My quest for the elusive coal company scrip from Harlan County, KY has brought not only much enjoyment but at times, much frustration as well.  Frustration brought on by the lack of knowledge concerning certain coal companies and their locations within Harlan County has turned my hobby into a major detective drama on more than one occasion.  This was especially true when I came upon a piece of scrip from the Standard Harlan Coal Company, Cuffey, KY.  This early Harlan County coal company, by its name alone, became my first clue to its link to Harlan County.  The address on the scrip, Cuffey, KY, was to become a major obstacle when I tried to pinpoint its location within Harlan County.  From the beginning, I couldn’t find anyone who knew anything about where Cuffey was located.  I was also sure this address would equally puzzle anyone who was lucky enough to possess a specimen of this ultra rare Harlan County coal company scrip.

     My search for Cuffey, KY  began in July, l986 when my friend, Gerald Cornette, Closplint, KY brought me information that his mother had a $1.00 token from the Standard Harlan Coal Co., Cuffey, KY.  He informed me that his father, now deceased and mother had the token for many years.  I persuaded him to ask his mother if she would sell the scrip to me to go into my Harlan County collection.  His mother agreed to sell that token and with its addition to my collection, I asked Gerald the question I would be asking for many months to come:  “Where is Cuffey, KY?”  His answer was to become the same one I would receive whenever I asked anyone about Cuffey, KY.  He replied, “Heck, I don’t know.”  The more I asked and received the same negative replies, only helped to reinforce my determination to find out the true answer.  I had no idea that it would take as long as it did for the puzzle to be solved.

     During a telephone conversation with my friend, Dr. Virginia Leftwich, Arnold, MO, who is writing the History of the Peabody Coal Company, I mentioned Cuffey, KY and my problem of locating the town or place.  Dr. Leftwich, an expert researcher, with an extensive personal library, also had access to the St. Louis Public Library which houses additional information concerning the coal mining history of America.  Dr. Leftwich agreed to assist me with my problem.

     After approximately two months, I received a letter from Dr. Leftwich containing my first real lead to solving the Cuffey mystery.  She had found the Standard Harlan Coal Company listed in the 1922 Keystone Manual, the official coal company directory published yearly since the early 1900’s.  The address listed for the company was Evarts, KY, not Cuffey.  The shipping point was also listed as Evarts with the mine listed as the Brown Mine.  The seam of coal was listed as the Harlan Seam.  In a footnote, the mine was formerly owned and operated by the R. L. Brown Coal & Coke Co, Evarts, KY.

     With this new information at my disposal, my spirits gained new heights as I tried again to find someone in the Evarts area that might know about the Brown Mine and Cuffey, KY.  I sought out information from two of Harlan counties foremost scrip collectors, Mr. Paul Whitakerand Mr. Howard Short.  Mr. Short also had a $1.00 token of the Standard Harlan Coal Company scrip but didn’t know anything about the company or where Cuffey was located.  Neither did Mr. Whitaker.  Again I became “stumped”. The official address for the company, Evarts, KY, helped to reinforce my original hunch that Cuffey must be located somewhere in the Clover Fork area of Harlan County.  This fact, along with the knowledge that I had obtained the token from a life long resident of the area, gave me the assurance that the answer was just around the corner.  But, again the answer failed to present itself.  All I had accomplished thus far was to narrow the location to the Eastern area of Harlan County.  However, the number of coal companies in this area of Harlan County accounted for as many or more companies as did all the rest of the county combined.

     Frustration again set in and continued to be my lot as I came no closer to finding the location of Cuffey than I had months before.  I became obsessed with finding this long forgotten mining camp and the site of the mine and, if possible, the company store that had issued, so long ago, the now rare company scrip.

     The official reference guide for the National Scrip Collectors Association, Edkin’s Catalogue of United States Coal Company Store Scrip, has one token from the Standard Harlan Coal Company listed, a $.50 example.  Dr. N. S. Guy, III, Harlan, KY has one $.10 token and Howard Short and I each have a $1.00 token.  These tokens are all that I have been able to locate.

     In early May, 1987, I again contacted Dr. Leftwich for additional assistance.  She provided the final clue to solving my dilemma.  From her records she found that the Standard Harlan Coal Company, which also had operations in Bell County as well as Harlan County, had been sold, according to the 1925 Keystone Manual, to the R. L. Brown Coal Co, Evarts, KY.  In the 1924 Keystone Manual, the company was still the Brown Mine at Evarts.  Their other operations, the Middleton Mine, had been sold to the Middleton Coal Co, Evarts, KY and the Ages Green Mine was now operated by the Harlan Blue Gem Coal Company, Ages, KY.  The key bit of information came with the identification of the seam of coal being mined at the Brown Mine.  It now listed the Kellioka Seam a 47” rich seam of coal located near the site of the Harlan Kellioka Coal Company mine at Darkmont, KY.  I knew the location of Darkmont, approximately one mile north of Evarts, on Kentucky Highway 38.

     I knew the answers to all my questions would now have to come from someone from the Evarts/Darkmont area that was living in the middle 1920’s.  I thought of one man that was born, lived and worked his entire adult life in this area.  This person was Jewels H. Bradford,Evarts, KY, a long time friend.  “Pap” Bradford, as I affectionately referred to him, worked most of his life for the Harlan Wallins Coal Company, Verda, KY.  He has an extraordinary memory of the “good old days”and when I asked him about the R. L. Brown Coal Company Cuffey and the Brown Mine, he immediately remembered a place called “Brown Town” from his youth and growing up in Evarts, KY.  He started work at the age of sixteen with the Harlan Wallins Coal Company, in 1935, but remembered that “Brown Town” was an area near Darkmont.  He also remembered the mining camp, company store and the old mine.  He informed me that all had long  since been torn down and all that remained that brought the coal from the mine to the tipple.  Going back to other “old timers” that I had previously interviewed, I asked if they had ever heard of “Brown Town” and a Brown Mine near Darkmont.  All knew of the place called “Brown Town”.  Mrs. Cornette remembered well the old mine when she was a child. 

     My search for Cuffey, KY was over and I finally had most of my answers to the many questions about the Standard Harlan Coal Company.  Evidently the name Cuffey was given to the site because Darkmont was already being used by the Harlan Kellioka Coal Company.  Maybe some other reason, now lost to history, caused the name to be used.  The L&N Railroad transported coal from this area and many companies came up with very unusual names for their shipping points that had more familiar names at the time.  I found this to be true while searching for Cuffey, KY.  Without the help of my many friends, the puzzle would not have been solved.  However, my search uncovered other lost and forgotten locations such as Marne, White Star, Pleasant View, Merna, Glidden and Shonn.  All these Harlan County locations were the old L&N Railroad coal sidings or former mining camps.  Now these places will not be forgotten in the years to come thanks to the $1.00 piece of scrip from Cuffey, KY.