[2] The county was created in 1843 by the Virginia General Assembly and named for Richmond newspaper publisher Thomas Ritchie.

Later that year, the new state's counties were divided into civil townships, with the intention of encouraging local government.

This proved impractical in the heavily rural state, and in 1872 the townships were converted into magisterial districts.

[4] Ritchie County was divided into four districts: Clay, Grant, Murphy, and Union.

[5] In 1911, historian Minnie Kendall Lowther published "The History of Ritchie County."

As of the 2010 United States census, there were 10,449 people, 4,367 households, and 2,960 families living in the county.

[16] After having leaned strongly towards the Democratic Party between the New Deal and Bill Clinton's presidency, most of West Virginia has since 2000 seen an extremely rapid swing towards the Republican Party due to declining unionization[17] along with views on environmental, social and cultural issues increasingly at odds with the national Democratic party.

Only one Democratic presidential nominee has carried Ritchie County since West Virginia's statehood: Woodrow Wilson in 1912, and he won by a mere six votes with only 34.22 percent of all votes against a Republican Party mortally divided between conservative incumbent Taft and progressive Theodore Roosevelt.