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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Gallatin County, Kentucky.
Official Website
Overview
The county was formed on December 14, 1798 and named for Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson.
During the Civil War, several skirmishes occurred in the county and the Union Army arrested a number of men for treason for supporting the Confederates.
The 1866 Gallatin County Race Riot happened just after the Civil War, when bands of lawless Ku Klux Klansmen terrorized parts of the Bluegrass State. "A band of five hundred whites in Gallatin County... forced hundreds of blacks to flee across the Ohio River."
On December 4, 1868, two passenger steamers, the America and the United States, collided on the Ohio River near Warsaw. The United States carried a cargo of barrels of kerosene, which caught fire. The flames soon spread to the America, and many passengers perished by burning or drowning. The combined death toll was 162, making it one of the most deadly steamboat accidents in American history.
The Lynchings of the Frenches of Warsaw were conducted by a white mob on May 3, 1876. It was unusual as Benjamin and Mollie French were killed for the murder of Lake Jones, another, older black man. They were hanged by local masked KKK members.
Marco Allen Chapman was executed in 2008 for multiple murders he committed on August 23, 2002 in Warsaw, Kentucky. He murdered two children, Chelbi Sharon, 7, and Cody Sharon, 6, by slitting their throats. He raped and stabbed their mother, Carolyn Marksberry, more than 15 times. A third child, daughter 10-year-old Courtney Sharon, played dead after being stabbed and then escaped. Thirty-seven-year-old Chapman was executed on November 21, 2008 by lethal injection at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Kentucky. He was the last person executed by the Commonwealth.
Adjacent Counties
Communities
- Glencoe
- Sparta
- Warsaw (County Seat)
Links
Gallatin County Civil War History
National Register of Historic Places
