History of Kentucky
The early economy rested on family farms and traditional southern plantations in the central and western parts of the state, with a rapid growth in tobacco for the national market.
Following the Civil War, Kentucky underwent a period of Reconstruction, during which the state's political and social structures were reshaped to reflect the post-war era.
Kentucky, a major producer of bourbon and other distilled spirits, saw significant social and economic changes as a result, with moonshining in the mountains to provide liquor for the cities to the north.
At the end of the last ice age, between 8000 and 7000 BCE, Kentucky's climate stabilized; this led to population growth, and technological advances resulted in a more sedentary lifestyle.
[11] Mississippian sites in western Kentucky are at Adams, Backusburg, Canton, Chambers, Jonathan Creek, McLeod's Bluff, Rowlandtown, Sassafras Ridge, Turk, Twin Mounds and Wickliffe.
[15] The archaeological evidence (or lack thereof) indicates that for 50 years following the Beaver Wars, there were no Native American settlements in Kentucky, until the appearance of Eskippakithiki.
English colonists Gabriel Arthur and James Needham were sent out by Abraham Wood from Fort Henry (present-day Petersburg, Virginia) on May 17, 1673, with four horses and Cherokee and other Native American slaves,[20] to contact the Tomahittan (possibly the Yuchi).
In 1739, Frenchman Charles III Le Moyne, Baron de Longueil, on a military expedition discovered Big Bone Lick a few miles east of the Ohio River in extreme northern Kentucke.
A few years later, in 1744, Robert Smith, an English fur trader on the Great Miami River, confirmed le Moyne's find with additional discoveries at the Lick.
[citation needed] From the time of establishment of New France, there were complex and overlapping claims to land south of the Ohio including that which would become the future state of Kentucky.
[28] Numerous incidents of conflict between settlers and Native Americans in the south of Ohio lands, an expansive area including Kentucke and the Allegheny River basin upstream to southwestern Pennsylvania, eventually resulted in war.
In spring, 1774, James Harrod, with a royal charter from Lord Dunmore, led an expedition to survey land in Kentucke country promised by the British crown to soldiers who served in the French and Indian War.
John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, and Royal Governor of Virginia Colony, received news in May of 1774 that fighting between settlers and Ohio country Shawnee Indians had broken out in the upper Allegheny valley and elsewhere.
The Shawnee defeat in Lord Dunmore's War emboldened land speculators in North Carolina who believed that much of present-day Kentucky and Tennessee would soon be under British control.
Daniel Boone, Richard Henderson and others, particularly land speculators, founders of distilleries, lawyers and other prominent businessmen on the frontier had previously come to be called colonels.
Louisville was founded during the latter stages of the American Revolutionary War by Virginian soldiers under George Rogers Clark, first at Corn Island in 1778, then Fort-on-Shore and Fort Nelson on the mainland.
[56] In addition to river access, railroads helped solidify Louisville's place as Kentucky's commercial center and strengthened east and west trade ties (including the Great Lakes region).
As part of what is now known as the "Western Revival", thousands of people led by Presbyterian preacher Barton W. Stone came to the Cane Ridge Meeting House in Bourbon County in August 1801.
Stone broke with his Presbyterian background to form the new sect, which rejected Calvinism, required weekly communion and adult baptism, accepted the Bible as the source of truth, and sought to restore the values of primitive Christianity.
Doyle was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor in the state penitentiary by the Fayette Circuit Court, and the captured slaves were returned to their owners.
Although the Confederates won the bloody Battle of Perryville, Bragg retreated because he was in an exposed position; Kentucky remained in Union hands for the remainder of the war.
A number of chapters of the Ku Klux Klan formed as insurgent veterans sought to establish white supremacy by intimidation and violence against freedmen and free Blacks.
Although the Klan was suppressed by the federal government during the early 1870s, the Frankfort Weekly Commonwealth reported 115 incidents of shooting, lynching, and whipping of blacks by whites between 1867 and 1871.
[90] Congressman Alben W. Barkley became the spokesman of the anti-gambling group (nearly secured the 1923 Democratic gubernatorial nomination), and crusaded against powerful eastern Kentucky mining interests.
Fort Knox was expanded with the arrival of thousands of new recruits; an ordnance plant was built in Louisville, and the city became the world's largest producer of artificial rubber.
During the 1960s, as a result of successful local sit-ins during the civil rights movement, the Woolworth store in Lexington ended racial segregation at its lunch counter and in its restrooms.
[100] A rally in support of the bill attracted 10,000 Kentuckians and leaders and allies such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Jackie Robinson, and Peter, Paul and Mary.
"[101] Martin Luther King Jr. concurred with Breathitt's assessment of Kentucky's sweeping legislation, calling it "the strongest and most important comprehensive civil-rights bill passed by a Southern state.
Near the end of his second term, Patton was accused of abusing patronage and criticized for pardoning four former supporters who had been convicted of violating the state's campaign-finance laws.
Kentucky was the first state in the U.S. to adopt Common Core, after the General Assembly passed legislation in April 2009 under Governor Steve Beshear which laid the foundation for the new national standards.
