Adrian Almy
Adrian Adelbert Almy (March 1850 – May 5, 1915) was a businessman who invested in the coal mines at Paint Rock in Scott County. He was the man the Almy community was named after.
Early Life
Born in March 1850, Adrian Almy was the son of Samuel Willett Almy (1821-1899) and Sally Foster Applebee (1823-1864). He was born in Wirt, N.Y.
When the New York state census was taken in 1855, Adrian was one of four children living in the home. His siblings included 13-year-old Mary, 11-year-old Sidney and one-year-old Charles. His paternal grandparents, Robert and Polly Almy, lived in the home, as did a 40-year-old servant named Anna Taylor.
Almy was listed as a student at Alfred University in New York in 1871.
Almy married Mary Emma Darrow (1852-1944), who was originally from Connecticut. They had two children: Samuel Willett Almy, born in 1880, and Edmund Darrow Almy, born in 1885.
In 1885, Almy was listed on the board of supervisors in Allegany County, N.Y., where he was born and raised, according to an article in The Olean Democrat on March 10, 1885, published in Olean, N.Y.
Life in Scott County
Adrian Almy moved with his family to Scott County sometime after the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad was built around 1880. He still lived in New York when the 1880 census was taken. His occupation at the time was listed as a sawmill foreman.
By the time the 1900 census was taken, the Almy family lived in Altamont, Ky., a small coal town just north of London, Ky. The town was named for Altamont Coal Company, which opened in 1882. The town was originally known as Nield when a post office opened there in 1884, then changed to Altamont in 1885.
The Almy family’s time in Scott County was between 1880 and 1900.
A newspaper reported at the time of Almy’s death in 1915 that he left New York in 1889. The post office on Paint Rock Creek opened in 1990, and Almy was its first postmaster. Hence, the Paint Rock community was known for many years as Almy. Even though the post office closed in 1909 and combined with Oneida, the school at Paint Rock was always known as Almy Elementary School. For many years, Huntsville Hill Road, which leads over the mountain to Huntsville, was named Old Almy Road. That name can still be found on some atlases.
Almy’s reason for moving to Scott County was to take a job with the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Co., which was founded in 1885 by men named Willian Gunn, W.M. Appleby, Robert Hibbler and others, who discovered the large deposits of coal along the headwaters of Paint Rock Creek while traveling through the region with their work on the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad.
In 1889 and 1990, about the time that Almy moved to Scott County, the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Co. Railroad was built from the depot at Oneida to Morning Glory on Paint Rock Creek. It included the 402-foot-long tunnel at Tunnel Hill. Almy’s primary occupation appears to have been procuring land for railroads. W.M. Appleby, who was one of the founders of the Paint Rock company, was likely related to Almy through his mother.
The Paint Rock Coal & Coke Co. Railroad was a forerunner to the Tennessee Railroad, which took its name after the railroad was purchased from the Paint Rock company in 1903 by Southern Railway president Samuel Spenser. Spenser and his son, H.B. Spenser, extended the railroad south along Paint Rock Creek to New River, and continued upstream along New River to Norma and, eventually, into Anderson County.
Almy had left Scott County by the time the railroad was sold to the Spensers. He had taken a job with the Altamont Coal Company by 1900.
A notice in The Frankfort Roundabout newspaper in Frankfort, Ky., that was published on March 21, 1891 stated that Almy, Andrew J. Applebee and S.F.J. Trabue had incorporated the Capital Mining, Lumber & Oil Company in Frankfort. Listed as directors, along with those three men, were William Duke and Charles Duke. Andrew J. Applebee was Andrew Jackson Applebee (1835-1912), Almy’s uncle.
Late life and death
Adrian Almy’s residence was still listed as being in Laurel County, Ky. when the 1910 census was taken. He and Mary were joined in the residence by a newborn grandson, also named Adrian Almy. The baby’s mother, Mary Lee Fuson, had died as a result of childbirth.
That same year, 1910, Adrian Almy moved to Deming, N.M., a town just north of the Mexican border, to take a job with the Santa Fe Railroad. Adrian Almy died there on May 5, 1915, at age 65. He was buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Deming.
Mary Almy died in 1944 at age 91 and was buried at Mountain View Cemetery.
Samuel Willett Almy died of a heart attack in Texas in 1948 at age 67 and was buried at Mountain View Cemetery. Edmund Almy died in 1956 at the age of 71 and was buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Maryland. He served as a captain in the Navy during World War I and was awarded the Navy Cross citation.
Adrian Almy, the grandson who lived with Adrian and Mary Almy in 1910, died in 1993 in Carlsbad, N.M. He spent his entire life in New Mexico as a mining engineer.