There was a Sinking Creek on my paternal grandfather's farm in another part of Kentucky, south central. Also we had sinkholes in central Florida where I grew up. There were a few old ones, but they started happening often beginning in the 1970s, because of water being pumped out of the limestone aquifer.

Stab, Kentucky, huh? Now there's an opening for Jon in Wessex..

My grandfather had relocated from a place called the Coon Range, farther east and apparently pretty hardscrabble. I don't know exactly where that is.

I think we can assume that if groups are trying to block the road project, it will take more than a year for a decision to come out.

I wonder if the town was first called Slab?
That part of the world is lovely. There are coal measures with massive sandstones that overlie the limestones. The limestones develop internal drainage (canes and sinking creeks, except where the creeks go through sulphur rich rocks and then are called stinking creek).
As erosion continues some of the massive sandstones are undercut, leading to the huge cane shelters used by the Native Americans as temporary refuges. As erosion continues, the massive sandstones break off. Boom. And a large resistant slab is left. And that's why I first read the town as Slab.
In our part of the world there are many, many map names that aren't what the locals call the places. The map makers never double checked what they recorded.

Deb, it's only about two hours from me. I'm sure I can interest DH in a road trip. What's your family name? And I wonder if I could find R. setigera there for you?

Ann

It's a reasonable guess that "Stab" refers to the habits of former residents. We have a Sodom in Madison County and a Sodom Laurel Creek. On the other hand, Big Fat Creek is a cartographer's error for Big Flat Creek. Then some of the changes are euphemisms. You can't expect the mapmaker to write "Shitbritches Creek" (also in Madison County).

The town definitely is called Stab. It was named Lincoln but the mail got mixed up with another Lincoln town in Kentucky. Sometime around the Civil War an ancestor changed the name to Stab. I'm guessing everybody there is related.
The name of Stab is a puzzler, alright. I've looked in vain for a picture of the town. Pictures of caves turn up, and lists of every stabbing that ever occurred in Kentucky going back a long time.
I could imagine somebody saying "This is just a little bitty stab of a place," or I could imagine something worse.
My great great grandfather built a church there in 1868 and his house is still there, so they tell me. Pleasant Run Baptist Church. I think they were originally Quakers or Dutch Mennonites, though. They are serious about the Lord in that area.
The roads are called Mize Cemetery Road and Miller Mize Road.
The same year Silas and Mariah Mize built the church, his brother Freeman came to Montana. His granddaughter's house is a state park now down by Three Forks.
Everywhere in history you can find these people, 30 miles down river from Daniel Boone in North Carolina and oddly following Merriwether Lewis to the Three Forks of the Missouri 50 years after he came.
Unremarkable and unsung, they were there.
All of Silas and Mariah's children followed Uncle Freeman to Montana, another oddity, but about that time they put in a grain mill in Somserset run by power. I'm guessing the family trade was over.
Silas and Mariah came here but Mariah got sick and died. Silas went back to Kentucky where he lived up into his 90's.
Somewhere in my Mom's photos there is a picture of a creek, which looks nothing like anything around here. I finally recognize it now, as someplace in the Sinking Valley.
I learned what little I know by genealogy research and a little e-mail with a family member there.
I don't know if I'm ever getting there but wouldn't mind a picture. I hope their home isn't about to be destroyed.
They've lived there for 207 years.
Here's a picture of the parker Homestead where Rosa lived.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rosa's house

All of Silas and Mariah's children followed Uncle Freeman to Montana, another oddity,

*** Way back when, it seems that groups of families moved together. My people started out in SW South Carolina, but part of them picked up and moved to Alabama right after the Revolutionary War. (We think they may have fought on the wrong side.)
We've traced 'em, one generation after another, from AL to TX, and finally to CA -- but generation after generation there were the same surnames migrating together. And marrying, too.
Of course, there just flat weren't as many people in the U.S., in the 17th and 18th Century. If groups didn't start out related, they ended up related.

Jeri

The thing that was odd is they all left home. Silas and Mariah seem to have come here just to visit. You would think some of them would have stayed home. I think times were bad after the Civil War.
Whatever, I've read up a little more.
They sure are planning to build a fourlane right through my ancestral home.
And reading up on the cave systems and underground streams , there seems to be no way to do it without demolishing the place.

Here is a link that might be useful: Freeway

> > I think times were bad after the Civil War.

*** BAD? WHEW.
They say everyone in Jasper, AL would have starved, but my GGAnut hid all the food they could find, down in the mine before the Yankees got there.
They said they thought my G-gftr was dead. But he got home months after Appomattox Courthouse, starved, barefoot, and riding on a mule. He "found everything changed." And not long after, he lit out for TX.
I'm sure things weren't a whole bunch better in KY.

Jeri