Appalachian Community Histories – Towns, Mingo County: Searching the Records for a Forgotten Appalachian Place
Some Appalachian communities disappear slowly. A mine closes, a store shuts its doors, a school consolidates, and houses that once filled a narrow hollow gradually vanish into weeds and second-growth timber. The name may survive for another generation because people still use it when giving directions or explaining where their grandparents lived. Eventually, even that can fade.
Other places present a different mystery. Their names appear in lists, family recollections, databases, or copied records, but when the historian begins looking for the community itself, the trail becomes uncertain.
Towns, supposedly a community in Mingo County, West Virginia, belongs to that second category.
After searching historical place-name records, Mingo County reference works, government sources, newspapers, geological material, and modern locality lists, I have not found enough evidence to confidently say that a distinct Mingo County settlement was historically known as Towns. That does not prove that the name was never used. In the coalfields, where a cluster of houses could be known by a family name, mine name, railroad designation, creek, school, or post office, a place could exist locally without leaving a strong official record.
For now, the history of Towns is therefore partly the history of an unanswered question.
A Name Missing from the State Record
One of the best places to begin when researching an obscure West Virginia community is the historical place-name collection maintained by the West Virginia State Archives.
That record is especially useful because it includes communities that have long since disappeared from modern maps. Under the letter T, the archives identify a remarkable number of forgotten or little-known places.
Mingo County alone appears several times. Tamcliff is recorded for 1930. Taylorsville, also rendered Taylorville, appears in 1967. Taylortown appears in 1935. Tekram is listed for the period from 1935 to 1967. Thacker appears as early as 1898, while Toyo is recorded in 1920 and Trace from 1920 to 1935.
Towns is not among them.
The omission becomes more significant when compared with modern records. The State of West Virginia’s present Mingo County page lists numerous incorporated and unincorporated communities, including places as small as Baisden, Borderland, Breeden, Dingess, Edgarton, Meador, Nolan, Ragland, Rawl, Verner, and Wilsondale. Again, there is no Towns.
That is strong evidence that Towns was never a formally recognized West Virginia community under that exact name. It is not, however, absolute proof that nobody ever called a settlement by that name.
Why an Appalachian Community Can Disappear from the Maps
Mingo County is exactly the sort of place where an unofficial settlement name could have existed.
Before the industrial period, settlement in southern West Virginia usually followed river bottoms, creek valleys, and small patches of workable land. Mingo County was still part of Logan County until January 30, 1895, when the new county was created from Logan’s southern territory. Its population expanded rapidly after the Norfolk & Western Railway entered the Tug Valley and commercial coal development accelerated.
Mingo County’s population rose from 11,359 in 1900 to 19,431 in 1910 and eventually reached 47,409 in 1950. Coal, timber, railroads, and the businesses supporting those industries produced a landscape filled with settlements that had not existed a generation earlier.
Some became permanent towns. Others were company communities whose survival depended almost entirely upon a mine.
Across West Virginia, coal companies built settlements containing company houses, stores, schools, churches, post offices, and mine facilities. They were rarely incorporated municipalities and were commonly described simply as coal camps. By 1930, an estimated 465 company towns existed in West Virginia, concentrated heavily in southern counties such as Mingo, Logan, McDowell, Raleigh, and Fayette.
A place could therefore have several identities at once. A resident might say he lived at a particular hollow, while his mail went through another post office, his children attended a school carrying a third name, the coal company called the settlement by the mine name, and a railroad timetable used something else entirely.
That makes the absence of Towns from a gazetteer important, but not necessarily final.
The Coalfields Created Names Quickly
The transformation of Mingo County happened with extraordinary speed.
The Norfolk & Western reached the region around 1890, even before the county existed. Commercial mining expanded along the railroad and its branches, while logging operations moved deeper into previously isolated watersheds. Settlers who had farmed and timbered the mountains were joined by thousands of workers connected with coal and transportation.
A state report from the early twentieth century described the Pocahontas coal field, which included Mingo County, as an area whose development followed the railroad. Mines opened as transportation expanded, and companies recruited workers to meet a labor demand that the existing mountain population could not supply.
This produced places whose names were sometimes remarkably temporary.
A coal operator could acquire land, open a drift or shaft, construct several dozen houses, and create what residents regarded as a community. If the mine failed, consolidated with another operation, or changed ownership, the old name might disappear within decades.
Mingo County’s surviving place-name records illustrate how common this was. Tekram, Toyo, Tamcliff, Trace, Taylortown, and other names survive in archival lists even though most Americans today would have difficulty locating them on a map.
If Towns existed in a similar fashion, this is the historical environment in which it most likely would have appeared.
There is presently no evidence, however, that allows Towns to be connected with a particular coal company, mine, creek, railroad branch, or family settlement.
Could Towns Be Another Name?
One possibility is that Towns is a corrupted or shortened version of another Mingo County place name.
Taylorsville, or Taylorville, deserves attention simply because of the similarity between the names and because the State Archives specifically documents it in Mingo County. Taylortown is another possibility worth investigating. Toyo, Trace, and Tamcliff were also small enough that later databases and handwritten materials could produce confusion.
There is no evidence at present that Towns was actually an alternative name for any of these places, so identifying one of them as the answer would go beyond what the record supports.
The spelling itself could also be the problem.
Historical researchers regularly encounter Town, Towns, Towne, Townes, and similar variations in handwritten records. A family surname can become a geographic name, and a geographic name can later be mistaken for a settlement. An old notation such as “Towns Branch” could eventually be copied into a database as though “Towns” were the community.
Until an original document establishes the connection, these possibilities should remain possibilities rather than conclusions.
Searching the Newspapers of Mingo County
The local press provides one of the best chances of eventually solving the mystery.
The Mingo Republican began publication in Williamson in 1904 and continued until 1951. The newspaper called itself the official Republican paper of Mingo County and also advertised its connection to the developing Thacker coal field. Its pages covered businesses, mines, politics, churches, schools, deaths, accidents, community gatherings, and hundreds of small events that never reached state histories.
The West Virginia State Archives also preserves substantial runs of the Williamson Daily News, the Williamson Enterprise, and other Mingo County newspapers. The Daily News collection reaches back to 1913, while the surviving Enterprise material begins even earlier.
These newspapers matter because an informal community might never appear in an official state gazetteer while still appearing in phrases such as “residents of Towns,” “Towns school,” “Towns mine,” or “Towns Branch.”
So far, I have not found a newspaper reference strong enough to establish such a community.
That absence should be treated carefully. Historical newspaper searching depends heavily on imperfect optical character recognition, damaged pages, variant spellings, and incomplete surviving runs. A name can be present in an old paper and still remain effectively invisible to an electronic search.
What the 1914 Geological Survey Can Tell Us
Another unusually valuable source is the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey’s massive 1914 report on Logan and Mingo counties.
Produced while the region’s industrial transformation was still underway, the work runs hundreds of pages and examines geology, coal seams, streams, transportation routes, mines, and settlements across both counties. The surviving volume contains 776 pages, while associated maps document the county at a scale detailed enough to identify numerous geographic features and industrial locations.
The importance of a source like this goes beyond coal geology.
For community historians, geological reports often preserve a snapshot of the human landscape. Mines had to be located in relation to creeks, railroads, branches, ridges, and settlements. A place that later vanished could remain embedded in a mine description or map even after its houses disappeared.
Yet here again, the available searchable evidence has not produced a convincing Towns in Mingo County.
That strengthens the argument that the name was either extremely local, short-lived, recorded under another spelling, or mistakenly attached to Mingo County at some later date.
The Records Still Waiting in the Archives
The unanswered question is not necessarily a dead end.
The West Virginia State Archives holds original Mingo County Circuit Clerk material, while its microfilm holdings include deeds beginning in 1895, typed copies of earlier Logan County deeds, wills, marriages, bonds, chancery orders, estate records, and other documents extending into the twentieth century.
The archives’ Mingo County bibliography also identifies Nancy Sue Smith’s An History of Mingo County, West Virginia and History of Logan and Mingo Counties, Beginning in 1617, along with Heritage of Mingo and a substantial collection of historical newspaper material.
Even richer is the George F. Williamson Family Collection. Its holdings include material relating to early Mingo and Logan County land, railroads, Williamson, cemeteries, historical photographs, a typescript history of Logan and Mingo counties, and other records reaching deep into the nineteenth century.
Those are the kinds of records that may eventually settle the question.
A deed might mention Towns Branch. A railroad plat might identify a Towns siding. A school record could preserve a settlement name never recorded by the postal service. A newspaper death notice might describe someone as being “of Towns.” A family Bible, cemetery record, or oral history could provide the clue needed to connect the name with a known hollow.
Until something like that appears, certainty would be premature.
Towns and the Problem of Forgotten Appalachia
There is a temptation when writing community history to fill silence with assumption.
That is especially dangerous in Appalachia because so many genuine places have disappeared. Entire coal camps have been abandoned, renamed, incorporated into neighboring settlements, demolished, or reclaimed by forest. The existence of hundreds of forgotten communities makes almost any obscure place name sound plausible.
But preserving Appalachian history also means preserving the difference between what is known and what is suspected.
Towns may have been a tiny family settlement remembered locally but ignored by state records. It may have been a mine camp that existed for only a few years. It may have been another name for a documented community. It may represent a spelling error that became detached from its original source.
At present, the evidence cannot choose between those explanations.
That uncertainty is itself worth recording.
Historians of small Appalachian communities often work with fragments. A place may survive in a cemetery name but nowhere else, or in a railroad map, a single newspaper column, an elderly resident’s memory, or a line written in the margin of a deed book. The historical record becomes thinner as the community becomes smaller.
Towns appears to stand near that outer edge of the record.
Remembering a Place Without Inventing It
Mingo County has no shortage of vanished names. The State Archives preserves communities such as Tamcliff, Tekram, Toyo, Trace, Taylortown, and others whose presence reminds us how complicated the human geography of the coalfields once was.
It is entirely possible that evidence for Towns is still waiting somewhere among the county’s deeds, railroad maps, mine records, census schedules, newspapers, photographs, or family papers.
For now, however, the most historically responsible conclusion is a limited one.
A distinct community called Towns in Mingo County has not yet been verified in the major state place-name records or other sources examined for this article. The name should therefore remain an open research question rather than being presented as an established coal camp or historic settlement.
That may seem less satisfying than recovering the story of a forgotten town, but it is an important part of historical work. Sometimes the record gives us a mine, a school, a church, and generations of families. Sometimes it gives us only a name and asks us to keep looking.
For Towns, Mingo County, the search is not finished.
Sources & Further Reading
West Virginia State Archives. “Place Names in West Virginia: T.” Archives and History, West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamt.html
West Virginia State Archives. “Mingo County History Sources.” Archives and History, West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
West Virginia State Archives. “Newspapers on Microfilm: Mingo County.” Archives and History, West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/newspapers/mingo.html
West Virginia State Archives. “George F. Williamson Family Collection, Ms2021-202.” Archives and History, West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/manuscripts/ms2021-202.html
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Historical Records Survey.” West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/collections/public-records/historical-records-survey
The Mingo Republican. Williamson, WV: Mingo Republican Newspaper Company, 1904–1951. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86092084/
Hennen, Ray V., David B. Reger, and William Armstrong Price. Logan and Mingo Counties, West Virginia. County Geologic Report CGR-13. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1914. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_10471.htm
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. County Reports and Maps: Logan and Mingo Counties. Wheeling, WV: Wheeling News Lithograph Company, 1914. https://books.google.com/books/about/County_Reports_and_Maps.html?id=k_1LAAAAMAAJ
U.S. Geological Survey. “topoView.” National Geospatial Program. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/topoview
U.S. Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection.” National Geospatial Program. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/usgs-historical-topographic-map-collection
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Norfolk & Western Railway and Associated Companies Collection, Ms2009-037.” Accessed July 25, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/2456
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://books.google.com/books/about/West_Virginia_Place_Names.html?id=61YlAAAAMAAJ
Erwin, Robert B. West Virginia Gazetteer of Physical and Cultural Place Names. Vol. V-24. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 1986. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70198461
Erwin, Robert B. West Virginia Gazetteer of Physical and Cultural Place Names. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 1986. Publication details and digital map information. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/wvges2/publications/PubCat_Details.aspx?PubCatID=V-24
Smith, Nancy Sue. An History of Mingo County, West Virginia. Williamson, WV: Williamson Printing Company, 1960. Bibliographic record, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
Smith, Nancy Sue. History of Logan and Mingo Counties, Beginning in 1617. Williamson, WV: Nancy Smith, 1966. Bibliographic record, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
Mingo County Genealogical Society. Heritage of Mingo. Williamson, WV: Mingo County Genealogical Society, 1985–. Bibliographic record, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
What’s the Matter With Mingo? Williamson, WV: Mingo Republican Print, 1938. Bibliographic record, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
Van Meter, Linda. “Mingo County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Revised April 23, 2026. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1772
Gillenwater, Mack H. “Company Towns.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Revised April 24, 2024. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1440
Hill, Raymond Thomas. “Place Names.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Revised February 29, 2024. Accessed July 25, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1806
Author Note: This article is a little different from most community histories because the surviving records have not yet allowed me to prove that Towns was a distinct Mingo County settlement. I chose to preserve that uncertainty rather than turn a possibility into a fact, and I hope future records or local knowledge may eventually solve the mystery.