Silas Harlan (March 17, 1753 – August 19, 1782) was one of the early settlers of Kentucky, having arrived with James Harrod in 1774 to found Harrodstown – the oldest permanent white settlement in the territory (now Harrodsburg).

Following his death, Silas' fiancée, Sarah Caldwell, married his brother James and was the grandmother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan.

As a member of the Committee for the Defense of West Fincastle in 1776, Silas supported making Kentucky a county of Virginia rather than an independent state under the Transylvania Company, as did George Rogers Clark.

[1] In 1778, Silas, with the help of his uncle, Jacob, and his brother, James, founded "Harlan's Station", a log stockade on the Salt River near Danville, about seven miles above Harrodsburg.

January 2, 1777, at Harrodsburg, Silas Harlan was one of about thirty men raised by James Harrod to retrieve five hundred pounds of gunpowder from Three Islands in present-day Lewis County.