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This project is part of the Commonwealth of Kentucky Portal.=
About the Project
Please use this project to add, research, document, and discuss your ancestors from Hopkins County, Kentucky. You can add profiles for:
- People born in Hopkins County, Kentucky
- People who lived in Hopkins County, Kentucky
- People who died in Hopkins County, Kentucky
When you find helpful resources for research, please share them here so that others can benefit.
If you have projects related specifically to Hopkins County, Kentucky, like projects for towns or families centered within the county, you can also add those.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or general thoughts to share, please use the "Discussions" link at the upper right corner of the page.
Brief History
From http://kykinfolk.com/hopkins/
Hopkins County, the forty-ninth in order of formation, is located in western Kentucky. It has an area of 552 square miles. The county was created on May 1, 1807 from a portion of Henderson County and was named for Gen. Samuel Hopkins, a Revolutionary War veteran and early settler of the region. The county seat is Madisonville.
Some of the early settlers were veterans of the Revolutionary War who received land grants from Virginia in the area southwest of the Green River. Among these was Frederick Wilhelm, Baron Von Steuben, the Prussian general who had instructed the Revolutionary army at Valley Forge in the winter of 1776-77. According to tradition, the baron was wounded during an Indian attack while on his first visit and subsequently quit-claimed his property. On his grant of several thousand acres in the northwest part of the county, a salt spring came to be known as Steuben's Lick. By the 1880s, the community there was called Manitou.
On January 3, 1829, Ashbyburg in the northeastern part of the county was incorporated. Located on the Green River, it thrived as a steamboat landing during the nineteenth century. Other antebellum communities included Nebo, northwest of Madisonville, and Charleston, named after "Free Charles," a black freedman who operated a tavern in the southwest part of the county.
- Above information from: http://www.mykentuckygenealogy.com/ky_county/ho.htm {dead link}
family heads
(first arrivers to the county)