Appalachian Community Histories – Varney, Mingo County: Family Roots, Coal, Schools, and Life Along Pigeon Creek
Varney is the kind of Appalachian community whose history can easily disappear between the histories of larger places.
It never became an incorporated town with a courthouse, municipal government, or downtown business district. It stood instead along Pigeon Creek in Mingo County’s Magnolia District, connected by mountain roads to places such as Musick, Calico, Red Jacket, Matewan, and the surrounding hollows. For generations, families built homes along the creek, worked farms and timberlands, entered the mines, attended local schools and churches, and buried their dead in family and community cemeteries.
Yet Varney left a surprisingly strong documentary trail.
By 1904, the United States Geological Survey was calling Varney a post village. Five years later, federal surveyors traveled directly through the area while establishing elevations along the road following Pigeon Creek. By 1910, the federal census recognized a Varney Precinct, a designation that continued into 1920. In 1930, the Census Bureau assigned Varney its own enumeration district based upon Voting Precinct 9. State records repeatedly listed Varney as a post office and identified residents participating in Mingo County politics.
The evidence reveals something important about small Appalachian communities. Varney did not need incorporation to possess an identity. Long before modern maps placed a dot beside its name, the community existed through families, roads, schools, cemeteries, political precincts, postal routes, and the geography of Pigeon Creek.
Before Varney Was in Mingo County
To understand Varney, its history has to be carried backward beyond the creation of Mingo County.
Mingo County was formed in 1895 from part of Logan County. That means nineteenth-century deeds, tax records, marriages, court proceedings, and land transactions involving the future Varney area may appear in Logan County rather than Mingo County records. The larger Tug Valley had been settled by families of European descent beginning around the opening of the nineteenth century, long before the railroad and commercial coal industry dramatically increased the region’s population.
In those earlier years, Pigeon Creek mattered more than any formal town boundary. Roads were limited, mountain travel was difficult, and waterways provided natural corridors through otherwise rugged country. Farms and houses could be identified by the creek or branch on which they stood rather than by a community name recognized throughout the county.
The Varney family was already closely associated with this landscape before the community regularly appeared in twentieth-century government records.
A family history written by Nancy Jane Varney in September 1936 preserves traditions that she said had been passed to her largely by her father, Alex Varney, along with information supplied by other relatives. She traced the family from Virginia into what became Pike County, Kentucky, and Mingo County, West Virginia. When describing descendants of Andrew Varney, she specifically wrote that members of the family had been reared and continued to live around the head of Pigeon Creek.
Family histories must be used cautiously. Memories can compress generations, confuse dates, or preserve stories that later documentation does not support. In this case, however, the broader claim that Varney families lived in the Pigeon Creek country during the nineteenth century is supported by other evidence.
The Varney Family on Pigeon Creek
Varney Cemetery provides one of the clearest physical links between the family and the nineteenth-century community.
A cemetery transcription records Henry C. Varney, born in 1817 and deceased in 1896, and Jane Yantus Varney, born in 1823 and deceased in 1893. Other Varney burials include members born during the 1860s and later generations who lived well into the twentieth century. The cemetery also contains members of other families associated with the surrounding country, including Justices, Farleys, and others whose names appear repeatedly in Mingo County records.
These graves matter because Jane Varney died before Mingo County existed, while Henry lived through its creation. Their burial in the Varney area ties the family to the landscape before the community became the recognizable postal and governmental place found in twentieth-century records.
The precise origin of the community name remains less certain.
The long presence of the Varney family, the cemetery, and Nancy Jane Varney’s account make a family connection to the place name entirely plausible. It would be tempting to simply write that Varney was named for one particular member of the family. The surviving evidence examined for this article does not yet justify doing that.
A federal post office site report, postmaster appointment record, early deed, newspaper announcement, or other contemporary source may eventually answer the question. Until such a record is found, the safest conclusion is that the Varney family was deeply established in the Pigeon Creek area before and during the period when Varney emerged as an official community name.
That distinction is important. Good local history should preserve a likely tradition without turning probability into fact.
A Post Village by 1904
One of the most valuable early references to Varney came from the federal government.
In 1904, geographer Henry Gannett published the United States Geological Survey’s Gazetteer of West Virginia, Bulletin 233. It contained thousands of brief descriptions of the state’s communities, streams, mountains, railroads, and other geographic features.
The entry for Varney was simple: “Varney; post village in Mingo County.”
Those few words establish several things.
Varney was already sufficiently recognized for inclusion in a federal geographic reference by 1904. More importantly, it was described as a post village. The community therefore had an identity connected with the federal postal system rather than existing only as a local name used by neighboring families.
This was less than a decade after Mingo County had been organized.
Postal service could be one of the most important institutions in a rural Appalachian community. Before widespread telephone ownership, automobiles, paved roads, and modern delivery services, a post office connected isolated households with government correspondence, newspapers, relatives, businesses, mail-order companies, pension offices, and the larger world.
The exact establishment date of the Varney post office deserves additional research in the original Post Office Department records. Those records may also identify the earliest postmaster and potentially provide evidence about why the name Varney was selected.
By the first years of the twentieth century, however, there is no question that the name had entered the federal record.
Federal Surveyors Come Down Pigeon Creek
Five years after the federal gazetteer identified Varney, another government project left an unusually detailed description of the community’s geography.
United States Geological Survey crews traveled through southern West Virginia establishing benchmarks so that elevations could be measured consistently. Their work was published in Robert Bradford Marshall’s Results of Spirit Leveling in West Virginia, 1909 and 1910.
One of the survey routes began around Calico and proceeded westward along the highway down Pigeon Creek toward the home of Mary Taylor before turning southwest toward Matewan. Along that route, the surveyors passed directly through Varney.
The record describes a benchmark nine-tenths of a mile west of Varney. An aluminum tablet stamped “959 W. Va. 1909” was placed in sandstone beside the road, with its measured elevation recorded at 958.242 feet.
Another benchmark stood 3.8 miles west of Varney. It was placed in sandstone near the creek, about 400 feet east of the road that turned southwest toward Matewan at Mary Taylor’s house. Its elevation was measured at 859.066 feet.
These descriptions provide far more than elevations.
They recreate a portion of the road through the Pigeon Creek country in 1909. Surveyors used houses, churches, creek crossings, enormous sandstone rocks, mills, road forks, and other familiar landmarks to explain exactly where their benchmarks had been established.
Their route also demonstrates how closely Varney was connected with neighboring communities. The same series of measurements passed Calico before reaching Varney and continued toward Red Jacket and Matewan. At Red Jacket, the surveyors placed a benchmark on a mine pumping station, a reminder that the older rural landscape was already being transformed by the rapidly expanding coal industry.
From Community to Varney Precinct
Varney became even more firmly defined in federal records during the following decades.
Census references identify a Varney Precinct within Magnolia District in 1910. The designation remained in use in the 1920 census. One documented household was that of Henry Rice Browning, who appeared as a farmer in the Varney Precinct in both census years. Members of his family demonstrate the mixture of occupations that could exist in the community. Edmond Alfred Browning was later recorded as a public school teacher in 1920, while other records connected him with timber work and eventually coal mining.
The significance of the precinct designation should not be overlooked.
Varney was no longer merely a name used for mail delivery or directions. The government was using it to organize people territorially for administrative purposes.
That became even clearer in 1930.
The federal enumeration structure for Mingo County designated Enumeration District 30-16 as Magnolia Magisterial District, Voting Precinct 9, Varney. Neighboring districts separately identified Red Jacket, Matewan, Thacker, and other Magnolia District communities.
An enumeration district was the territory assigned to a census taker to canvass during the census period. The National Archives preserves the original population schedules as well as descriptions and maps of these districts. This means Varney can be reconstructed household by household in 1930, with researchers potentially identifying occupations, property status, ages, family relationships, birthplaces, and other information for the people living inside the precinct.
For a small unincorporated Appalachian community, that is an unusually strong documentary foundation.
Varney in County Politics and Civic Life
State government records provide another way to see Varney developing as an identifiable community.
The 1917 West Virginia Blue Book included Varney among the post offices of Mingo County. The state repeated the listing in later editions, including the 1921 Blue Book.
Residents also appeared in the county’s political organization.
The 1919 Blue Book listed E. E. Musick of Varney as a member of the Mingo County Republican Executive Committee. Eight years later, the 1927 Blue Book placed Mrs. Agnes Felty of Varney on the Democratic County Executive Committee representing Magnolia District along with E. A. Justice.
These entries seem small compared with elections for governor or Congress, but they offer valuable evidence about community life.
Varney residents were participating in the civic and political network of Mingo County. The community had become specific enough that state publications could identify a person as being “of Varney” and expect readers to understand the location.
It also reveals that women were appearing in official county party organization by the 1920s, only a few years after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Agnes Felty’s listing preserves a small piece of Varney history that might otherwise have disappeared completely.
Varney and the Coalfield
No history of twentieth-century Mingo County can avoid coal.
The arrival of rail transportation and large-scale mining transformed the Tug Valley and helped fuel the population growth that preceded the formation of Mingo County. New mines, company towns, rail sidings, roads, stores, and industrial communities appeared throughout the region. Immigrants and African American workers joined older Appalachian families as the southern West Virginia coalfields expanded.
Varney, however, should not automatically be described as a classic coal company town.
The evidence examined here does not establish that a single coal company planned the settlement, owned most of its houses, and controlled its central institutions in the manner associated with many purpose-built mining camps.
Instead, Varney appears to have grown from an older settlement pattern along Pigeon Creek. Families and farms preceded the height of industrial mining, but the community became surrounded by and economically tied to the coalfield.
That distinction matters.
A man could live at Varney while working at a mine in another named community. A family could own its own house or farm while its members earned wages underground, in timber operations, on roads, or with companies elsewhere in Magnolia District.
The surrounding geology made such development possible. Federal geological investigations later documented the coal-bearing formations of the Kermit and Varney region and the larger border country along the Tug Valley.
Mining therefore became part of Varney without necessarily being the reason the community first existed.
Varney School and an Unexpected Record From 1930
One of the most remarkable pieces of Varney history survives not in a census or coal report, but in a university herbarium.
In July 1930, botanists collecting plants in Mingo County repeatedly used Varney School as their location.
A specimen of false goldenrod was collected near Varney School on July 7. Yellow passion flower and other plants were collected near the school on July 8. On July 10, botanist E. E. Berkeley collected a passion flower identified specifically as coming from “Pigeon Creek; at Varney School.” The physical specimens and collection information are preserved by West Virginia University.
It is an unusual historical source, but an excellent one.
The records prove that Varney School was a recognized landmark by the summer of 1930. They also place the school directly within the Pigeon Creek landscape at almost exactly the same moment the Census Bureau was treating Varney as its own voting precinct and enumeration district.
For generations of Appalachian children, the local school was one of the central institutions of community life. It was where children learned to read and write, but schools also hosted meetings, performances, elections, community gatherings, and social events.
The Varney school continued far beyond 1930. Later records identify Varney Elementary School as part of the Mingo County school system, while a 2014 photograph documents the former Varney Grade School building after its educational use had ended.
The surviving building and the herbarium specimens together provide something rare. They connect a physical piece of the modern landscape with a precisely dated record from nearly a century earlier.
Cemeteries, Churches, and Community Memory
Government records are strongest when Varney was being measured, counted, mapped, or administered. They are less capable of describing the relationships that actually made a community.
Those survive in places such as cemeteries and churches.
Varney Cemetery preserves generations of families whose names recur throughout the region’s census schedules, marriages, deeds, political records, and newspapers. Its nineteenth-century burials push the visible history of the Varney family back before the creation of Mingo County. Later graves follow those families through the coal era and into modern times.
Churches performed a similar role.
The First Baptist Church of Varney remains a visible reminder that the community possessed institutions beyond its post office, school, and voting precinct. Like countless churches throughout Appalachia, such congregations could become repositories of community memory through membership rolls, funeral records, minutes, photographs, revival announcements, and family traditions.
For historians, those records can be particularly valuable because they preserve people who rarely appeared in government documents except at birth, marriage, death, or census time.
A complete history of Varney will eventually have to be written not only from federal documents, but from those family and religious archives as well.
A Varney Life Remembered by the State
One twentieth-century resident provides a personal connection between Varney, military service, and the coal industry.
In 2016, the West Virginia Legislature adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 28 requesting that a bridge over Pigeon Creek on Musick Bottom Road be named for U.S. Marine Corps Corporal Ronald “Duke” Varney.
The resolution stated that Ronald J. Varney was born in 1950, spent his childhood in Varney, attended Red Jacket High School, enlisted in the Marine Corps at seventeen, and served during the Vietnam War. After returning home, he worked as a coal miner and spent his life in Mingo County.
His biography connects several generations of local history.
A man bearing the Varney name grew up in the same Pigeon Creek country where nineteenth-century Varneys had lived, attended a regional school during the mature coal era, served overseas, and returned to employment in the industry that had dominated Mingo County for much of the twentieth century.
Today his name on a bridge carries that memory back into the physical landscape.
From Coal Land to an Airport
Perhaps no feature better demonstrates the changing landscape around Varney than the Appalachian Regional Airport.
The airport was developed on a reclaimed surface-mining site near Varney. According to the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority, the project involved Alpha Natural Resources, the Mingo County Airport Authority, and the West Virginia Aeronautics Commission. The property was transferred to the county as part of a post-mining redevelopment effort, and the site was developed with a runway, taxiway, lighting, fencing, and additional land intended for aviation and industrial development.
The county celebrated the opening of the Mingo County Air Transportation Park in October 2012. The airport had been conceived as a replacement for the older Mingo County Airport and as a tool for economic development in a county confronting the long decline of coal employment.
The location creates an extraordinary historical contrast.
In 1909, federal surveyors moved along a road beside Pigeon Creek, measuring elevations from sandstone outcrops and describing their location by nearby houses.
A century later, engineers were grading a former surface mine above Varney for aviation.
The mountains that had once isolated the Pigeon Creek settlements had been mined, reshaped, crossed by improved highways, and eventually used to create a runway intended to connect Mingo County with places far beyond the Tug Valley.
Varney had moved from the geography of wagon roads and postal villages into the geography of reclaimed mines and aircraft.
Why Varney’s History Matters
Varney is not important because it became a large town.
It never did.
Its importance lies in how clearly it demonstrates the way hundreds of Appalachian communities developed outside formal municipal boundaries.
The community grew from an older Pigeon Creek settlement where the Varney family and other families were present before Mingo County existed. By 1904, the federal government recognized Varney as a post village. In 1909, surveyors carried their instruments down Pigeon Creek and used Varney as a point of reference. Federal censuses treated it as a precinct, and by 1930 the government had assigned Voting Precinct 9, Varney, its own enumeration district. State Blue Books listed its post office and named residents participating in Mingo County politics. A school became prominent enough that university botanists used it repeatedly as a collection location. Coal reshaped the economy around it without completely erasing the older settlement beneath the industrial landscape.
Much remains to be discovered.
Logan County deeds and tax books may identify exactly where the earliest Varney families lived. Original Post Office Department records may reveal when the post office was established, who served as the first postmaster, and perhaps why the community received its name. Census schedules can reconstruct entire neighborhoods. School records can recover teachers and students. Newspapers can restore weddings, funerals, accidents, elections, church gatherings, mine employment, floods, and countless pieces of everyday life.
The history is there because the community was there.
Varney survived without incorporation because its identity did not depend upon a city charter. It existed in the people who said they were from Varney, the children who attended Varney School, the voters assigned to Varney Precinct, the families whose mail arrived at the Varney post office, and the generations buried beneath the hills of Pigeon Creek.
The records simply allow us to hear them again.
Sources & Further Reading
Gannett, Henry. A Gazetteer of West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 233. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0233/report.pdf
Marshall, Robert Bradford. Results of Spirit Leveling in West Virginia, 1909 and 1910. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 477. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0477/report.pdf
Marshall, Robert Bradford. Spirit Leveling in West Virginia, 1896 to 1915, Inclusive. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 632. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0632/report.pdf
United States Geological Survey. Geology and Coal Reserves of the Kermit and Varney Area, Kentucky. Professional Paper 507. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geology-and-coal-reserves-kermit-and-varney-area-kentucky
National Archives and Records Administration. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” Microfilm Publication M841, Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Microfilm Publication M1126, Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
United States Bureau of the Census. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910. Magnolia Magisterial District, Varney Precinct, Mingo County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1910. National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives census records
United States Bureau of the Census. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. Magnolia Magisterial District, Varney Precinct, Mingo County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1920. National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives census records
United States Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Mingo County, West Virginia, Enumeration District 30-16, Magnolia Magisterial District, Voting Precinct 9, Varney. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1930. 1930 Census enumeration district records
National Archives and Records Administration. “Enumeration District Maps, 1930 Census.” Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1930/enumeration-districts-maps.html
West Virginia. West Virginia Blue Book, 1919. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1919. 1919 West Virginia Blue Book
West Virginia. West Virginia Blue Book, 1921. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1921. 1921 West Virginia Blue Book
West Virginia. West Virginia Blue Book, 1923. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1923. 1923 West Virginia Blue Book
West Virginia. West Virginia Blue Book, 1927. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1927. The Mingo County register identifies Mrs. Agnes Felty of Varney as a Magnolia District member of the Democratic County Executive Committee. 1927 West Virginia Blue Book
West Virginia Archives and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records.” Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia Archives and History. “Mingo County History Sources.” Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Districts and Place Names in West Virginia.” Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed July 27, 2026. West Virginia districts and place names
The Mingo Republican. Williamson, WV: Mingo Republican Newspaper Company, 1904–1951. Digitized in Chronicling America, Library of Congress. Library of Congress collection
The Williamson Enterprise. Williamson, WV, 1907–1911. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. Accessed July 27, 2026. Library of Congress newspaper collections
The Progressive West Virginian. Williamson, WV, 1911–1913. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. Accessed July 27, 2026. Library of Congress newspaper collections
Varney, Nancy Jane. “A History of the Varney’s in Pike and Mingo Counties and Elsewhere.” September 1936. Family history manuscript based partly upon information supplied by Alex Varney and other family members. Digitized family-history copy
“Varney Cemetery.” Mingo County WVGenWeb. Cemetery transcription documenting nineteenth- and twentieth-century Varney-area burials. Accessed July 27, 2026. Varney Cemetery transcription
West Virginia University Herbarium. Passiflora incarnata. Collected by E. E. Berkeley at “Pigeon Creek; at Varney School,” Mingo County, West Virginia, July 10, 1930. West Virginia University Research Repository. WVU Research Repository
West Virginia University Herbarium. Solidago sphacelata. Collected near Varney School, Mingo County, West Virginia, July 7, 1930. West Virginia University Research Repository. WVU Research Repository
West Virginia Legislature. Senate Concurrent Resolution 28, “U.S. Marine Corps CPL Ronald ‘Duke’ Varney Memorial Bridge.” 2016 Regular Session. Charleston, WV, 2016. Resolution history
West Virginia Legislature. House Journal, February 18, 2016. Senate Concurrent Resolution 28, Ronald “Duke” Varney Memorial Bridge. Charleston, WV, 2016. House Journal record
Mingo County Redevelopment Authority. “Air Transportation Park.” Williamson, WV. Accessed July 27, 2026. Mingo County redevelopment projects
Appalachian Regional Commission. “About the Appalachian Region.” Washington, DC. Accessed July 27, 2026. ARC Appalachian Region
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” Washington, DC. Accessed July 27, 2026. ARC Kentucky counties
Author Note: To the reader, Varney’s history survives through federal surveys, census precincts, family records, cemetery stones, school records, and the landscape of Pigeon Creek. Although the Varney family was firmly established in the area before Mingo County existed, this article distinguishes that documented connection from the still-unproven tradition concerning exactly how the community received its name.