk and Western stations and sidings document dated July 1, 1977, provides an especially revealing snapshot. Beginning at the Jacobs Fork Branch junction, the railroad listed Jacobs Storage Siding, a Pocahontas Fuel operation at Newhall, the Call Coal Company operation, Newhall Storage Siding, and then Squire at mile 6.22. Beyond Squire stood Craft Siding, Hawley Coal Mining Corporation’s Jacobs Fork operation, the Bishop Coal Company operation, the West Virginia and Virginia state line, and Bishop.
More than sixty years after coal shipments began moving over the first part of the branch, Squire remained an official railroad location.
The same document demonstrates how densely industrialized this seemingly isolated valley had become. Within a relatively short distance, the railroad served multiple coal operations, storage sidings, communities, and the interstate connection toward Bishop. Squire was not isolated from the coal economy. It sat inside one of the networks that made McDowell County a major American coal producer.
Squire Elementary and a Coal-Fired Furnace
Some of the most vivid evidence for later community life comes from an unexpected source: a West Virginia Supreme Court case.
In Perfin v. Cole, decided in 1985, the court reviewed an unemployment compensation dispute involving a woman who had been offered a job as custodian at Squire Elementary School in November 1981. Her testimony described duties involving the operation of the school’s coal-fired furnace. She also expressed concern about working alone in a building that had experienced vandalism and about being required to return on Saturdays and Sundays to tend the furnace and check the school.
The court case had nothing to do with writing a history of Squire, which is exactly what makes the details so valuable. Government records created for entirely different purposes sometimes preserve aspects of ordinary life that formal histories overlook.
As late as the early 1980s, Squire still had an elementary school whose building depended upon coal for heat. The school required weekend furnace attention during cold weather, and it stood as a community institution substantial enough to employ aides and custodial workers through the McDowell County Board of Education.
The image is a fitting one for Squire. Coal was not only leaving the valley in railroad cars. It heated the building where the community’s children went to school.
The Jacobs Fork Burial Fund
Another federal record from almost the same period reveals something even more personal about workers associated with the nearby mining operation.
In 1982, the United States Department of Labor issued an advisory opinion concerning the Jacobs Fork Operation Burial Fund Association. Membership in the voluntary organization depended upon employment at Hawley Coal Mining Corporation’s Jacobs Fork operation. The association provided death benefits when a member or certain dependents died. Federal officials concluded that the arrangement qualified as an employee welfare benefit plan covered by federal law.
Behind the technical language of the ruling was a much older coalfield practice: workers pooling resources to help families through death and burial expenses.
Mining communities had always lived unusually close to the realities of injury, illness, and death. The Jacobs Fork burial association shows miners creating an institution of their own to provide a measure of security. It adds a human dimension to a documentary record otherwise filled with mine maps, corporate names, railroad mileposts, and production infrastructure.
Mechanization and the End of the Old Coalfield World
Squire remained tied to coal, but the economic world surrounding the community changed dramatically after World War II.
McDowell County reached the height of its population and national coal importance around the middle of the twentieth century. After 1950, mechanization allowed mines to produce coal with far fewer workers. Thousands of families left in search of employment elsewhere, and communities throughout the county lost population, schools, stores, and other institutions that had depended upon a much larger mining workforce.
Squire’s surviving records show that this contraction did not happen overnight. The railroad still recognized Squire in the 1970s. Squire Elementary remained active in the early 1980s. Workers at the Jacobs Fork operation still maintained their burial association. Coal employment and transportation continued even as the classic company-town economy was disappearing around them.
The railroad itself proved remarkably durable. West Virginia’s 2020 State Rail Plan continued to identify the Jacobs Fork Branch as a Norfolk Southern route of approximately 10.4 miles connecting with the Dry Fork Branch near Newhall and extending toward Bishop. By then it was a single-track freight line with a maximum authorized speed of ten miles per hour, but the basic transportation corridor created during the coal boom remained recognizable more than a century after construction began.
Remembering Squire Beyond the Mine
Squire’s history is not the story of one coal company or even one mine. It begins earlier, with Brewster, A. C. Christian’s post office and store, a physician, a constable, and families occupying land along the creeks before railroad engineers arrived.
Then the scale changed.
The Jacobs Fork Branch pushed into the valley. Railroad right-of-way maps sliced across Brewster family property and other local holdings. Coal operations followed the tracks. Squire became connected to the Jacobs Fork Mine and the larger Pocahontas coal economy. A store served families living amid that industrial growth. Federal census takers struggled to fit the sprawling community neatly into their administrative boundaries. Children attended Squire Elementary. Miners created a burial fund to protect one another’s families. Trains continued to recognize Squire as a station long after the first generation of coal development had passed.
That is what makes Squire worth preserving as a community history rather than reducing it to a dot on a map.
Its records show two McDowell Counties existing in the same place. One was the older mountain landscape of families, local stores, country post offices, and roads leading toward Virginia. The other was the industrial McDowell County of railroads, coal tipples, company operations, and nationally important fuel production.
Squire survived the transition between them, and in the scattered records left behind, both worlds can still be seen.
Sources & Further Reading
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Wheeling, WV: R. L. Polk & Co., 1904. https://ldsgenealogy.com/WV/books/West-Virginia-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-pt-2-part-25.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Vol. 2. Wheeling, WV: R. L. Polk & Co., 1904. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/westvirginiastat02rlpo
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. Pocahontas Mines Collection, 1883–1997. Ms2004-002. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/55
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “East View of Tipple of Jacobs Fork Mine, Pocahontas Coal Company, Squire, McDowell County, West Virginia.” April 10, 1940. Pocahontas Mines Collection, Ms2004-002, Box 646, Folder 1. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/110236
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Map and Profile of Proposed Extension of Jacobs Fork Branch of Dry Fork Branch, McDowell County WV & Tazewell County VA.” Drawing 6013-D. May 1, 1930. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=104671
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Map Showing Right of Way on Jacobs Fork Branch and Cucumber Branch, McDowell County, WV.” Drawing D714. Revised January 21, 1932. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=133738
Norfolk & Western Railway. Jacobs Fork Branch and Cucumber Branch right-of-way drawings, including C-1630, C-1641, C-1642, C-1643, C-1644, C-1645, C-1648, C-1649, and related plats. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=133738
West Virginia State Archives. Photograph Collection Ph2009-055. “Harrison Family Members and Squire Store, McDowell County,” ca. 1915–1930s. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/photographaccessions.html
West Virginia State Archives. Southern Coal Producers Association Collection, 1904–1985. Ms2014-021. Box 25, “Jacobs Fork Division, Pocahontas Empire Coal Company, L. J. Signaigo Jr., Secretary-Treasurer.” Charleston, WV. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/collections/manuscripts/ms2014-021.html
West Virginia Secretary of State. “Pocahontas Empire Coal Corporation.” Business Organization Information System. Charleston, WV. https://apps.sos.wv.gov/business/corporations/organization.aspx?org=61421
United States Department of the Interior, Bituminous Coal Division. Federal Register. October 5, 1940. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1940-10-05/pdf/FR-1940-10-05.pdf
United States Department of the Interior, Bituminous Coal Division. Federal Register. February 26, 1941. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1941. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1941-02-26/pdf/FR-1941-02-26.pdf
United States Congress. Congressional Record. 90th Cong., 1st sess., 1967. McDowell County mine listings, including Jacobs Fork Coal Mining Company, Squire. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1967-pt2/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1967-pt2-7-1.pdf
United States Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration. “Advisory Opinion 1982-25A: Jacobs Fork Operation Burial Fund Association.” June 8, 1982. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ebsa/about-ebsa/our-activities/resource-center/advisory-opinions/1982-25a.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions: West Virginia, McDowell County, ED 24-21, ED 24-22, ED 24-23, and ED 24-24.” NARA Identifier 5888415. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5888415
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department, including Microfilm Publication M841, Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census.” Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://1950census.archives.gov/
West Virginia State Archives. “Vital Research Records.” Charleston, WV: West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia State Archives. “McDowell County History Sources.” Charleston, WV: West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
West Virginia State Archives. McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files. Ar2094. Charleston, WV. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
West Virginia State Archives. McDowell County Land Records Collection. Ms2004-115. Charleston, WV. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/manuscripts.html
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Mine Information Database System.” Morgantown, WV: West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/mineinformation/
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. “National Mine Map Repository.” U.S. Department of the Interior. https://www.osmre.gov/programs/national-mine-map-repository
The McDowell Times. Keystone, WV, 1904–1941. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86092050/
Bluefield Daily Telegraph. Bluefield, WV. Historical issues. NewspaperArchive. https://newspaperarchive.com/bluefield-daily-telegraph/
Charleston Gazette. Charleston, WV. Historical issues. NewspaperArchive. https://newspaperarchive.com/charleston-gazette/
Coal Age. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Historical issues. Google Books. https://books.google.com/
Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Craft v. Pocahontas Corporation, 118 W. Va. 380, 190 S.E. 687 (1937). https://openjurist.org/118/wva/380/craft-v-pocahontas-corp
United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. Morton v. Gardner, 257 F. Supp. 67 (S.D.W. Va. 1966). https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/257/67/1601370/
Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Perfin v. Cole, 174 W. Va. 417, 327 S.E.2d 396 (1985). https://law.justia.com/cases/west-virginia/supreme-court/1985/16486-5.html
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://archive.org/
Sowers, Auburn Daniel. Facts About McDowell County, West Virginia. 1912. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
McDowell County Centennial, 1858–1958. McDowell County, WV, 1958. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
Solins, Mrs. Samuel, and Mrs. Paul Jones. McDowell County History: A Pictorial History of McDowell County, West Virginia. 1959. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
Friedl, Joseph. A History of Education in McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1976. 1975. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
Evans, Norma Pontiff. First Families of McDowell County, West Virginia. 1981. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
McDowell County Historical Society. The Heritage of McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1995. Welch, WV: McDowell County Historical Society, 1995.
Battlo, Jean. McDowell County: In West Virginia and American History. McDowell County, WV, 1998.
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1963. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/
Schust, Alex P. Billion Dollar Coalfield: West Virginia’s McDowell County and the Industrialization of America. Two Mule Publishing, 2010.
National Coal Heritage Area. Coal Heritage Survey Update: Final Report, McDowell County, West Virginia. National Coal Heritage Area. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
West Virginia Department of Transportation, State Rail Authority. West Virginia State Rail Plan 2020. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Department of Transportation, 2020. https://transportation.wv.gov/rail/2020WVSRP/Documents/WVSRP-Full-Appendix.pdf
West Virginia University Libraries, West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Maps, Atlases, and Gazetteers.” Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University. https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/collections/maps-atlases-and-gazetteers
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “McDowell County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Humanities Council. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1577
Author Note: Squire is one of those McDowell County communities whose story becomes much larger once the scattered railroad, mining, census, school, and family records are brought together. I hope this history helps preserve the memory of the people who knew Squire not simply as a coal operation or railroad stop, but as home.