Editing Trimble County, Kentucky (section)

==Communities==
Trimble county comprises two major towns, a couple of hamlets, and various small settlements.{{sfn|Demaree|2000|p=28}}
The 1877 Collins county history identified the towns of Bedford, Milton, Kingston, and Palmyra.{{sfn|Collins|1877|p=733}}
Later authorities have differed from this.

The town of [[Bedford, Kentucky|Bedford]] at the junction of United States Highways 421 and 42 is the county seat but was not its largest town until the middle 20th century.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=1}}
Its environs include Callis Grove, to the north, the site of an open-air tabernacle and campgrounds built by a Methodist church, retaining the name of the old Callis Grove post office run by Robert Edward Callis from June 1893 to September 1894 at the junction of what is now U.S. highway 42 and New Hope Road;{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=7}} and Bedford Springs, a set of springs popular before the U.S. Civil War.{{sfn|WPA|1939t|p=4}}

The largest town until then was the port town of [[Milton, Kentucky|Milton]], which was also the oldest town, at the junction of U.S. Highway 421 and [[Kentucky Route 36]] and across the Ohio River from [[Madison, Indiana]].{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=2}}
It is widely believed that it used to have the name "Kingston" but in fact Kingston was a nearby, and not as old, village that Milton subsumed by an act of the Kentucky General Assembly in March 1872.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|pp=2&ndash;3}}
In its vicinity are such things as Lookout Point{{sfn|WPA|1939t|p=4}} and the erstwhile farm of [[Delia Webster]].

[[Wises Landing, Kentucky|Wise's Landing]] was a thriving port town in the 19th century that has dwindled down to a hamlet, whose identity is intermingled with Corn Creek, the name of one of the county's creeks that the Landing served and also (confusingly) the name of the Wise's Landing post office and thus the name given to the town on many maps over the years.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=3}}
It is at the mouth of Barebones Creek whose headwaters lie at Bedford and one of whose forks is Pryors Fork, sometimes identified on maps by its post office Trimble.
Their collective environs include Payne Hollow, Preston Hollow (and an erstwhile Preston Plantation), and Spring Creek.

The rest of the county was in the 19th century a wide number of very small settlements, characterized as "just 'store-school-church' crossroads" by geographer Nancy Demaree.{{sfn|Demaree|2000|p=28}}
Before the school system was centralized and the advent of [[Rural Free Delivery]] in the 20th century there were twenty-odd post offices and a similar number of little schools throughout the county.

In the view of Robert M. Rennick, who made a lifetime study of places in Kentucky, outside the incorporated cities of Bedford and Milton only four more places with post offices have qualified as viable villages.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=9}}
They are Wises Landing and Corn Creek, counting as two for this purpose despite their historic conflation, Abbott/Abbotsford, which also may not actually have been separate places, and Providence.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=9}}

It isn't known where exactly the Abbotsford post office, and the two later post offices named Abbot, actually were, as the location reports on the forms that were submitted by their postmasters to the government are subject to interpretation.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=5}}
Abbotsford post office from the name was at a "ford" somewhere on the Little Kentucky River, or possibly another watercourse, in the store and hotel of postmaster James Abbot.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=5}}
The first Abbot post office (1880-08-02 to June 1883) was in postmaster Madison Dunn's home north of the Little Kentucky River.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=5}}
The second Abbot post office (1886-04-06 to August 1906) was originally to be named Abbots Ford, but "Ford" was crossed out on the form, and was (according to postmaster William R. Morgan) one mile to the north-east of Middle Creek, five miles to the east of the Ohio River, and five miles south of Bedford.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=6}}
This is roughly the location of the name "Abbott" that is shown on 20th century state highway maps, although that is {{convert|4+1/2|mi}} south-south-west of Bedford and {{convert|1/2|mi}} west of the Little Kentucky River.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=6}}

Robert M. Rennick characterized 19th century Ewingford as "a couple of stores and a sawmill at a ford", and 20th century Ewingford as "a small restaurant and a couple of dozen homes".{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=6}}

Providence used to be a village, purportedly with the original name "Hammels' Store" if the post office submission form for Hammel post office (1890-04-28 to February 1903) by storekeeper George M. Hammel is to be believed.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=6}}
It was actually identified on maps as Hammel until [[World War One]], after which it was apparently renamed Providence after a local Baptist church.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=7}}

The 1847 Collins county history identies Palmyra as a village with a store and a post office, however this is contradicted by records that show no Palmyra post office and only a post office named Winona at the location, later established by one James M. Turner on 1851-01-21.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=4}}
(The 1877 Collins history instead names Winona post office.{{sfn|Collins|1877|p=733}})
It could not have been called Palmyra as that would have clashed with an existing Palmyra postoffice in [[Simpson County, Kentucky|Simpson County]].{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=7}}
Nor was Palmyra the same as Vail, which actually was another post office whose lifetime overlapped that of Palmyra.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=7}}
Vail was rather the precursor of the post office named Monitor, so renamed because after an attempt to reëstablish it in 1903 after a hiatus, it, too, then clashed with an existing postoffice with an almost identical name in another county.{{sfn|Rennick|2000t|p=7}}

=== Cities ===

* [[Bedford, Kentucky|Bedford]] (county seat)
* [[Milton, Kentucky|Milton]]

=== Unincorporated communities ===

* [[Monitor, Kentucky|Monitor]]
* [[Mount Pleasant, Kentucky|Mount Pleasant]]
* [[Providence, Trimble County, Kentucky|Providence]]
* [[Wises Landing, Kentucky|Wises Landing]]