Henry P. Scalf was a newspaperman, genealogist, and Appalachian writer who lived from 1902 until 1979. For many years, he worked for the "Floyd County Times" in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and wrote on nearly every subject that a small courthouse town newspaper might cover. He was also an avid student of the history of Eastern Kentucky and wrote and published several works which ranged from several pamphlet sized works including one about Jenny Wiley, an early Eastern Kentucky pioneer woman who was captured by and escaped from a band of native Americans, and about a half dozen genealogical books during his lifetime. Much of his writing, documents, and books are in the Special Collections Department at the University Of Pikeville Library which I have used more than once in my research. I own one of his dozen or so self-published genealogical books about the Stepp-Stapp Families of America. His best work was done in the fields of newspaper writing and genealogy. Most of his books and pamphlets were self published in small editions and can be difficult to locate on the open market.
I was able to purchase an autographed copy of the book we are discussing here, "Kentucky's Last Frontier" which was self published as a hardback in 1966 with a foreword by the eminent Kentucky historian Thomas D. Clark. My copy of the book was part of the estate of another Kentucky newspaper writer, Helen Price Stacy and I was lucky enough to buy several works by other regional writers from her collections after they had passed into the hands of a friend who buys and sells antiques. The book covers a "12-county area, centered by the Big Sandy, Licking, and North Fork Kentucky rivers...With a few southeastern counties of the state, it constituted "Kentucky's Last Frontier." My copy is, sadly, not in great condition but due to the difficulty of finding a copy in any condition, I was glad to find it. The book covers a large segment of the history of Eastern Kentucky from the times of early settlement to about 1955 or so. It is possibly, at least partially, derived from earlier newspaper articles written by Scalf. While the book is a wonderful resource for the student of Eastern Kentucky and Appalachian history, it does have several weaknesses including Scalf's unique style of documentation of sources and inclusion of notes. Many times in the book, quotations are not clearly identified in the text and there is a section of notes which covers 109 pages in the back of the book and the notes are not cited in the text by any currently recognized system. But these issues are offset by the fact that the Bibliography is 6 pages long and well documented. Any reader with the desire to read all those documented sources would have a strong background in the history of the region up to the time this book was published.
The book is composed of 25 chapters which are presented chronologically from an opening chapter about the geologic and prehistoric origins of the region to the final chapter about, in part, the widespread coal, oil, and gas extraction in the region which has served to greatly damage the beauty of the land. There is a fine discussion of the consequences of the 1957 flood which devastated the region and, until the recent Eastern Kentucky flooding of the summer of 2022. While the book can be a slow read, it is well worth the effort to find and read a copy if you are a student of either Eastern Kentucky or Appalachian History. I know that there are copies in both the University of Pikeville library and at the library of Big Sandy Community and Technical College. I suspect there might also be a copy in the collections of the Johnson County Library in Paintsville since they own a large, publicly available but non-circulating regional books. I hope you can locate a copy if you are interested in the area which it covers.
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