The county is named for Major Joseph Hamilton Daveiss (a recording error in the State Clerk's office accounts for the error in spelling, which was never corrected), the United States Attorney who unsuccessfully prosecuted Aaron Burr.

The courthouse was burned in January 1865 during the American Civil War, but the county records were spared destruction because they had been transferred to a church.

[5] The northern half of the county along the Ohio River is relatively flat, with a few rolling hills dotting the landscape.

The southern portion was mined for coal in the past, especially in the rolling hills along Panther Creek and other streams.

Daviess County has long had a reputation as the leading center of the production of distilled spirits, chiefly Kentucky bourbon.

Walter McFarland, who moved here from North Carolina, began making whiskey and peach brandy in about 1804 on a 200-acre (0.81 km2) estate just south of Panther Creek, on today's U.S.

[12] Cornelius Westerfield also began distilling corn whiskey in the early 1800s on his farm three miles (4.8 km) southwest of Whitesville, Kentucky, on Deserter Creek.

McCullough began the Green River Distillery which ran until Prohibition and was subsequently purchased thereafter by Charles Medley Distillers where it ran until the 1950s, changing ownership a number of times without producing anything until its eventual purchase by Trinidad-based Angostura Limited, who bought the Medley Distillery in 2007 with plans to make its entrance into the world's bourbon market, but the severe global recession in 2008 ended those plans.

[13] The following is list of distilleries operating in 1883[14] The southwestern portion of the county around the Panther Creek area was heavily mined through the 1960s till the early 1990s.

The licensed blaster employed by the contractor blasted the highwall into the pit, resulting in a reduced effort to grade and dress the final slope.

Through innovative field techniques and extraordinary cooperation from the contractor, this site has been returned to a very safe, stable and productive property.