Kentucky

About Kentucky

History of Kentucky

Kentucky was occasionally used as hunting grounds by roving bands of Shawnee Indians, but there were no permanent Indian settlements by 1750. Kentucky was owned by the colony and state of Virginia. For a while a few settlers tried to set up a colony of Transylvania with its capital at Boonesborough. After 1770, settlers from Virginia and North Carolina came through the Cumberland Gap. Kentucky grew rapidly and was the first major frontier developed west of the Appalachian Mountains. Guns enabled this movement westward, and even the term shotgun was first coined in Kentucky in 1776. After the war, it became Kentucky County, Virginia and ten constitutional conventions took place at the courthouse of Constitution Square in Danville between 1784 and 1792. In 1790, Kentucky delegates accepted Virginia’s terms for separation and the state constitution was drafted at the final convention in April 1792. On June 1, 1792, Kentucky became the fifteenth state in the union and Isaac Shelby, a war hero from Virginia, was elected the first Governor of the Commonwealth Of Kentucky.

Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born in Kentucky.

Kentucky was a border state during the American Civil War. For a while it tried to be neutral. In September 1861, Lincoln warned, “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.” The Confederates entered the state during the “Kentucky Campaign” of Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith in 1862, but Braggs’ retreat following the Battle of Perryville left the state under the control of the Union Army for the rest of the war.The Confederates tried to set up an alternative state government but failed to displace the government in Frankfort, which enthusiastically supported the Union and hunted down rebels. The Presidents of both the United States (Abraham Lincoln) and the Confederate States (Jefferson Davis) during the Civil War were born in Kentucky.

Kentucky

Albany     Ashland     Barbourville     Bardstown     Beaver Dam     Benton     Berea     Bowling Green     Brooks     Cadiz     Calvert City     Campbellsville     Carrollton     Catlettsburg     Cave City     Central City     Columbia     Corbin     Covington     Danville     Dry Ridge     Eddyville     Elizabethtown     Erlanger     Florence     Fort Campbell     Fort Knox     Fort Mitchell     Fort Wright     Frankfort     Franklin     Georgetown     Gilbertsville     Glasgow     Goody     Grand Rivers     Grayson     Harlan     Harrodsburg     Hazard     Hebron     Henderson     Hopkinsville     Horse Cave     Irvine     Jeffersontown     Kuttawa     La Grange     Lebanon     Leitchfield     Lewisport     Lexington     London     Louisa     Louisville     Madisonville     Manchester     Mayfield     Maysville     Middlesboro     Monticello     Morehead     Mount Sterling     Mount Vernon     Murray     Newport     Nicholasville     Oak Grove     Owensboro     Paducah     Paintsville     Park City     Pikeville     Prestonsburg     Radcliff     Renfro Valley     Richmond     Richwood     Russellville     Shelbyville     Shepherdsville     Somerset     Springfield     Walton     Whitley City     Williamsburg     Williamstown     Winchester