Anderson County

Anderson County, the eighty-second county in order of formation, is located in the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky. The county is bounded by Spencer, Shelby, Franklin, Woodford, Nelson, Mercer, and Washington counties and covers 204 square miles. Lawrenceburg, incorporated in 1820 as Lawrence, is the county seat. Most of the area is rolling hills. The most rugged terrain is near the Kentucky River, which borders the county on the east. The other major waterway is the Salt River, which flows north and then west through the county's center. There are deposits of limestone, clay, sand, and gravel in the county. A variety of agricultural commodities are produced, including burley tobacco and livestock. The county was established on January 16, 1827, from parts of Franklin, Washington, and Mercer counties. It was named for Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., a Kentucky legislator, U.S. congressman, and minister to Colombia.

What later became Anderson County was settled in the late 1770s and early 1780s. Many of the early settlers had spent time at James Harrod's Fort (now Harrodsburg) and had come north to take up land claims. Among them were Richard Benson, Nathan Hammond, William Brayer, and Thomas Baker. Jacob Kaufman (or Coffman), a German immigrant, established Kaufman's Station around 1780. He owned 1,400 acres on the future site of Lawrenceburg. Another early settlement was John Arnold's Station, built around 1783 on the Kentucky River just above the mouth of the Little Benson Creek. In 1798 the Salt River Baptist Church was built two miles south of Lawrenceburg. Its first pastor was John Penney, great-grandfather of J.C. Penney, who founded the chain of retail stores.

A network of trails connecting the pioneer settlements, which came together at Kaufman's Station, later developed into a road system that made Lawrenceburg the dominant city in the county. Trails led northward to settlements that became Frankfort and Shelbyville, southward to Harrodsburg, west to Bardstown, and east to where the Woodford Road forded the Kentucky River and connected with Lexington. Beginning in the 1830s, some of the county's roads were improved to turnpikes. Hemp, tobacco, and corn were important early crops, and distilling became a major local industry. Bond's Mill was erected in 1831 on Salt River and operated on that site until well into the twentieth century. In 1833 a cholera epidemic killed eighty-nine residents of the county.

During the Mexican War (1846-48), Anderson County furnished Company C, 2d Kentucky Infantry Regiment, known as the Salt River Tigers. Led by Capt. John H. McBrayer, it fought at the Battle of Buena Vista. During the Civil War, approximately four hundred county residents fought for the Confederacy, and two hundred entered the Union army. On October 8, 1862, while the Battle of Perryville was being fought to the south, some of Maj. Jones M. Withers's Confederates skirmished with a rear-guard Union force under the command of Gen. J. W. Sill near Fox Creek, five miles west of Lawrenceburg. The next day, the battle-weary Confederate army of Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby-Smith encamped at McCall's Spring near the Mercer County line before withdrawing from Kentucky. In the later years of the war, there were numerous skirmishes in the county between partisan guerrillas and local Union Home Guard units.

A boon to the county's prosperity was the coming of the Southern Railway (now Norfolk Southern) to Anderson County in 1888. With the completion of Young's High Bridge over the Kentucky River at Tyrone, Anderson County was connected by rail with Louisville and Lexington. The cantilever bridge was named for Col. Bennett H. Young, a former Confederate officer and Louisville railroad promoter. The bridge and the railroad helped to speed Anderson County's best known product, bourbon whiskey, to market. Among the larger distilleries was one operated at Tyrone by the Ripy family (now Boulevard Distillers) and one on Salt River at Bond's Mill (now Joseph E. Seagram's and Son).

The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the production and sale of distilled spirits, had a drastic effect upon the local economy. Tyrone, especially hard-hit, declined from an incorporated town of more than nine hundred to a quiet unincorporated village along the river. Although the distillery reopened after the end of prohibition in 1933, the town never regained its size.

The economy of Anderson County is based on industry centered around Lawrenceburg and on agriculture. Many county residents commute north to state government jobs in Frankfort. The Bluegrass Parkway, which provides rapid access to Versailles and Lexington, made the county one of the fastest-growing areas in the Bluegrass region during the 1980s.

The population of the county was 9,358 in 1970; 12,567 in 1980; 14,571 in 1990; and 19,111 in 2000.