Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Elmer Begley of Leslie, Kentucky
Elmer Begley belonged to a generation of eastern Kentucky political figures whose careers were built first at the courthouse and only later carried them to Frankfort. Born in Leslie County in 1912, Begley became closely associated with Hyden and spent much of his public life representing the mountain county that remained his political base even after his ambitions expanded across Kentucky.
Before voters across the Commonwealth encountered Begley’s name on a statewide ballot, Leslie Countians had known him for years as their county judge. Later family material described him as having served in that position for more than sixteen years, while contemporary newspapers place him firmly in the office during the early 1950s. Those surviving reports are particularly valuable because they show Begley not simply as a name in a list of officeholders, but as a county official responding to some of the difficult situations that accompanied life in a coal-producing Appalachian county.
His career eventually carried him far beyond the Leslie County courthouse. Begley twice became the Republican nominee for Kentucky Secretary of State, losing his first attempt in 1963 before returning four years later and winning. By January 1968, a man whose political identity had been formed in Leslie County was administering one of Kentucky’s constitutional offices.
The County Judge During a Changing Era
The county judge of Begley’s era occupied a highly visible place in local government. In an Appalachian county where roads, public services, schools, law enforcement, coal employment, and county finances touched nearly every community, the courthouse could become the center of disputes that extended well beyond routine administration.
A revealing glimpse of Begley’s county career survives from February 1952. The Floyd County Times identified him directly as “Leslie County Judge Elmer Begley” while reporting on the presence of federal investigators in the area. Begley discussed conversations with FBI agents at a time when tensions surrounding coal operations near Hyden had attracted attention beyond Leslie County.
The photographic record adds another dimension. The John C. Wyatt Lexington Herald-Leader Photograph Collection preserves an image cataloged as Judge Elmer Begley in connection with a work stoppage at Hyden mines in February 1952. Related photographs concern the New Hyden and Citation Coal Company operations. Together with the newspaper reporting, those images place Begley directly inside the complicated relationship among county government, coal companies, workers, federal authorities, and the communities surrounding Hyden.
Another contemporary newspaper report from 1953 again identified Begley as Leslie County judge, this time in connection with the discovery of Charles Vermillion’s body along the Hyden-Manchester road. The subject was entirely different from the mining tensions of the previous year, but the appearance of Begley in both situations demonstrates the range of matters that reached the county judge’s attention.
These brief surviving references cannot reconstruct every year of his local administration. Leslie County Fiscal Court minutes, court order books, and county election records would be necessary for that. What they do establish is that Begley had already become an important public figure in Leslie County long before Kentucky voters saw his name on a statewide ticket.
The First Campaign for Secretary of State
Begley made his first documented statewide run for Kentucky Secretary of State in 1963. Contemporary campaign notices identified him as “Elmer Begley, Hyden, Ky.,” an important geographical description in an election where a candidate from a small eastern Kentucky county was asking voters from Paducah to Pikeville to place him in statewide office.
The official election returns leave no uncertainty about the result. Begley, the Republican nominee, received 380,798 votes. Democrat Thelma L. Stovall received 418,852. Begley therefore lost the secretary of state contest while Republican gubernatorial nominee Louie B. Nunn was also defeated by Democrat Edward T. “Ned” Breathitt.
For Begley, however, 1963 was not the end of a statewide political career. It proved to be the beginning of one.
Returning to Leslie County after the defeat, he retained something that mattered enormously in Kentucky politics: statewide name recognition. Four years later, the political climate would be different, Nunn would again head the Republican ticket, and Begley would again seek the office of secretary of state.
The Election of 1967
The November 1967 election produced the defining victory of Begley’s political life. The official Kentucky vote returns identify three candidates for secretary of state: Republican Elmer Begley of Hyden, Democrat Claude Reed of Canada, Kentucky, and Conservative candidate Dorothy B. Marquess of Louisville.
Begley received 391,997 votes statewide. Reed received 383,960, while Marquess received 5,775. Begley had won the office by only a little more than eight thousand votes in a statewide election, making every region that supported him important to the final result.
Nowhere was that support more emphatic than at home.
Leslie County gave Begley 2,785 votes. Reed received only 756, while Marquess received 15. The numbers demonstrate how completely Begley’s statewide candidacy remained tied to the county where his political career had developed. The former county judge was no longer campaigning merely for a courthouse office in Hyden, but Leslie County voters continued to treat him as one of their own.
Begley’s victory also came as Louie B. Nunn captured the governorship. The results placed two eastern and south-central Kentucky Republicans who had suffered defeat together in 1963 into statewide office four years later.
For Begley, it represented a remarkable transition. The public official who had spent years handling local matters in one of Kentucky’s mountain counties would now work from Frankfort with responsibilities extending to the entire Commonwealth.
Secretary of State
Begley entered office in 1968, and the surviving documents produced during his administration provide unusually direct evidence of his work.
The Kentucky State Board of Elections’ official returns from the 1968 primary were issued from the office of “Elmer Begley, Secretary of State.” The same wording appears again on Kentucky’s official 1969 election publication. These documents are more than references to his title. They are governmental records created under his authority and demonstrate one of the central responsibilities of the office during his tenure.
Election administration was only part of the paper trail.
Western Kentucky University Special Collections preserves a Commonwealth of Kentucky certification for candidates in the May 26, 1970 primary election that was presented by Secretary of State Elmer Begley. Created during the final year of his life, the document provides a direct connection between Begley and the routine constitutional work of placing candidates before Kentucky voters.
The William Huston Natcher Papers at Western Kentucky University contain additional material authored by Begley and published by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in April 1968. That archival survival is significant because it demonstrates that traces of his administration remain scattered well beyond the formal Secretary of State files.
Corporate records preserved in Kentucky Public Service Commission filings likewise retain certifications bearing Begley’s name and title. Such records may appear less dramatic than an election victory, but they are valuable precisely because they reveal the daily machinery of government. The secretary of state certified records, maintained official documents, handled filings, and helped preserve the legal record of corporations and organizations operating throughout Kentucky.
Preserving Kentucky’s Records
One particularly interesting glimpse into Begley’s work came in 1969. Contemporary material in the Walton Advertiser showed Begley among state officials discussing the repair and preservation of records and official documents.
That detail gives his term a dimension easily lost when a political biography concentrates only on campaigns. Secretaries of state are often remembered through election returns because elections create clear winners, losers, dates, and vote totals. Much of the office itself, however, concerns preservation, certification, and continuity.
Begley’s name survives on precisely those kinds of records.
More than half a century later, official Kentucky election returns still announce that they came from his office. Archival certifications still identify him as secretary of state. Corporate documents preserved in later government proceedings still carry his title. Taken together, those records allow Begley’s administration to be reconstructed through the paperwork it created.
Hyden Never Disappeared from the Story
Winning statewide office did not erase Begley’s Leslie County identity. The official 1963 return identified him simply as Elmer Begley of Hyden. Four years later, the official 1967 election document again listed his home as Hyden.
That repetition matters.
Kentucky politics has produced many officeholders from Louisville, Lexington, and the Bluegrass, but Begley entered statewide politics with a public identity rooted in a small Appalachian county seat. His electoral strength in Leslie County in 1967 demonstrates that the connection was more than ceremonial. The county that had watched his earlier career gave him an overwhelming majority when he sought one of the Commonwealth’s highest elected offices.
The relationship also continued after his death through his family. Begley had married Leila Feltner in 1941, and she later served as assistant secretary of state during his administration. Their partnership would take on unexpected historical importance during the final months of his life. Leila’s obituary records their 29 years of marriage and confirms Elmer’s death on September 18, 1970.
Illness During His Final Year
By the summer of 1970, Begley’s health had begun interfering with his work.
The Floyd County Times reported on July 23 that a project in the Secretary of State’s office had been begun months earlier by Begley but had been interrupted because of his illness. The report is significant because it establishes that his declining health was affecting official business before the public vacancy that followed his death.
Even during that final year, however, surviving records show the office continuing its work. The May 1970 candidate certification preserved at Western Kentucky University still carried Begley’s authority as secretary of state.
Less than two months after the July newspaper report, Elmer Begley died on September 18, 1970. He was still Kentucky Secretary of State.
The Kentucky Secretary of State’s own historical account singles him out for that distinction, recording that Begley was the secretary who died while holding the office.
Leila Begley Steps Into the Office
Begley’s death created both a political vacancy and a family tragedy. Three days later, on September 21, Governor Louie B. Nunn appointed Leila Feltner Begley to succeed her husband.
The state’s official history records her appointed service from September 21, 1970, until February 2, 1971.
The transition created an unusual chapter in Kentucky political history. Elmer and Leila Begley were not simply husband and wife connected to public service. They became successive holders of the same constitutional office, with Leila assuming responsibility for the department in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death.
Her later obituary recalled that she had already served as assistant secretary of state before Nunn appointed her to Elmer’s position. She eventually returned to the assistant role after leaving the office in February 1971.
The Begley story in Frankfort therefore did not end abruptly in September 1970. It continued through Leila, linking Leslie County to the Secretary of State’s office even after Elmer’s death.
A Legacy That Returned to Eastern Kentucky
Elmer Begley’s public record is scattered across very different kinds of sources. His Leslie County years appear in regional newspapers and archival photographs. His statewide campaigns survive in official election returns. His tenure as secretary of state remains visible in certifications, election publications, government documents, and archival collections.
His name also continued in eastern Kentucky through education.
Eastern Kentucky University has documented recipients of the Elmer Begley Memorial Scholarship, including a Leslie County student who received the award through the EKU Foundation. The scholarship provided a fitting form of remembrance for a political figure whose identity remained closely associated with the mountain county from which he came.
Leila Begley’s obituary referred more fully to the Elmer and Leila F. Begley Scholarship fund for deserving Leslie County students at Eastern Kentucky University.
In that sense, the Begley name traveled a long route and eventually returned home. It moved from Leslie County government to statewide elections, from Hyden to Frankfort, and then back toward the young people of Leslie County through a scholarship bearing the family name.
Why Elmer Begley Matters
Elmer Begley’s importance to Appalachian history rests partly in the scale of the journey he made without abandoning the place where it began.
The surviving record first shows him as a Leslie County judge dealing with problems close to home. Coal disputes, federal investigators, public safety, roads, county administration, and the ordinary responsibilities of courthouse government formed the environment in which his political reputation developed. He then carried the name “Elmer Begley, Hyden, Ky.” onto a statewide ballot in 1963 and lost.
Four years later, he tried again.
In 1967, nearly 392,000 Kentuckians voted to make the former Leslie County judge their secretary of state. Among them were 2,785 voters in Leslie County, compared with only 756 there for his principal opponent.
His years in Frankfort were short. Begley served from 1968 until his death in September 1970, leaving behind no long governorship, congressional career, or decades in a statewide office. Yet the documentary trail is substantial enough to tell a larger story.
It is the story of a mountain politician whose career was built locally, tested statewide in defeat, and finally rewarded with statewide victory. It is also a reminder that Appalachian political history did not happen only through governors and senators. County judges, courthouse officials, election administrators, and constitutional officers helped connect isolated communities to the broader machinery of Kentucky government.
Elmer Begley made that journey from Leslie County to Frankfort, and even on the official returns that recorded his greatest political victory, the place beside his name remained the same: Hyden, Kentucky.
Sources & Further Reading
Kentucky State Board of Elections. Statement of the Official Vote of Kentucky, General Election, November 7, 1967. Frankfort: Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1967. Official returns document Begley’s successful campaign for secretary of state and his strong Leslie County vote. https://elect.ky.gov/results/1973-1979/Documents/1967.pdf
Kentucky State Board of Elections. Statement of the Official Vote of Kentucky, General Election, November 5, 1963. Frankfort: Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1963. This documents Begley’s first unsuccessful campaign for secretary of state. https://elect.ky.gov/results/1973-1979/Documents/1963.pdf
Kentucky State Board of Elections. Official Vote of Kentucky, Primary Election Held May 28, 1968. Frankfort: Office of Elmer Begley, Secretary of State, 1968. This is a particularly valuable primary source because it was issued directly from Begley’s office. https://elect.ky.gov/results/1973-1979/Documents/1968.pdf
Kentucky State Board of Elections. Statement of the Official Vote of Kentucky, Primary Election Held May 27, 1969. Frankfort: Office of Elmer Begley, Secretary of State, 1969. https://elect.ky.gov/results/1973-1979/Documents/1969.pdf
Commonwealth of Kentucky. “Official Certification of Candidates for Nomination at May 26th, 1970 Primary Election.” Presented by Secretary of State Elmer Begley. Western Kentucky University Special Collections, 1970. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/scl_broadsides/57/
Western Kentucky University Special Collections. William Huston Natcher Papers, MSS 142. Finding aid containing Commonwealth of Kentucky material authored by Elmer Begley in 1968. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5993&context=dlsc_mss_fin_aid
John C. Wyatt Lexington Herald-Leader Photograph Collection. “Judge Elmer Begley Pictured in Connection with Work Stoppage at Hyden Mines.” February 1952. Photograph no. 1.07-464.01. https://www.lhlphotoarchive.org/ark%3A/16417/th7mc9xqvqhqv
John C. Wyatt Lexington Herald-Leader Photograph Collection. “New Hyden and Citation Coal Company” related photographs, February 1952. The archive groups these images with the Begley photograph and the Hyden mine work stoppage. https://www.lhlphotoarchive.org/find?condition=2&keywords=1.07-464.&order=a&sort=51&view=1
Floyd County Times. February 21, 1952. Contemporary reporting identifies Begley as Leslie County judge and records his statements concerning FBI agents operating in the area. https://fclib.org/Floyd%20County%20Times/The_Floyd_County_Times_1952/02-21-1952.pdf
Floyd County Times. November 9, 1967. Contemporary post-election coverage concerning Begley’s campaign and election as Kentucky secretary of state. https://fclib.org/Floyd%20County%20Times/The_Floyd_County_Times_1967/11-09-1967.pdf
Floyd County Times. July 23, 1970. Contemporary reporting notes that a project begun by Secretary of State Elmer Begley had been interrupted because of his illness. https://papers.fclib.org/Floyd%20County%20Times%20%28renamed%29/The_Floyd_County_Times_1970/July%2023%2C%201970.pdf
Cadiz Record. May 23, 1963. Contemporary Kentucky newspaper coverage of the statewide election cycle in which Begley sought the Republican nomination for secretary of state. https://www.digifind-it.com/jlslibrary/data/newspapers/Cadiz%20Record/1963/1963-05-23.pdf
Walton Advertiser. 1969. Digitized newspaper volume containing contemporary material involving Secretary of State Elmer Begley and the preservation and repair of official state records. https://archive.org/stream/Walton_Advertiser_Vol_54_1969/Walton_Advertiser_Vol_54_1969_djvu.txt
Kentucky Secretary of State. “Trivia.” Office of the Kentucky Secretary of State. The official history identifies Elmer Begley as a secretary who died while in office and records Leila Feltner Begley’s appointment after his death. Accessed August 12, 2026. https://sos.ky.gov/sos-office/history/Pages/Trivia.aspx
Kentucky Public Service Commission. West Laurel Water Association Application. Archival exhibits include a surviving Kentucky Department of State document carrying Elmer Begley’s name and title as secretary of state. https://psc.ky.gov/PSCSCF/2005%20cases/2005-00477/WestLaurel_Application_112805.pdf
Kentucky Public Service Commission. Electronic Application of the Lake Village Water Association. Archival exhibits reproduce a Department of State corporate certification issued under Secretary of State Elmer Begley. https://psc.ky.gov/pscecf/2021-00020/wrjones%40rubinhays.com/01222021125838/Application_and_Exhibits.pdf
Kenton County Public Library. “Rep. Carl Bamberger, Secretary of State Elmer Begley.” Faces and Places Photograph Archive. Historical photograph documenting Begley during his statewide political career. https://facesandplaces.kentonlibrary.org/viewimage.php?i=di55468
Eastern Kentucky University. “A For Affordability.” August 8, 2023. Documents the continuing Elmer Begley Memorial Scholarship and its support of a student from Leslie County. https://www.eku.edu/news/a-for-affordability/
Walker Funeral Home. “Leila Feltner Begley.” Obituary, May 9, 2010. Provides family information, the Begleys’ marriage, Elmer Begley’s September 18, 1970 death, and Leila Begley’s political career. https://www.walkerfuneralhomesllc.com/obituaries/5751828
Walker Funeral Home. “Elmer ‘Sonny’ Begley, Jr.” Obituary, May 5, 2020. Particularly useful for the family’s account that Elmer Begley served as Leslie County judge for more than sixteen years. https://www.walkerfuneralhomesllc.com/obituaries/elmer-begley-jr
Author Note: Elmer Begley’s story shows how a political career rooted in a small Appalachian county could reach one of Kentucky’s highest constitutional offices. His journey from the Leslie County courthouse to Frankfort also preserves a chapter of eastern Kentucky political history that deserves greater attention.