07/16/2026
Henry County Communities: COAL
Long before Highway 7 connected Clinton to points east, a little crossroads village called Coal took shape in Leesville Township. Its story begins in 1859, when the Cole family (sometimes spelled Coale) arrived from Moniteau County and opened a store, giving the place their name. When J.D. Galbraith, a Tennessee transplant, became a partner, locals started calling it Galbraith's Store instead. After Galbraith sold his share back to Cole in 1879, the village became Colesburg — and eventually settled into the simpler name it kept for good: Coal.
Daily life in Coal centered on the essentials. Several blacksmiths kept wagons, buggies, and horses in working order, and a nearby mill ground neighbors' corn into meal and wheat into flour. At one time, stagecoaches running between Sedalia and Osceola made Coal their halfway stop.
The post office tells its own story of a community that came and went with the times. Coal's very first postmaster, a Mr. Hallford, ran the post office right out of the attic of his log cabin home. The first recorded postmaster on the books was C.W. Duden in 1892-93, and the last was postmistress Grace McGuiness in 1921, with George Bradley carrying the route. All told, Coal had a post office on and off from 1867 to 1935 — closing and reopening as the village's fortunes shifted.
Coal's school followed its own long path. The first school was a log cabin in the eastern part of the village. A later building stood at the south edge of Coal until 1870, when township schools were consolidated. High school classes began in 1922 in the Presbyterian Church, moved to the community building in September 1923, and by 1940-41 Coal was offering a full four-year high school for the first time — before the school eventually closed and its students were bussed into Clinton.
When the telephone arrived, the first exchange was set up in the Duden family's home, then moved to the Davis home, before the community eventually banded together to build its own telephone company.
And one story we love: local doctor Dr. Peelor made his rounds by horseback or buggy, tending to patients across the countryside. Once, a telephone was installed on a tree at the corner of the picnic grounds at the Shady Grove school — so the good doctor could enjoy the community picnic while staying just a phone call away from an expectant mother.
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This story was adapted from Betty Maxwell's "Communities of Henry County."
