Welcome to Bracken County, KY History and Genealogy Presented by Kentucky Genealogy Trails a part of Genealogy Trails Volunteers Dedicated to Free Genealogy This Site is Available for Adoption Our goal is to help you track your ancestors through time by transcribing genealogical and historical data for the free use of all researchers. We're looking for folks who share our dedication to putting data online and are interested in helping this project be as successful as it can be. If you are interested in joining Genealogy Trails, view our Volunteer Page for further information and then contact Kim. (Enough knowledge to make a basic webpage and a desire to transcribe data is required) We regret that we are unable to perform personal research for folks. All data we come across will be added to this site. We thank you for visiting and hope you'll come back again to view the updates we make to this site. If you would like to be kept informed of our state and county website updates, subscribe to any or all of our mailing lists Kentucky is covered under our "Southern" States mailing list. COUNTY HISTORY Bracken County was organized as Kentucky's 23rd county in 1797 from parts of Mason and Campbell counties. It is named in honor of William Bracken, an early pioneer and surveyor, who first came to the area in 1773, then settled here. He met his death at an early day at the hands of the Indians. The original county was composed of all the way to southern Nicholas County, north to the Ohio River, west to the Licking River and east to Dover, Kentucky. Several early settlers were veterans of the American Revolutionary War among them was Capt. Abner Howell, who came from Pennsylvania with his family. He died in Bracken County in 1797. Bracken County played a major role in Underground Railroad. There are several Underground Railroad Sites in the Augusta, KY area. Bracken County's economy was largely agricultural; its chief crops before the American Civil War were tobacco and corn. White burley tobacco, a light, adaptable leaf that revolutionized the industry, was first produced in 1867 from Bracken County seed The county government moved from Augusta to Woodward's Crossing (now Brooksville) in 1833. Some records were lost in a fire on 20 Apr 1848 [Source: wikipedia.org] ONLINE DATA Biographies Births Cemeteries Census Church Histories/Records County History Court Records Deaths Family Bibles Extinct Towns Marriages Military Newspapers Obituaries Surnames Wills/Legal Records  Website Updates: June 2009: 1870 Mortality Index; List of places on the historic register List of Patrons for the 1884 Atlas; Early Settlers; Marriages for "H" Surnames; List of Cemeteries SURROUNDING COUNTIES * Clermont County, Ohio (north – across the Ohio River) * Brown County, Ohio (northeast – across the Ohio River) * Mason County (east) * Robertson County (south) * Harrison County (southwest) * Pendleton County (west) Back to Kentucky Trails Visit Our National Genealogy Trails Site Subscribe to our mailing lists to get notification when we update this and our other Southern websites. Copyright © Genealogy Trails All data on this website is Copyright by Genealogy Trails with full rights reserved for original submitters.