Appalachian Community Histories – White Lily, Pulaski County: The Schoolhouse, Church, and Farming Community That Endured
In the eastern countryside of Pulaski County, Kentucky, White Lily developed around the institutions that sustained generations of rural Appalachian families. Its farms, church, schoolhouse, and cemetery served a network of households whose daily lives were closely connected to neighboring settlements such as Colo, Dykes, Drum, and Ruth. Although White Lily never developed into a large town, its history can be traced through newspaper correspondence, educational records, historical photographs, and government documents that preserve more than a century of community life.
The name appears in historical records under both White Lily and White Lilly, although the former spelling predominates in early newspaper accounts. Its exact founding date and the origin of its name remain uncertain, but by the beginning of the twentieth century, White Lily was sufficiently established to have its own church, school, burial ground, and recognizable community identity. In February 1920, The Somerset Journal published a dedicated White Lily news column that recorded farm purchases, family visits, religious services, and local illnesses. The ordinary nature of these reports offers an unusually valuable picture of the settlement as its residents would have recognized it.
The landscape itself provides another surviving record. The United States Geological Survey’s Dykes quadrangle, based on aerial photographs taken in 1951 and fieldwork completed in 1952, identifies White Lily School and White Lily Ridge among the surrounding roads, hills, and settlements. Published in 1954, the map places White Lily within a countryside of dispersed homes, agricultural land, wooded ridges, and small community institutions. Its geography helps explain why neighboring settlements were so interconnected and why schools and churches often drew people from considerably beyond their immediate surroundings.
Farming Families and the White Lily Settlement
One of the clearest surviving descriptions of White Lily appeared in the February 13, 1920, edition of The Somerset Journal. The community correspondent reported that James Baker had purchased Marion Meece’s farm, while Logan Bradley had recently visited P. Hargis and Mollie Hargis had visited J. P. Kenney. The same column recorded a visit from Reverend Shadoan of Somerset, announced an upcoming church service, and noted that J. C. Mounce was ill. Although brief, the report identifies several families associated with the community and provides evidence of its agricultural economy, religious activities, and relationships with Somerset and the surrounding countryside.
The Bakers, Meeces, Hargises, Mounces, and other families appearing in these accounts were part of a wider network of relatives and neighbors who regularly traveled between White Lily and nearby communities. Their names recur throughout the surviving newspaper correspondence, particularly in the reports from Colo, Drum, and Ruth, where marriages, illnesses, funerals, livestock transactions, and visits between households received regular attention.
Landownership was an important part of this rural economy. The February 1920 purchase of Marion Meece’s farm by James Baker was one of several property transactions recorded in the surrounding area during the period. In January 1921, another newspaper report noted that George Baker had moved from Marshal Simpson’s farm to another property near White Lily. Such notices illustrate the movement of families between farms and the importance of land purchases and tenancy in maintaining the settlement.
Agriculture also connected White Lily with neighboring communities through the exchange of livestock, feed, and labor. Reports from the surrounding countryside frequently described residents buying and selling cattle, hogs, horses, and mules, while seasonal activities such as planting, harvesting, and gathering firewood remained central to household life. White Lily’s history cannot be separated from this broader agricultural landscape, since its residents maintained social and economic relationships with communities across eastern Pulaski County.
White Lily Church and the Religious Life of the Community
Religion occupied an important place in White Lily’s early documented history, with its church serving not only local families but also residents of neighboring settlements. The February 13, 1920, newspaper column announced that an all-day service would be held at White Lily Church on February 29, indicating that the congregation was already established and capable of organizing gatherings that extended beyond ordinary weekly worship.
The church’s regional importance became particularly apparent during the summer of 1920. On July 30, the Colo correspondent for The Somerset Journal reported that a large congregation had attended services at White Lily the previous Sunday and heard a sermon delivered by Reverend Ridner. The same column described family visits and the departure of several local young people for employment in Ohio, demonstrating how religious gatherings remained central to community life even as residents began pursuing opportunities elsewhere.
By October of that year, White Lily was hosting a revival meeting. The October 22 edition of The Somerset Journal announced that the revival had begun the previous Sunday evening, while a November report from neighboring Drum recorded that several residents had attended church at White Lily. These accounts suggest that the congregation maintained strong relationships with families across the surrounding countryside, bringing together people whose homes might otherwise have been separated by considerable distances.
Religious gatherings were closely connected to the community’s musical traditions. In March 1921, newspaper correspondence reported that Henry Goodwin was conducting a singing school at White Lily on Saturdays and Sundays. Singing schools provided opportunities to learn and practice music while also creating occasions for fellowship, and the surviving reports show that White Lily’s program attracted considerable interest.
The April 8, 1921, edition of The Somerset Journal reported that people from Drum had attended singing at White Lily and that the gatherings were continuing. Residents were also participating in similar singing programs at Bent and other nearby settlements, illustrating a regional musical tradition that connected individual churches and communities. The newspaper accounts do not establish whether every White Lily singing session took place inside the church, but they clearly demonstrate that music had become an important part of its communal life.
White Lily School and the Education of Rural Children
Education was another important institution in White Lily’s development. By December 1920, the community possessed an established schoolhouse that was being used for activities extending beyond classroom instruction.
The December 24 edition of The Somerset Journal recorded that several young people from the nearby Ruth community had attended a pie supper at the White Lily schoolhouse the previous Saturday evening. Although the newspaper did not report the amount of money raised or the purpose of the gathering, its description demonstrates that the building was already serving as a social center where young people and neighboring families could gather. Such occasions were an important feature of rural school life, providing entertainment and opportunities for families living across the surrounding countryside to maintain their relationships.
The school’s importance to the wider educational system is further established by an announcement in The Commonwealth on January 21, 1921. The newspaper identified White Lily as one of eight locations where Pulaski County would administer examinations for common-school diplomas on January 28 and 29. The other designated locations included Somerset, Nancy, Eubank, Pulaski, Science Hill, Burnside, and Shopville, placing White Lily within a countywide examination system serving rural and urban students.
The school continued to serve the community through the following decades. Its location was recorded on the 1952 United States Geological Survey map of the Dykes quadrangle, while surviving photographs preserved by the Pulaski County Historical Society document the building and activities of its students during the latter half of the twentieth century.
One particularly valuable photograph comes from 1965, when White Lily Elementary School participated in the Head Start program. Preserved in the Jim Slaughter Photography Collection, the image shows Mrs. Albert Phillips eating lunch with several children identified as Faye Barnes, Stephen Sears, Teresa Meece, Gary Phelps, Fayetta Phelps, and Danny Glover. The photograph provides a glimpse of the school during a period when federally supported early childhood education programs were expanding educational opportunities for children across the country.
Another photograph from the same collection, associated with a newspaper dated May 24, 1972, shows a group of people standing outside White Lily Elementary School. The image preserves the school’s exterior and confirms its continued presence in the community more than half a century after the first documented schoolhouse gathering in 1920. An additional undated photograph from the Pulaski County Historical Society collection records the school building and its grounds, although its precise date has not been established.
The exact year White Lily School opened and the date when it ceased operating as an elementary school have not been established by the surviving records consulted for this article. Nevertheless, the newspaper accounts, historical maps, and photographs document a school that served several generations and remained closely connected to the community’s identity.
Migration and the Families Who Left White Lily
Although agriculture, education, and religion formed the foundation of White Lily’s early community life, its residents were also affected by the wider economic changes taking place across Appalachia during the twentieth century. Like many rural Kentucky settlements, White Lily and its neighboring communities maintained connections with industrial cities where employment opportunities attracted young people and entire families.
The July 30, 1920, edition of The Somerset Journal recorded the departure of Lee and Estel Smiley, Anna Meece, and Alice Mounce for Norwood, Ohio, where they intended to work. Their departure appeared in the same community report that described a large congregation gathering at White Lily Church, capturing two important aspects of rural life during the period. Families remained closely connected through church and kinship, even as employment increasingly drew some of their members away from Kentucky.
The October 22 edition of the newspaper recorded another example of this movement. Hayes Meece and Robert Farmer had departed for Bedford, Indiana, with their families expected to join them later. The report also noted that Lee Smiley had left for Cincinnati, while the surrounding community correspondence described agricultural transactions and other everyday activities continuing at home.
These movements connected White Lily’s families to industrial communities in Ohio and Indiana without necessarily severing their relationships with eastern Kentucky. Newspaper correspondence from the period frequently recorded visits by relatives returning from northern states, and the community’s cemetery records demonstrate how families who had moved elsewhere sometimes brought deceased relatives back to White Lily for burial.
White Lily Cemetery and the Families Remembered There
White Lily Cemetery preserves another important part of the settlement’s history, connecting its earliest documented families with later generations whose lives extended far beyond Pulaski County.
The January 30, 1920, edition of The Somerset Journal reported that the body of Mrs. Rosa Tucker had been sent to White Lily for burial the previous Saturday. The notice appeared in the Colo community column, demonstrating the cemetery’s importance to families living in the surrounding countryside.
Another burial was recorded in November of the same year, when a two-month-old child of Ed Mounce died near the Ruth post office and was brought to White Lily for burial. The notice, published on November 26, also mentioned members of the Baker, Hargis, and Mounce families, preserving a small but significant record of the community during a period when infant mortality remained an especially painful reality for many families.
White Lily also played a role in the funeral of James H. Ping, a medical student whose death received considerable attention in December 1920. According to The Somerset Journal, Ping was the son of Mrs. Maria Ping of Dykes and was attending medical school in St. Louis, Missouri, when he died following a short illness involving pneumonia and typhoid fever. His remains were returned to Kentucky, and funeral services were held at White Lily on Tuesday, December 14, under the direction of the Masonic Lodge, of which he had been a member. The newspaper records the funeral at White Lily but does not establish his precise burial location.
In February 1921, another account demonstrated the enduring connection between migration and the community’s burial ground. The Colo correspondent reported that the five-month-old child of Colson Baker, whose family was living in Bloomington, Illinois, had died of pneumonia. The child’s remains were brought back to Pulaski County and buried in White Lily Cemetery, illustrating how the settlement continued to serve as a place of remembrance even for families who had established homes in other states.
These burial notices reveal more than individual tragedies. They document the relationships between White Lily and neighboring settlements, the movement of families into northern industrial communities, and the continuing importance of the cemetery as a physical connection to home. Although additional cemetery surveys and family records are needed to reconstruct the burial ground’s earliest history, the surviving newspaper accounts establish its importance to the community by the beginning of 1920.
From a Rural School to a Community Center and Park
White Lily’s history did not end with the decline of its original rural school system. The former elementary school building eventually became White Lily Community Center, preserving the educational property’s importance as a gathering place for local residents.
The Somerset-Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce identifies the community center as the former White Lily School and describes a facility containing a gymnasium, kitchen, meeting room, fitness room, and library with computers and internet access. Its grounds also include playgrounds, picnic shelters, a walking trail, a ball field, and a volleyball court. The center has hosted community events, movie nights, and family gatherings, continuing many of the social functions that the old schoolhouse performed during the early twentieth century.
Federal funding helped support the development of White Lily Community Park. National Park Service records document a $43,600 Land and Water Conservation Fund grant awarded in 2000, with the Pulaski County Fiscal Court serving as the project’s local government partner. The investment provides an important date in the development of the community’s modern recreational facilities, although it does not establish when the former school building was first converted into a community center.
County government records also document the community’s continued organization. On October 27, 2015, the Pulaski County Fiscal Court recommended the appointments of April Mounce, Sharon Slavey, and Lewis Hyden to the White Lily Park Board. These appointments demonstrate the role of local residents and county government in maintaining the community’s recreational facilities.
The center continued to receive public investment in the following decade. In April 2025, Pulaski County Judge-Executive Marshall Todd reported that the county had received a grant to improve the White Lily Community Center’s energy efficiency through heating, cooling, and window replacements. On November 25 of that year, the fiscal court formally approved the purchase of mini-split heating and cooling units using grant funds, providing further evidence of efforts to maintain the historic school property for community use.
The Continuing History of White Lily
The surviving history of White Lily is particularly valuable because it shows how an Appalachian settlement could maintain its identity through institutions rather than through population size or commercial development. Newspaper columns from the early twentieth century record a community organized around its farms, church, schoolhouse, and cemetery, while historical photographs and government documents demonstrate how those institutions adapted over time.
The church drew worshippers from neighboring settlements, singing schools brought together residents of different communities, and the schoolhouse provided a place for education and social gatherings. Meanwhile, the cemetery maintained connections between families who remained in Pulaski County and those who had departed for employment in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and elsewhere.
Much remains to be discovered about White Lily’s earlier history, particularly the settlement’s founding, the origins of its name, the establishment of its first church and school, and the lives of families who settled there during the nineteenth century. Deed books, school records, church minutes, and additional newspaper issues may eventually answer some of these questions.
The transformation of White Lily School into a community center offers a particularly meaningful continuation of the settlement’s history. A building once used to educate rural children became a place where later generations could gather for recreation, celebrations, and community activities. More than a century after the first surviving newspaper accounts described White Lily’s farms and church services, the former school property continues to connect the community’s past with its present.
Sources & Further Reading
The Somerset Journal. “Colo.” January 30, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/1_30_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. “White Lily.” February 13, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/2_13_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Drum.” July 9, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/7_9_20.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Colo.” July 30, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/7_30_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Colo.” October 22, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/10_22_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Drum.” November 5, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/11_5_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Grade.” November 26, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/11_26_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Ping.” December 17, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/12_17_1920.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Ruth.” December 24, 1920. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/12_24_1920_2.htm
The Commonwealth. “Diploma Examinations.” January 21, 1921. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/1_1921/1_21_1921.htm
The Commonwealth. “Ruth” and “Drum.” January 21, 1921. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/1_1921/1_21_1921_2.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Drum” and “Ruth.” January 28, 1921. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/1_1921/1_28_1921_2.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Colo.” February 11, 1921. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/2_21/2_11_1921_4.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Colo.” March 18, 1921. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/3_21/3_18_1921_2.htm
The Somerset Journal. “Drum.” April 8, 1921. Transcribed by Pulaski County KYGenWeb. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/news/4_21/4_8_1921.htm
Pulaski County Historical Society. “White Lily Elementary School.” Undated photograph. Pulaski County Historical Society Photo Collection. Digitized by Pulaski County Public Library, December 20, 2023. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcplphotos/53410055916
Pulaski County Public Library. “Head Start.” Photograph, 1965. Jim Slaughter Photography Collection. Uploaded May 10, 2017. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcplphotos/34447809721/
United States Geological Survey. Dykes Quadrangle, Kentucky. 7.5-minute series. Scale 1:24,000. Surveyed 1952. Published 1954. USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
National Park Service. “Pulaski County Multiple Resource Area.” National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form, 1984. U.S. Department of the Interior. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000251_text
National Park Service. “White Lilly Community Park.” Kentucky: Land and Water Conservation Fund Projects. U.S. Department of the Interior. https://home.nps.gov/state/ky/index.htm?program=all
Pulaski County Fiscal Court. Fiscal Court Meeting Minutes, 2015. Somerset, KY: Pulaski County Government, 2015. https://www.pulaskigov.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/FCM_all_2015.pdf
Pulaski County Fiscal Court. Fiscal Court Meeting Minutes, 2025. Somerset, KY: Pulaski County Government, 2025. https://www.pulaskigov.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/FCM-2025-combined.pdf
Pulaski County Government. “Parks in Pulaski County.” Accessed September 26, 2026. https://www.pulaskigov.com/parks-in-pulaski-county/
Pulaski County Public Library. Digital Archives. Somerset, KY. Accessed September 26, 2026. https://pulaskilibrary.advantage-preservation.com/
Pulaski County Schools. “Records Request Procedures.” Somerset, KY. Accessed September 26, 2026. https://www.pulaski.net/community/records-request-procedures-2-392-1
Pulaski County KYGenWeb. “Pulaski County, KY Cemeteries.” Accessed September 26, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/pulaski/cemetery/cemeteries.html
Ramey, Clarice Payne. History of Pulaski County. Master’s thesis, University of Kentucky, 1935. https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_Pulaski_County.html?id=PSYInwEACAAJ
Somerset-Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce. “White Lily Community Center and Park.” Accessed September 26, 2026. https://somersetpulaskichamber.com/directories/white-lily-community-center-and-park/
Tibbals, Alma Owens. A History of Pulaski County, Kentucky. Somerset, KY: Moore, 1952. https://books.google.com/books/about/A_History_of_Pulaski_County_Kentucky.html?id=hUh4D_2eUFMC
Tibbals, Alma Owens. History of Pulaski County, Kentucky. Reprint of the 1952 edition. Greenville, SC: Southern Historical Press, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=KBFvswEACAAJ
United States Geological Survey. “topoView: Historical Topographic Map Collection.” Accessed September 26, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/topoview
White Lily Community Center and Park. “White Lily Community Center and Park.” Mightycause. Accessed September 26, 2026. https://www.mightycause.com/organization/White-Lily-Community-Center-And-Park
Author Note: White Lily’s surviving newspaper accounts offer readers a glimpse into the everyday lives of the farming families, teachers, and church congregations who sustained this rural Pulaski County community. I hope this article helps preserve their stories and encourages future generations to uncover more of the history still waiting in local archives, family collections, and community memories.