Do you know of Kay ???
This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Kay. When we encounter a name that is new to us, we add it to our Gazetteer with the hope that we'll discover more information in the future. Such is the case with Kay.<1>
Our source wasn't clear whether Kay was a community, a post office or a post office located in a community and having the same name.<2> While we don't have its location, we believe that Kay would be found somewhere in Harlan County, Kentucky.
Communities Also Named Kay ...
We found three communities that share the name Kay.
Within Kentucky, the name Kay is unique.
Beyond Kentucky, we know of another three communities that are located throughout in the United States.
- Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- Arkansas
- North Carolina
Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Kay ...
We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Kay:
SPV's Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America - Appalachia & Piedmont
Written by: Walker, Mike
Published by Steam Powered Video (SPV), 2004
(Available from Amazon.com)
The FIPS database contains an entry for Kay.
Referenced FIPS Records ...
FIPS Code: 21/41626 (Place Name: Kay)
County: Harlan (FIPS State/County: 21/095)
Class: U8
Identifies a populated place (in this case, Kay) located wholly or substantially outside the boundaries of an incorporated place or CDP (Census Designated Place) but whose name has not been verified as authoritative by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
More Orphans in Harlan County ...
Can you help?
As we explained above, when we encounter a name that might be a community or a post office we add it to our Gazetteer. If we have little information to go with the name, we call them Orphans. Below are Orphans that we believe to be located in Harlan County.
Footnotes ...
| <1> | This entry could have originated in error. It might be that a source had a misprint, was simply wrong or we made a transcription error while referencing it. Many of the documents we reference are from the 1800s and the early 1900s, with some easier to read than others. |
| <2> | Part of the difficulty in identifying whether a name is a post office or a community lies with how Post Offices were named. We've prepared an article with our understanding of how post offices were named: Naming of Post Offices. |
| <3> | If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer. Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Rock Creek to see Pete ... Rock Creek is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name. Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time. Also keep in mind that Kay could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out. |