of Owsley County
by Fred W. Gabbard
As Published in the Booneville Sentinel
(or Local Paper at the Time Published)
Circa 1965-1974
Copied from Article as Printed
by Betty Bowman Gabbard
In the year 1606 King James I of England granted to the Virginia Company a large territory in the new world which included the territory now comprising the Commonwealth of Kentucky. After the settlement of Virginia the land which is now Kentucky was part of Fincastle county, Virginia. In 1776 Kentucky county was divided into three counties known as Fayette, Lincoln and Jefferson, by act of the legislature of Virginia. In 1786 the county of Madison was organized from a portion of Lincoln county.
In 1792 Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the 15th state. After Kentucky became a state the original counties were subdivided into various counties, one of which was the county of Clay which was organized in 1806 and named in honor of General Green Clay. Clay was taken from territory which had earlier belonged to Madison. In 1807 Estill was organized from portions of Madison and Clark, and in 1839 Breathitt was formed from parts of Clay, Perry and Estill. It was from these three counties, Clay, Estill and Breathitt, that the county of Owsley was formed in the year 1843. Owsley was named in honor of William Owsley, a prominent Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals and later Governor of the state.
The original boundaries of Owsley County included what is now Owsley, most of what is now Lee, and a considerable portion of what is now Jackson and Wolfe. The territory comprising the original boundaries of Owsley county were first seen by white men in 1750 when Dr. Thomas Walker and his company passed through this area near the junction of the three forks of the Kentucky River, now the site of Beattyville. Dr. Walker’s journal states that he was accompanied on this trip by Ambrose Powell, William Tomlinson, Colby Chew, Henry Lawless and John Hughes. Dr. Walker also gives us some idea of the abundant wild life to be found in Southeastern and Eastern Kentucky of that date. He says, “We killed in the journey 13 buffaloes, 8 elk, 53 bears, 20 deer, 4 wild geese, about 150 wild turkeys, besides small game, we might have killed three times as much if we had wanted it.”
A few years after Dr. Thomas Walker explored this area, the McAfee brothers passed through on one of their hunting trips. After the McAfees the next person to explore the region of the Three Forks was Daniel Boone. In 1770 Boone had a camp on Station Camp Creek in what is now Estill County. It was near the mouth of this creek that Boone camped alone while his brother Squire Boone returned to North Carolina to get a supply of ammunition. Upon Squire’s return the two spent the following winter on Station Camp.
During 1770-1771 the Boone brothers made numerous hunting trips up the South Fork of the Kentucky river. They established a temporary camp near the mouth of Buck Creek at what is now the town of Booneville. While camping at the mouth of Buck Creek, on one of his trips up the South Fork, Daniel Boone found the nest of a goose on the top of a large rock in the middle of the river, just above the mouth of the stream now knows as Sexton Creek. Boone called the whole of the South Fork by the name of Goose Creek after finding the goose’s nest, and this name was applied to the stream for many years.
In 1784 Daniel Boone as a deputy surveyor of Lincoln county, surveyed 50,000 acres of land for John Donelson and James Moore. With him were William Brooks and Septimus Davis as chain carriers, and Edmund Calloway as marker. The survey calls “Beginning one mile from the mouth of Sextons Creek---------”.
In 1816 Septimus Davis identified the beginning corer to Andrew Bradley, then surveyor of Clay County. The John Donelson mentioned in the survey referred to was the brother of Rachel Donelson Jackson, wife of Andrew Jackson. The Donelsons at that time lived near Harrodsburg.
Most of the first land entries made in what is now Owsley county were made by men who were more interested in land speculation than in settling on the land entered. This was true of the greater part of southeastern Kentucky.
The first person known to have settled on the South Fork, then known as Goose Creek, was one James Collins who built a cabin on Collins Fork if Goose Creek in 1780 and shortly afterward began the manufacture of salt there.
The first persons to become permanent settlers in the area now composing Owsley County were James Moore, John Abner, Henry Gabbard, William Baker and William Neal. The families of these five men moved in about the same time although they did not come together. John Abner and William Neal had made a hunting trip up the South Creek after having killed several large buffaloes in the Canebrakes Fork as early as 1780 and legend has it that they named Buffalo near the mouth of the creek.
Most of the early settlers in Southeastern Kentucky were originally from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Pennsylvania. They came for many different reasons, some to hunt, others in search of lands, and there is much to indicate that many came in search of legendary treasures, notably Swift’s Silver Mines.
The early inhabitants of the Kentucky mountains were mostly English, French, German, Scotch and Irish. The pure Anglo-Saxon race which many orators and writers have insisted on locating in the hill country does not exist, nor has it ever existed. The mountain people represent a mixture of the early Colonial stock which first settled the various sections of the United States.
A more or less legendary silver mine brought numerous adventurers to the headwaters of the Kentucky River at an early date. The story is that of the Swift Silver Mine which tradition has handed down for generations in various sections of the hill country. The legend is that from 1760 to 1769, one John Swift in company with some Shawnee Indians discovered and mined a great amount of silver in Eastern Kentucky. The presence of a band of hostile Cherokee Indians forced Swift and his men to bury their treasure and flee for their lives.
About 1790 Swift and the Shawnees, who alone with him knew of the location of the buried treasure, returned to their cache. There Swift slew his companions while they slept and being unable to carry away the silver by himself he again returned to the settlements empty-handed. Shortly thereafter Swift lost his eyesight, and was never able to re-locate the silver.
Tradition places the location of Swift’s mining activities along the Paint River, the headwaters of the Kentucky River, Laurel County, Jackson County, Breathitt County, and various other locations. Local tradition has it that John Abner, who with William Neal made a hunting trip up South Fork in 1870 told of having met a Shawnee Indian who claimed to have helped Swift mine the silver somewhere near the Three Forks of the Kentucky River. He also informed Abner that the silver was so plentiful that if the white men were only smart enough to locate it they could shoe their horses more cheaply with silver than with iron.
According to some historians, this rumor of buried silver brought about the death of Colonel James Harrod, the founder of Harrodsburg.
The story is that in 1793 Colonel Harrod was approached by one Bridges, a former enemy, who now appeared to be very friendly, and who claimed to have located the Swift Silver Mine near the Three Forks. Harrod and another man accompanied Bridges to the Three Forks and upon arriving there they separated and went hunting, the intention being to kill some game for food to use while camping there. The third man had gone only a short distance when he heard a shot, thinking that one of his companions had already killed a deer, he returned to camp and upon arriving there found Bridges greatly excited and claiming to have heard a shot and seen signs of hostile Indians. Harrod did not reappear and Bridges insisting that he had been killed by Indians, persuaded his companion to return with him immediately to the settlements.
Sometime later a searching party ascended the Kentucky to Three Forks in an attempt to find Harrod. Near the present site of Proctor they found the bones of a man and pieces of a hunting shirt which was identified as Harrod’s. In the meantime Bridges had made his escape and was never more heard of.
This perished Colonel James Harrod, one of Kentucky’s earliest and boldest settlers, and to this day no student of the past has been able to locate his final resting place.
We have seen from an earlier installment of these sketches that the first permanent settlers in Owsley county were James Moore, Henry Gabbard, William Neal, William Baker and John Abner. These five men and their families came into the region in the spring of 1798 and were joined by several other families a year later. Many hunters, surveyors and land speculators had been here previous to 1798 and much of the land had been taken up by these speculators.
Some of the early surveys were the following: In 1783 Richard Moore, 2,000 acres on South Fork; John Abner 1,000 acres on Kentucky River. In 1784 Jno Bailey, 3,000 acres on Sturgeon; Joseph Boone, 1,000 acres on Sturgeon; Daniel Boone, 100 acres on South Fork; Samuel Overton 10,000 acres on South Fork; Richard Nall, 3,000 acres on South Fork; Carnegg and Paul, 300,306 acres on the Three Forks; John Carman, 300,306 acres at Three Forks; Benj. Wynkoop, 50,000 acres at Sexton’s Creek.
Another attraction which brought many of the first hunters into the Three Forks area was the “wolf scalp laws”. The Kentucky General Assembly in 1795 passed an act offering a bounty of three shillings for the head of each wolf under six months old and eight shillings for the head of each wolf over six months old. The legislators had an early precedent for this law, Edgar, the Saxon King of England, who succeeded to the throne in 958 having sponsored a similar measure which had brought about the extermination of wolves in England.
The Wolf Bounty Law immediately became very popular. The early settlers devoted much of their time to hunting wolves for the sake of the bounties, and in the Kentucky hills. In 1812 the Sheriff of Clay county, upon investigating the unusual number of wolf scalps being brought to Manchester by one hunter, learned that wolves were being reared in pens on a small creek located between Buffalo and Indian Creeks. That creek has since this occurrence been called Wolf Creek and is now a part of Owsley county.
December 21, 1837, an act was passed raising the bounty on wolves to six dollars per scalp. An act of March, 1847 lowered the bounty to three dollars per scalp, and placed a bounty of fifty cents per head on wildcats. Later bounties were offered for the scalps of red foxes and grey foxes. Most of the bounties paid hunters from this section were paid by counties of Madison and Clay, Owsley not having been organized as a county. However after Owsley became a county in 1843, between the years of 1843 and 1879 the County Court of Owsley allowed claims totaling $109.00 for wolf scalps, $505. for wildcat scalps, $440. for red foxes,------------. (remainder of line missing from copy)
Owsley was at one time a favorite hunting ground of the Indians of the north as well as the south. Early settlers encountered many scattered bands of Shawnee from the north and Cherokees from the south. Arrowheads and other artifacts are still quite common here but these are almost the only remaining traces of the Red man.
A branch of the old Warriors Path used in crossing Kentucky by the Indians lead across Sextons Creek in Clay County, through Clay Gap to Island Creek in Owsley, thence down the South Fork to what is now known as Belle Point in Lee County, and from there to Indian Old Fields where it rejoined the main trail.
The early settlers in this area had numerous encounters with bands of Indians. What was probably the last Indian raid in Kentucky was made within the present boundary of Clay County. The Kentucky Herald published at Lexington (March 28, 1795) states: “By a gentleman just from the salt works, we are informed that the Indians stole a number of horses from that place last week, and they also killed a man on Goose Creek.”
Not all the Indians were unfriendly. Two Indians who lived on South Fork for many years after it was settled by white men were well liked and respected by the settlers. These two men were Captain Jack for whom Jacks Creek was named, and a Cherokee chief called Redbird who lived on the banks of a stream which now bears his name. Captain Jack and Chief Redbird were finally killed by white renegades and robbed of their furs. The ancestry of several present day families, many of them the most prominent citizens of their respective communities, can be traced back to Chief Redbird of the Cherokees.
A few families moved into what is now Owsley County between the years of 1798 and 1810 but most of the county was uninhabited as late as 1815. In 1815 an act of the General Assembly opened for sale at twenty dollars per hundred acres all vacant lands in the state. Under this law the purchaser secured a warrant from the state treasurer which was in turn converted into a land office warrant authorizing the from faulty titles cased by care-certain acreage. When this had been completed and returned to the land office it was registered and a land patent was issued to the owner within six months.
Much of the surveying done in locating these early claims was quite inaccurate and almost endless litigation has resulted from faulty titles caused by careless methods of surveying and marking boundary lines.
After the act of 1815 was passed making mountain lands more easily available, settlers began to come into the ill country rapidly and by 1843 practically every creek in the Three Forks area was thinly populated.
Many of the pioneers who settled Kentucky were veterans of the Revolutionary War. Some of the Veterans who settled in the Three Forks area were Matthias horn, and Jesse Robertson of the Virginia Line; Thomas Stapleton of the North Carolina Line; David Snowden of the Pennsylvania Line; and Samuel Woods, of the Third South Carolina Cavalry. **Woods died in 1825 at the home of Peter Gabbard on the South Fork. He was at that time receiving a pension from the Federal Government on account of injuries incurred in the line of duty while fighting the British and their Indian allies.
** Clay County, Kentucky Court Order Book “B” 1815 to 1832:
193. “Kentucky, Clay county 26 June 1826........And on motion of John Wood, administrater as aforesaid - Satisfactory proof was made to the court by the Testamony of two creditable witnesses (to wit Jacob Gabbard and Edward Gabbard) that said Samuel Wood died at the house of Jacob Gabbard in the county of Clay and state of Kentucky on 13 Dec 1825 and that said Samuel Wood dec’d was to their knowledge a Revolutionary pensioner and they believed him to be the Identical person named in an original pension certificate now present and shown to the court and of which the following is a copy: ......”
Note: The name “Samuel Wood” can be seen among the names of those who fought in the BATTLE OF BLUE LICKS. This monument is on the grounds of Blue Licks State Park. This is said to be the last battle of the Revolutionary War.
After the area around the junction of the Three Forks became fairly well settled, the people of lower Clay and Breathitt, and upper Estill circulated a petition asking for the organization of a new county. Their main reason for desiring the creation of a new county being that very poor roads existed and it was difficult to travel the long distances to the county seats of Clay, Estill and Breathitt.
Thursday, January 12, 1843 the petition asking for the organization of the new county was presented to the General Assembly by Representative Ansel Daniel of Estill County. The legislature passed an act to establish the county and the act was approved by Governor Robert P. Letcher on January 24, 1843.
The text of the act is as follows:
Sec. An Act To Establish The County of Owsley
Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, that from and after the first day of June next, al parts of the Counties of Clay, Estill and Breathitt contained in the following boundary:
Beginning at the mouth of Willow Shoal Branch on the Kentucky River in the County of Estill, thence south to James K. Harris’ house on Grassy Branch, thence with the dividing line between Station Camp and Sturgeon Creeks, to line between Clay and Estill; thence with Clay and Estill line to Laurel line; thence with Clay and Laurel line until it crosses Pond Creek; thence up Pond Creek so as to include John Rader’s residence; thence with dividing ridge between Sextons Creek and Sturgeon to the head of Island Creek to the gap between Robert Morris’s and Henry Clark’s, where what is called the Estill Road crosses; thence a straight line to Lewis Sandlings residence, excluding him; thence a straight line to Levi B. Hunt’s residence on South Fork, including Hunt; thence up the South Fork of the Kentucky River to the mouth of Buffalo Creek; thence up the dividing ridge between the South Fork and Buffalo Creek to the head of Buffalo, and on the dividing ridge between the South and Middle Fork; thence with said ridge to the Breathitt County line at the head of Long’s Creek; thence with the Breathitt County line to head of Meadow Creek; thence with dividing line between South and Middle Fork to a point from which a straight line to the middle of Snag Shoal will include the house and buildings of Archibald Crawford; thence a straight line from Crawford’s to said Snag Shoal on North Fork of Kentucky River; thence up the point of the ridge between Bloody and Upper Devil’s Creek, to the Morgan County line; thence with the Morgan line to Estill and Montgomery line; thence with Estill and Montgomery line so as to include the big bald rock on the waters of Miller’s Creek; thence a straight line to the mouth of Big Willow Shoal Branch to the beginning, shall be, and the same is hereby, erected into one distinct county, to be called and known by the name of Owsley, in honor of William Owsley.
After the new political division known as the County of Owsley was organized by the General Assembly in 1843, Luther Brawner of Clay, Joseph Wilson of Estill, John V. L. McKee of Laurel, and William Chenault of Madison were appointed Commissioners to locate a county seat for the new county. These Commissioners were instructed to meet at the house of John Moore of Booneville on the third Monday of August, 1843.
Governor Robert P. Letcher appointed James McGuire, Jr., as the first Sheriff of Owsley County, Wm. Morris as County Agent, and James Anglin as Coroner. Seven Magisterial Districts were created and the following men were appointed as the first Justices of the Peace: William Clark, David Snowden, Hiram McGuire, William Morris, Lassiter Robertson, Pleasant Reynolds and George H. Brandenburg. February 26, 1848 the General Assembly ordered the erection of an eighth Magisterial District. This was laid off to include all the lands drained by Buffalo Creek. Five Constables were appointed in 1843.
At the time Owsley was organized Circuit Judges were appointed by the Governor, as were the Surveyor, Coroner, and Justices. Sheriffs were nominated by the Justices and appointed by the Governor. County Clerks and County Attorneys were appointed by the Justices. The Circuit Clerk and Commonwealth Attorney were appointed by the Circuit Judge. This system of selecting officials was in effect until the new Constitution of the state went into effect in 1850.
Other laws in effect in 1883 included paying Constables 41 1/2 cents for whipping slaves, Jailers 37 1/2 cents per day for providing prisoners in jail, Sheriffs 41 1/2 cents for pilloring persons, for putting in the stocks any person 21 cents, for ducking any person sentenced to this penalty 41 1/2 cents, for executing a condemned person $5.21.
When Owsley County was created by act of the General Assembly in 1843 Commissioners were selected to locate a County Seat. The Commissioners had much difficulty in locating the county seat, many citizens wanting it located at Proctor, a small village on the main Kentucky River, named in honor of the Reverend Joseph Proctor, a famous Indian fighter and follower of Captain James Estill.
The citizens of the South Fork held out for locating the county seat at Booneville, a small village which had grown up on the South Fork at the site of one of Daniel Boone’s old camps and had been named in honor of the great woodsman.
After some delay the Commissioners voted to locate the seat of justice at Booneville. The General Assembly passed an act in 1844 providing that the “Circuit and County Courts of Owsley County shall hereafter be held at the house now occupied by Lassiter J. Robertson, until a house for the purpose shall be prepared by the County Court of said County.”
Archibald McGuire and other residents of the Proctor section presented a petition to the General Assembly protesting against the location of the county seat asking that it be re-located on Mr. McGuire’s property at Proctor. February 29, 1844 the General Assembly passed an act requiring an election to be held in April, 1844, to commence on the first Thursday and hold for three days to determine the permanent location of the county seat. Two points were to be considered, one at Elias Moore’s at Booneville and the other at Archibald McGuire’s at Proctor, near the Three Forks. The place getting the most votes was to be the permanent county seat. Voting was held at Lassiter Robertson’s house and Booneville won by a small majority. - Note by BBG: Booneville won by a very small majority of one v
Previous articles in this work were written by Fred W. Gabbard and published in the local Owsley County newspaper. The 10 articles were copied to be placed on this internet site by Betty B. Gabbard. These are the only articles that I have found in the series that he did.
The following article was written for the purpose of bringing the history of Owsley County forward from the date of Fred’s last article to the date when the county reached it’s present size. This has not been published and is for the use of the Owsley County Historical Society. BBG
by Betty (Bowman) Gabbard
At the end of Fred W. Gabbard’s last printed article, # 10, Booneville had won the majority of votes to have the county seat located here. In 1844 David Snowden was sheriff, William Williams was both Circuit Clerk and County Clerk and William Morris of Island Creek was County Agent. Mr. Morris had been appointed County Agent on 9 May 1843 in accordance with an act of the General Assembly passed 17 January 1840, authorizing the state to appoint an agent in each county to represent the state, and to take over the lands of those dying intestate or to sell lands of those who did not pay their taxes.
Owsley was at first placed in the 10th Judicial District composed of Bourbon, Nicholas, Estill and Owsley. Circuit Court was held in May and November of each year and remained in session for four days each term. In 1844 Owsley was placed in the 15th Judicial District with the counties of Clay, Rockcastle, Harlan, Knox, Laurel and Whitley. The Circuit Judge of this district was Turnstall Quarles and the Commonwealth’s Attorney was Silas Woodson, who later moved to Missouri and was elected Governor of that state.
Both Circuit and County Courts were held at the house of Lassiter J. Robertson from 1843 to 1846. In 1846 a small courthouse of log construction was completed at Booneville.
Owsley County’s first and only legal execution occurred in 1846. A Negro youth was sentenced to hang at Booneville, and the sentence of the court was carried out by Sheriff William Abner. The Negro was hanged to a tree near the present Buck Creek Bridge and was buried on top of the point overlooking the village from the Buck Creek side. (This point was removed for construction of new Highway 11 about 1982.)
The only other person ever to be sentenced to death in Owsley County without the sentence later being changed was a man named Smith who was sentenced to death in 1882 for the murder of a woman on Indian Creek. After hearing the verdict, Smith who was in jail, hanged himself with a pair of suspenders.
March 1, 1847, Booneville was incorporated and the town limits were extended so as to include a few nearby houses. It was in this year that Lewis Collins wrote his famous History of Kentucky. William Williams of South Fork contributed a brief sketch on the history of the county for that publication.
In the year 1849 a Constitutional Convention for the state was held at Frankfort and a new constitution was written and adopted. Owsley and Estill were represented by Luther Brawner of Owsley. Brawner was born in Charles County, MD in 1811 and moved to Kentucky at an early age. He married Maria Garrard of Manchester in 1831. In 1833 he purchased 2540 acres of land between the mouths of Indian Creek and Cow Creek and lying on both sides of the river, from Elisha Williamson Bowman, prominent Methodist minister, and moved to the mouth of Indian Creek. Brawner was at the time the largest slave owner in this section. In 1834 he was appointed Justice of the Peace for this section of Clay County and served until 1840. When Owsley was organized Brawner served as one of the commissioners selected to locate the county seat. In 1858 he and his family moved to Texas.
In 1849 the people of Proctor section again petitioned the General Assembly to remove the County Seat from Booneville to their settlement and the Assembly in 1851 passed another act providing for an election to settle the issue. The election was to be held the first Monday in May 1851. Voting was at Booneville with the following election officers: Judges, John C. Faulkner and Joseph Seale; Clerk, James Smallwood; Sheriff, Abel Pennington.
Partisans of Proctor had contended that they could not get a fair election if the voting was all done at Booneville as it had been in 1844, so the citizens of the Proctor section were allowed to hold their election at Proctor on the same dates. The election officers for Proctor were: Judges, Absolam R. Dickerson and Hiram McGuire; Clerk, M. G. Horton; Sheriff, William B. McGuire.
The election lasted two consecutive days and the act provided that the village having the most votes at the end of that time was to be selected. An amendment to the act provided that in the event Proctor won, the citizens of Proctor were to move the public buildings and pay for any new ones constructed. The election was held as ordered and again Booneville won by a small majority.
In its early days Owsley was a large county, its original boundaries including most of what is now Lee County, and much of the present Jackson and Wolfe Counties in addition to its present acreage. The first reduction in size occurred in 1858 at which time Jackson County was organized out of parts of Owsley, Clay, Estill, Laurel, and Rockcastle.
In 1860 Owsley lost more territory when the County of Wolfe was organized from parts of Owsley, Breathitt, Morgan and Powell. In 1869 after the section had somewhat recovered from the effects of the Civil War, the people of Proctor, still unhappy about the location of the county seat, adopted different tactics in their struggle to get themselves a county seat. That year they again petitioned the General Assembly, but this time instead of asking that the county seat be moved from Booneville to their village, they petitioned for the organization of a new county so that they might have the advantages of a conveniently located county seat.
The General Assembly finally passed on an act to create a new county to be called Lee County. The act was approved 29 January 1870. The county seat was to be located at Proctor on a public square donated to the town by A. B. McGuire on 21 April 1845. John Cole, Sr. was appointed commissioner to run and mark the boundaries of the new county.
However, Proctor was once again to fail to realize her long cherished ideal of becoming a “County Seat Town”. The people of Canaan and Beattyville, two other Lee County villages, each petitioned the legislature against location of the county seat at Proctor, and each requested that their own town be made the Seat of Justice. An election was ordered to be held in 1871 to decide whether Proctor, Canaan or Beattyville should be selected. After a bitterly contested election Beattyville was selected by a narrow margin of two votes.
Curtis Jett and William Spencer of Breathitt County, and John Farmer of Jackson County were appointed commissioners to select and lay off suitable grounds upon which to erect the public buildings necessary to the new county.
The creation of this new county reduced Owsley County in area so that was now one of the smaller counties of the state now having a total area of 216 square miles, and no longer containing within its borders any part of the Middle Fork, North Fork, or main Kentucky River. Owsley was now drained wholly by the South Fork and its tributaries and by Sturgeon Creek.
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