Garrard County

Garrard County, the twenty-fifth in order of formation, is located in the Outer Bluegrass region of central Kentucky. It is bordered by Boyle, Mercer, Jessamine, Madison, Rockcastle, and Lincoln counties and has an area of 232 square miles. The county was created by the legislature on December 17, 1796, and named for Gov. James Garrard (1796-1804). Lancaster, the county seat of Garrard County and its only incorporated town, was established by the first county court in 1797 on fifty-seven acres of land near Wallace's Crossroads donated by Capt. William Buford, a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

The county is bordered on the east by Paint Lick Creek, on the north by the Kentucky River, and on the west by Dick's (Dix) River and Herrington Lake. The terrain is mostly rolling and includes the Palisades of the Kentucky River on the north and the Knobs and foothills on the southeast.Garrard County was first settled because of its proximity to the Wilderness Road. Pioneers in the county maintained close ties with Fort Boonesborough and Logan's Station (Stanford) and had somewhat less contact with Lexington and Harrodsburg. The first station in what later became Garrard County was William Miller's, established in 1776 near Paint Lick. It was followed by James Smith's Station in 1779 near Bryantsville; James and John Downing's Station on Sugar Creek in 1779; Humphrey Best's Canebreak Station on Upper Paint Lick Creek in 1779-80; and Zophar Carpenter's Station, was believed to have been near Suck Fork Creek. William Grant established a station in the northern part of the county by 1784 on Hickman Creek. On Gilbert's Creek in the southwestern part of the county, Lewis Craig and his Baptist congregation from Upper Spotsylvania, Virginia, known as the Traveling Church, relocated en masse to Craig's Station in 1780-81.Cattle, hemp, and tobacco were among the early agricultural products of the county, shipped via the Kentucky River by flatboat to downstream markets. James Hogan established a ferry in 1785 to bring Garrard County products to his warehouse across the river at the mouth of Hickman Creek in what is now Jessamine County. In 1789 Collier's warehouse was built at the mouth of Sugar Creek. Later the town of Quantico developed there, and flour, hemp, tobacco, beef, and pork were inspected and shipped from that point until the 1820s. The county then began a vigorous road-building program so that goods could be taken to market by wagon.Garrard County provided the commonwealth with a number of distinguished leaders, including Gov. William O. Bradley (1895-99) and George Robertson, who was U.S. congressman (1817-21) and chief justice of the Kentucky court of appeals (1829-43, 1870-71). One of the most prominent families of antebellum Garrard County was the Kennedys. General Thomas Kennedy, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, immigrated from North Carolina in 1776.In 1840 the Hill-Evans feud started in Lancaster because of a disagreement over the treatment of a slave woman whom Dr. Hezekiah Evans had hired from Dr. O.P. Hill. Members of both families were drawn into the violence, which killed nine people and wounded others. Hill left the county for Mexico after an assassination attempt but returned in 1855 and was murdered in 1862 by a man unrelated to the feud.In August of 1861, Camp Dick Robinson was established seven miles north of Lancaster as the first Union enlistment station south of the Ohio River. Many Union troops from central and eastern Kentucky as well as eastern Tennessee entered federal service there. During the war, enlistments from Garrard County ran approximately three to one in favor of the Union. After the war, the completion of the Stanford-Richmond line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (now CSX Transportation) in 1868 through Lancaster spawned growth in the city. Products grown or raised in the county could be sent rapidly to market. Garrard County produced cattle, sheep, hogs, poultry, and thoroughbred horses, but was most noted for burley tobacco. The railroad helped Lancaster grow into a prosperous market town, but by the 1930s the line suffered from truck and auto competition, which caused the Richmond-Lancaster branch to be abandoned. The Stanford-Lancaster branch lingered until the 1980s, when it too was abandoned.During the twentieth century, Garrard County has remained primarily an agricultural area with a major emphasis on the production of burley tobacco. In 1989 there were approximately 1,500 tobacco growers in the county, who produced a total of 7 million pounds of burley, for an income of $11,700,000.The population of Garrard County was 9,457 in 1970; 10,853 in 1980; 11,579 in 1990; and 14,792 in 2000.