Tomahawk, Kentucky

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Tomahawk is an unincorporated community that stretches along Ky. 40 in Martin County, which is on the Kentucky-West Virginia border in Eastern Kentucky. It has an estimated population of 1,000, based on voter registration in the Tomahawk precinct. There is a post office (41262) which survived in 1975 when the Postal Service closed nearby offices in Milo and Davisport, a volunteer fire department, a grocery, a convenience store,a car wash, a used car lot, a Jabez Ministries outlet, three churches, a Columbia Gas Co. pumping station and a large furniture store located in the old stone WPA-era Tomahawk Grade School, which was closed and sold in about 2002 after the school was consolidated with Grassy Grade School into Eden Elementary School at Inez, the county seat. The community was once called Wells, but the name was changed in the early 20th Century for reasons no longer clear. A book on Kentucky Placenames suggested the new name was grafted from a local newspaper at the time, The Tomahawk News. The community has produced several locally prominent educators, journalists and business leaders, the best-known of whom was Russell Williamson, a banker, educator and high school basketball coach. Williamson was president of the Inez Deposit Bank, president of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association, the acknowledged first graduate of Morehead (Ky.) State University and the principal and basketball coach at Inez High School, which won two state championships during his tenure. Tomahawk became briefly notorious in the early 1930s after a local family ritually murdered their mother after a church revival under the mistaken belief, it was reported, that they could bring her back to life in three days.^{[citation needed]} Newspaper articles concerning the event were published nationally and internationally.