Appalachian Community Histories – Symbol, Laurel County: Winding Blade Road, Rev. Elijah T. Cornett, and a Vanished Rural Post Office
Some communities leave behind rows of buildings, school photographs, church minutes, and long columns in old newspapers. Others survive in a thinner but still important record. Symbol, in northern Laurel County, Kentucky, belongs to that second kind of place. Its history is not easy to follow through a single large event or famous founder. Instead, Symbol appears in the kind of sources that often preserve rural Appalachian communities best: post office records, highway maps, topographic maps, cemetery listings, and the memory of roads.
The best direct place-name evidence places Symbol on Winding Blade Road, west of KY 490, in the rough hill country between East Bernstadt, Lamero, Mershons, and the Rockcastle County line. Robert M. Rennick’s Laurel County place-name material identifies Symbol with Winding Blade Road, and the Morehead State post office material gives the most important early fact about the community: the Symbol post office was established on March 26, 1929, with Rev. Elijah T. Cornett as its first postmaster.
The Post Office That Put Symbol on the Map
For many rural Kentucky communities, the post office was more than a place to pick up letters. It was proof that a settlement existed in the eyes of the outside world. A post office gave a name to a neighborhood, tied farm families to a larger mail route, and helped mark a place on official maps. In Symbol’s case, the post office is the strongest surviving anchor for the community’s early twentieth-century history.
The Morehead State Laurel County post office file states that Symbol’s post office began on March 26, 1929, with Rev. Elijah T. Cornett as first postmaster, located on Winding Blade Road, less than a mile west of old U.S. 25, now KY 490. Rennick’s related Laurel County material also notes that the origin of the name Symbol was not clearly explained in the sources he used. That silence matters. It means the community’s name survived, but its naming story may not have been preserved in official paperwork.
Postal records remain the best path for anyone who wants to take Symbol’s history further. The United States Postal Service’s Postmaster Finder includes postmaster and post office history, although USPS notes that many offices before 1971 are incomplete unless they have been researched and added. The National Archives also preserves Post Office Department site-location reports in Record Group 28, microfilm publication M1126, which can include county, roads, mail routes, nearby geographic features, and sometimes sketch maps. For Symbol, the key reel to pursue is the Kentucky roll covering Laurel through Lawrence counties.
Rev. Elijah T. Cornett and a Rural Mail Community
The first postmaster named in the Symbol record, Rev. Elijah T. Cornett, hints at the kind of leadership that often held small Appalachian communities together. In rural places, a minister, storekeeper, farmer, school trustee, or postmaster could become one of the few official points of contact between a scattered neighborhood and the wider county. Cornett’s title as reverend suggests that Symbol’s early postal history may also connect to church life and family networks around Winding Blade Road.
The available online record does not yet give a full biography of Cornett as postmaster. That is not unusual for a small rural office. However, the combination of his name, title, and appointment creates a research trail. County records, church records, census schedules, death certificates, land deeds, and cemetery inscriptions may help reconstruct the families who used Symbol as a mailing point. The post office is the door into the larger story.
Roads, Ridges, and the Shape of the Place
Symbol’s geography helps explain why the post office mattered. This part of Laurel County is a landscape of winding roads, narrow branches, wooded ridges, and small farm clearings. Modern gazetteer sources identify Symbol as a populated place in Laurel County at about 37.274 latitude and -84.139 longitude, appearing on the Livingston U.S. Geological Survey map.
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s Laurel County road map places Symbol in the northern part of the county’s road network, near other small communities such as Mershons, Lamero, Cruise, Cornette, and Victory. That map matters because it shows Symbol not as an isolated name, but as part of a chain of rural places connected by KY 490 and local roads.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s historical Livingston quadrangle also preserves Symbol as a mapped place. USGS topoView explains that historical USGS topographic maps are useful for seeing how places appeared across time, and the 1969 Livingston quadrangle includes Symbol, Winding Blade, and nearby church and branch labels.
Farming, Isolation, and the Mail Order World
Local historian and trail writer Stephen D. Bowling gives one of the fullest short descriptions of Symbol’s community setting. Writing about hikers passing through the Winding Blade Road area, Bowling describes Symbol as a rural community of subsistence farmers who were separated from London by distance and terrain. He also notes that the Symbol post office helped local families receive goods ordered from catalogs, including the kind of store-bought items that farm households could not produce themselves.
That description fits the broader pattern of many Appalachian communities in the first half of the twentieth century. A rural post office did not simply handle letters. It connected families to newspapers, farm information, government notices, seed catalogs, clothing catalogs, and relatives who had moved away for work. When the roads were difficult and trips to town were occasional, the mail could become one of the most important connections between a hillside home and the rest of the country.
Bowling’s account also says that a 1960 USGS topo map showed Symbol with sixteen houses and one church, and that the Symbol post office was discontinued on December 31, 1988. A separate postal-cover source also states that the Symbol post office was in service from 1929 to 1988. Those sources should be treated as useful local and postal-history leads, with the National Archives and USPS records serving as the best places for final confirmation.
The Land Beneath the Community
Symbol’s story is also a land story. The Kentucky Geological Survey’s generalized geologic map for Laurel County was created for land-use planning, not for writing local history, but it helps explain the terrain that shaped communities like Symbol. The map places Laurel County in the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field and describes the county’s varied elevations, with the Rockcastle River forming western and northern boundaries and elevations ranging from low river country to higher ridges near the Knox County line.
For a small community like Symbol, this kind of source is useful because it reminds us that roads, farms, churches, schools, and post offices were all shaped by the land. Families settled where they could farm, travel, worship, and bury their dead. A place like Symbol was not built around a courthouse or railroad depot. It was built around the practical geography of roads, ridges, kinship, and mail service.
Cemeteries and Family Memory
When a rural post office disappears, cemeteries often become some of the strongest surviving evidence of the families who belonged to the place. Find a Grave lists three cemeteries under Symbol: Duncil and Davis Cemetery, Old Casteel Cemetery, and Simpson Cemetery. The Simpson Cemetery listing gives directions from U.S. 25 North to KY 490 and Winding Blade Road, directly tying the cemetery geography to the Symbol community area.
These cemetery records should be used carefully. Online cemetery databases can contain errors, missing burials, and volunteer-submitted information that needs checking against stones, death certificates, obituaries, funeral home records, or county records. Still, they are valuable clues. Names such as Casteel, Duncil, Davis, Simpson, Cornett, and others may help reconstruct the family networks that gave Symbol its local identity.
Laurel County Context
Symbol’s story belongs inside the larger story of Laurel County. The Kentucky Historical Society’s marker entry for Laurel County states that the county was formed in 1825 from parts of Clay, Rockcastle, Whitley, and Knox counties, and that the abundance of laurel shrub impressed early pioneers. The Laurel County Historical Society likewise notes that the county was the eightieth county organized in Kentucky and was named for the Laurel River, known for dense laurel thickets along its banks.
That broader county history matters because Symbol was never a large town competing with London or East Bernstadt. It was one of the small named places that made up the lived geography of Laurel County. These communities often appeared in post office ledgers, road maps, church directories, cemetery records, school records, and family stories rather than in long formal histories.
What Happened to Symbol
By the late twentieth century, many small rural post offices across Kentucky were discontinued, consolidated, or replaced by larger delivery systems. Symbol’s post office appears to have lasted from 1929 until 1988, a span of nearly sixty years. That was long enough to carry the community through the Great Depression, World War II, the postwar migration of Appalachian families to northern industrial states, the decline of older subsistence patterns, and the road improvements that made rural isolation less severe.
When the post office closed, Symbol did not vanish from the land. People still lived near Winding Blade Road. Cemeteries remained. Roads kept the name alive on maps. But the closing of the post office likely marked the end of Symbol as an official postal identity. The community shifted from an active mail name to a remembered place name.
Why Symbol Still Matters
Symbol matters because it represents a kind of Appalachian history that is easy to overlook. It was not a county seat. It was not a coal boomtown. It was not the site of a famous battle. Its paper trail is small, but that does not make it insignificant. Places like Symbol were where families farmed, worshiped, buried their dead, traded news, received letters, and kept kinship ties alive across the hills.
The history of Symbol is a reminder that Appalachian communities were not only made by railroads, mines, courthouses, and highways. They were also made by small post offices on winding roads. A name on a map could hold together a whole neighborhood. A postmaster’s appointment could preserve a place in federal records. A cemetery could keep family memory when the post office was gone.
Today, Symbol survives in records that must be pieced together carefully. Rennick’s place-name files give the location and the first postmaster. Morehead State’s post office material gives the establishment date. USGS and KYTC maps place the community in the landscape. Cemetery records preserve family traces. Local history adds the human setting of farm families, rough roads, and a post office that once connected Winding Blade Road to the wider world.
That is the story of Symbol, Kentucky: a small Laurel County community whose name still marks the road, the map, and the memory of a rural place that mattered to the people who called it home.
Sources & Further Reading
Rennick, Robert M. “Laurel County.” Kentucky County Histories. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=kentucky_county_histories
Rennick, Robert M. “The Post Offices of Laurel County, Kentucky.” Kentucky County Histories. Morehead State University ScholarWorks, 1972. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/context/kentucky_county_histories/article/1386/viewcontent/Laurel_PostOffices.pdf
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” The United States Postal Service: Postal History. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” National Archives. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/post-offices/m1126.pdf
United States Postal Service. Sources of Historical Information on Post Offices, Postal Employees, Mail Routes, and Mail Contractors. Washington, DC: United States Postal Service, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/sources-of-historical-information.pdf
Eskew, Steve. “Symbol KY Postal Cover.” Kentucky Postal History. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.eskewconsulting.com/postalhistory/laurelcounty/symbol.html
Bowling, Stephen D. “What to See on Hike Six, 2024.” Bookhiker, April 30, 2024. https://bookhiker.com/2024/04/30/what-to-see-on-hike-six-2024/
Bowling, Stephen D. “What to See on Hike Two, 2023.” Bookhiker, February 8, 2023. https://bookhiker.com/2023/02/08/what-to-see-on-hike-two-2023/
HomeTownLocator. “Symbol Populated Place Profile, Laurel County, Kentucky.” KY HomeTownLocator. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://kentucky.hometownlocator.com/ky/laurel/symbol.cfm
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Laurel County, Kentucky State Primary Road System Map. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Department of Highways. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Laurel.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Laurel County, Kentucky: Generalized Geologic Map for Land-Use Planning. Lexington: University of Kentucky, Kentucky Geological Survey. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc165_12.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System: Symbol.” The National Map. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/summary/516909
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView.” National Geologic Map Database. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States Geological Survey. Livingston Quadrangle, Kentucky. Washington, DC: United States Geological Survey, various editions. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Ross, J. C., A. S. Johnson, and P. E. Avers. Soil Survey of Laurel and Rockcastle Counties, Kentucky. Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, 1981. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/data-and-reports/soil-surveys-by-state
United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. “Web Soil Survey.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/
Find a Grave. “Cemeteries in Symbol, Kentucky.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery-browse/USA/Kentucky/Laurel-County/Symbol?id=city_53574
Find a Grave. “Cemeteries in Laurel County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery-browse/USA/Kentucky/Laurel-County?id=county_1051
FamilySearch. “Laurel County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. Last modified May 19, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Laurel_County%2C_Kentucky_Genealogy
Kentucky Historical Society. “Laurel County.” Historical Markers Database. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://history.ky.gov/markers/laurel-county
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Research Room.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/researchers/Pages/default.aspx
Laurel County Public Library. “Digital Archive.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://laurellibrary.org/digital-archive/
Laurel County Historical Society. “Laurel County Historical Society and Genealogy Center.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.laurelcountyhistory.org/
Clark, Thomas D. A History of Laurel County. London, KY: Laurel County Historical Society, 1992. https://www.worldcat.org/
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Laurel County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/21125.html
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: This article pieces together Symbol’s history from postal records, maps, cemetery listings, and local-history sources. Small communities like Symbol often leave a thinner record, but those records still preserve the lives and roads that shaped rural Laurel County.