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The Poor Fork

As its headwaters near Eolia in Letcher County, Kentucky, The Poor Fork River is a mere trickle. It can be waded at almost any point as it flows westward toward the town of Harlan County that once bore its name.
This little Poor Fork joins Martin's Fork and Clover Fork near Baxter to form the Cumberland River, a meandering beauty 687 miles long, wandering into Tennesse, turning northeast and uniting with the Ohio at Smithfield, Ky.
The Poor Fork's bed is in the corridor formed when Big Black and Pine Mountatins drift apart,leaving a long valley through the precipitions Cumberland Mountains, the western-most range of the Appalachians.
The town of Poor Fork grew up along this river. We do not know whether the fork was named for a man named Poore or whether the river was hard to ford. (1) I don't know of a Poore who settled there.
The arrival in America of the people whose descendants settled the Poor Fork area and Harlan County predates Daniel Boone's move from Rowan County, NC to Castle's Woods in the valley of the Clinch in Virginia in 1773. (2)
William C. Kozee relates that there is no record that any white man settled in the mountain section of Kentucky before 1789. Yet the area that became eastern Kentucky was being settled as early as 1774 - before Harrodstown. (3)
The big influx into this frontier came during the push westward that started in the 1780's and continued for about 40 years. Our ancestors were in that vanguard.
They traveled through the nearly impenetrable mountain terrain, which had deterred the earliest explorations. They rode or walked through the water gaps - The Doubles snd Grassy Gap on Big Black - or through natural depressions in the mountains.
The lure was plentiful and unpatented land, which men had but to survey and claim if they had not recieved patents for their service in America's fight for independence. The river, too, could have been a lure. Settlers throughout the new nation liked to build homes near rivers.
These pioneers were Anglo-Saxon, English, Huguenots, Germans from the Palatinate, Scotch-Iris from Ulster, North Ireland, many young men who had received land grants for sevice in the war.
Our forebears settled first in Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina. A majority then moved to the frontier of Southwestern Virginia. They became landholders and taxpayers in the Powell Vally, in Turkey Cove, Big Moccasin Gap, Sugar Run, Hickory Flats, Wallens Ridge, Cane Creek and Big Snake Creek. They built forts, cleared land, built homes, planted crops. Some went into northern Tennessee.
About 1791, The Days, Kellys and Caudills were settling on the headwaters of the Cumberland and Kentucky Rivers. Among the first settlers on the Cumberland in Harlan County were people with such names as Howard, Turner, Middleton, Cawood, Napier, Smith, Cornett, Jones and Saylor. Near the Poor Fork were Branson, Cornett, Creech, Dixon, and Blair families. (4)
At one time, Kentucky was included in the original limits of Virginia and was a part of Augusta County, formed in 1738. In 1772, through the creation of counties, it ended up in Fincastle County, which included all of Southwest Virginia. In 1776, it was designated Kentucky County.(5)
In 1780, Kentucky was divided into three counties, placing the Poor Fork in Lincoln. In 1792, it was organized as a state by the consent of Virginia and on June 1 became the 15th. state to enter the union.
                                            New County

By 1799, the Poor Fork was in the new county of Knox. Harlan County was formed in 1819, with Poor Fork in its southeastern corner.
Harlan County is about 20 miles wide and 5o miles long, with an area of about 484 square miles, lying on the eastern boundary of the Commonwealth. Its southern border over Black Mountain is the toe of the shoe of Lee and Wise Counties, Va. Counties to the north are Letcher, Perry and Leslie, formed by sections taken from Harlan.
The high walls of Pine to the North and Big Black to the south closed the outside world. At 4,145 feet, Big Black is the highest peak in Kentucky. Its landmark peak is the Benham Spur, or Knob, which is 3,863 feet high. It was named for an Indian fighter and hunter named John Benham who built a cabin there in the eighteenth century and left his apple trees to bear, then and now, the Benham apple. (6)
Countless branches and streams in the copious watershed of Big Black and Pine Mountains feed the little Poor Fork. Up Whitesburg way toward Letcher County, the feeder branches have such names as Scott, Dave Lewis, Coldiron, Orchard, Charlie Blair, Beech Bottom and Big Cove.
The major feeders are Clover Lick Creek, which flows out of Big Black through its own valley, and Looney Creek. There are such little streams as Gap Branch, Long Rock Branch, Scott Branch, Maggard Branch that feed Looney, and other branches on Looney Ridge in the Big Black, such as Barnett, Long Rock, Big Laurel and Little Laurel. (7) Looney might have been named for a James Looney of Lee County, Va.
Clover Lick's major feeders are the left Fork and the Right Fork and branches named Sally Huff, Trace, Cave, Shop and Tyree and Big Moccasin, which later came to be called Pounding Mill.
The early settlement could have been built just as easily on Clover Lick, a beautiful creek bounded by fine meadows and farmland. It was here that a small settlement called Clover was started early in the nineteenth century with big home spreads, such as those of the Branson brothers. Here, the first school, Grange Hall, was built on Branson land.          Page # 1