Welcome To Morgan County, Kentucky
Jewel of Eastern Kentucky

Morgan County

Morgan County, the seventy-third in order of formation, is located in eastern Kentucky.  Covering 382 square miles, it is bounded by Rowan, Elliott, Menifee, Wolfe, Magoffin, Johnson and Lawrence counties.  Morgan County was created from Bath and Floyd counties in 1822.  West Liberty was established as the county seat in 1824.  The county was named for General Daniel Morgan, a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

The county’s major waterway is the Licking River and Cave Run Lake, which forms a portion of the county’s northwest boundary.  This area is also part of the Daniel Boone National Forest.  Major roads are KY 7, U.S. 460 and the Mountain Parkway.  Communites within the county include Ezel, Wrigley, Cannel City and Crockett.  Cattle and burley tobacco are the main agricultural pursuits and timber production is a major industry.  Because of its wide fertile valleys Morgan County has long been called “the Bluegrass county of the mountains.”

In 1787 surveying parties visited the area that was to become Morgan County. Settlement in the mountainous eastern region of the state lagged behind that in central Kentucky, but by 1800 the first permanent settlements were established.  Pioneers were drawn to the area by cheap but fertile land, forested with virgin timber and teeming with game.  Among the earliest settlers in Morgan County was Daniel Williams.  Tradition says he came to Kentucky from North Carolina with Daniel Boone in the 1770s and was a veteran of the Battle of Blue Licks.  Thomas Lewis was another early settler, who had served with General George Rogers Clark in western Kentucky.  Others include Gardner (or Garner) Hopkins, a Revolutionary War veteran from New York and Thomas Caskey, who married Hopkins’ daughter Lydia.

In 1822 residents of the area sought to form a new county and an act for that purpose was approved by the General Assembly on December 7.  March 10 of the following year twelve justices of the peace met at Edmund Wells’ tavern on the Licking River and presented their commissions signed by Governor John Adair.  The twelve justices were Edmund Wells, William Biddle, Johseph Carroll, John Hammans, Fielding Hanks, William Lewis, Isaac Lykins, Thomas Nickell, John S. Oakley, Holloway Power, John Williams and Mason Williams.    In 1823 the General Assembly established the county seat, a town to be called West Liberty and created from land provided by Edmund Wells.  Wells, a millwright, was subsequently awarded the contracts to erect the civic buildings.  These consisted of a log jail, completed in 1825 and a two-story frame courthouse that was finished in 1828.

The population of Morgan County as conducted by the U.S. Census was 10,019 in 1970, 12,103 in 1980, 11,648 in 1990 and 13,948 in 2000.

JOE NICKELL
The Kentucky Encyclopedia                                                           

West Liberty is the county seat of Morgan County and is located in the center of the county and lies on the Licking River at the junction of KY 7 and U.S. 460.

Around 1805 Daniel Williams, a Baptist minister built probably the first log cabin at the future town site in what was then part of Floyd County.  Others followed and with the installation of a gristmill completed about 1816 by Edmund Wells the settlement became known as Wells Mill.  After Morgan County was organized on March 10, 1823 the settlement was chosen as the site of the county seat.  The site was laid out on thirty-nine acres of land provided by Wells.

Despite its name West Liberty lies some one hundred miles northeast of Liberty, which is in Casey County.  According to tradition the name came about when the Wells Mill settlement was to be officially converted into the county seat.  Pike County to the east was in the process of creating its own seat of government (eventually Pikeville) which at the time was to be named Liberty.  Thus Morgan chose the name West Liberty. West Liberty became incorporated in 1840.

Currently the city is the site of a small airport, the Appalachian Regional Hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library and the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex.  The population of the fourth class city was 1,387 in 1970, 1,381 in 1980, 1,887 in 1990 and 3,277 in 2000.

JOE NICKELL
The Kentucky Encyclopedia 

Contact us | View site map