Okay – I know. Coal fields records sound boring… But in taking a look at these newly digitized records, I found that they are anything but that! If you’ve got Kentucky folks who worked in the energy industries there, you’ve got to browse and search these records. There’s 140 cubic feet of digitized materials that include records of interest to genealogists. Following is a portion of the July 28, 2016 news release. You may want to read it all.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 28, 2016) — The University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) successfully completed work on its National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) digitization grant, resulting in online access to 140 cubic feet of materials from the Bert T. Combs Appalachian Collection. The materials from the Coal, Camps and Railroads project is available to the public through the digital library ExploreUK.
The newly digitized materials at UK focus on 189 years of economic development in the Eastern Kentucky coalfield from 1788 to 1976. The 10 individual collections document:
- the search for, extraction of, and distribution of coal, oil and natural gas resources in Breathitt, Boyd, Clark, Floyd, Harlan, Lawrence, Letcher, Perry and Powell counties;
- the creation of railroads to bring these raw materials to industrial manufacturers and electrical power generators across the United States; and
- the company towns, their services and the individuals who grew up and made possible this economic development.
These collections include the Benham Coal Company records, Wheelwright collection, Sherrill Martin papers, Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company and Lexington and Eastern Railway Company records and the Kentucky Union Land Company records.
Read all about these collections in a detailed article at the University of Kentucky website.
