Formation of Kentucky

Kentucky Prior to 1777

Prior to 1777, the land that would become Kentucky had no counties, no local civil government, and no permanent European-American settlements. It was legally part of Virginia, but in practice it functioned as an enormous, unnamed frontier district beyond the mountains.

The region was crossed by long-established Indigenous hunting grounds and travel routes, but colonial administrative records for this territory were created outside Kentucky, mainly in:

• Fincastle County, Virginia (1772–1776) – the last Virginia county to include the Kentucky area before its dissolution.
• Botetourt County, Virginia (1770–1772) – jurisdiction before Fincastle.
• Augusta County, Virginia (1738–1770) – the earliest Virginia county from which Kentucky-area records may appear.

Because of this layered structure, early land claims, court orders, surveys, and militia references for Kentucky residents before 1777 are found in Virginia records, not in Kentucky itself.

As migration increased through the 1770s and fortified stations began to appear, Virginia established Kentucky County in Dec 1776, effective 1777, marking the first formal governmental unit within modern-day Kentucky.

Kentucky County, Virginia

In 1777, the Virginia General Assembly divided Fincastle County into three parts, creating Washington, Montgomery, and Kentucky Counties. Kentucky County was defined as lying “to the south and westward of a line beginning on the Ohio at the mouth of Great Sandy Creek and running up the same and the main, or northeasterly, branch thereof to the Great Laurel Ridge of Cumberland Mountain, then southwesterly along the said mountain to the line of North Carolina.”

In 1780, Kentucky County was further divided into Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln Counties. Over the next several years, additional counties were carved from those original three to accommodate the growing population.

Between 1784 and 1792, residents of the Kentucky district held ten conventions to consider separation from Virginia. On 18 December 1789, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act permitting Kentucky to seek statehood. With Virginia’s full consent, the district’s nine counties entered the Union as the Commonwealth of Kentucky on 1 June 1792.

Tip! A visual timeline of these boundary changes can be viewed on the Kentucky Genealogical Society’s county map resource.

Library of Virginia

The Library of Virginia holds several record sets for the period when the Kentucky district was still part of Virginia. These records are essential for locating early residents before Kentucky became a state in 1792.