Do you know of Poor Fork ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Poor Fork. 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 Poor Fork.

Our sources for Poor Fork (see Mentions and References below) indicate that it was a community with a post office by the same name. Unfortunately our sources aren't clear about the location of Poor Fork other than they indicate that Poor Fork would be found somewhere in Harlan County, Kentucky.

From the Blevins / Hellbock List: The post office opened  in 1837 and closed  in 1926.

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.

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.

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Poor Fork ...

We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Poor Fork:

Found in a comprehensive list of Post Offices that was created by Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<1>

Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide (1895)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

A note taken from the Shipper's Guide for Poor Fork - Services available: had a Post Office, no Railroad mentioned

List of Post Offices in the United States (1870)
Published by the Government Printing Office

Table of U.S. Post Offices in the United States (Jan. 1851)
Published by W. & J.C. Greer, Printers

U.S. Post Offices (Oct. 1846)
Published by John T. Towers

The FIPS database contains an entry for Poor Fork.

Referenced FIPS Records ...

FIPS Code: 21/62220   (Place Name: Poor Fork)

County: Harlan     (FIPS State/County: 21/095)

Class: X3

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.