Owsley County, Kentucky

Owsley County, Kentucky
Owsley County courthouse in Booneville
Location in the U.S. state of Kentucky
Kentucky's location in the U.S.
Founded	1843
Seat	Booneville
Largest city	Booneville
Area
• Total	198 sq mi (513 km2)
• Land	197 sq mi (510 km2)
• Water	0.9 sq mi (2 km2), 0.4%
Population
• (2010)	4,755
• Density	24/sq mi (9/km²)
Congressional district	5th
Time zone	Eastern: UTC-5/-4

Owsley County is a county located in the Eastern Coalfield region of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2010 census, the population was 4,755, making it the second-least populous county in Kentucky. The county seat is Booneville. The county was organized on January 23, 1843 from Clay, Estill, and Breathitt counties and named for William Owsley (1782–1862), the judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals and Governor of Kentucky (1844–48).

According to the 2010 census reports, Owsley County has the second highest level of child poverty of any county in the United States. In terms of income per household, the county is the poorest in the nation. Between 1980 and 2014, the rate of death from cancer in the county increased by 45.6 percent, the largest such increase of any county in the United States.

Owsley County was formed in 1843 from portions of Clay, Breathitt, and Estill Counties and was named for Governor William Owsley. Owsley County was Kentucky's 96th county. Parts of Owsley County were used to form Jackson County in 1858 and Lee County in 1870.

The first settlers in Owsley County were John Renty Baker and John Abner. They settled there in about 1780 near the present Clay County line at Courtland. A gravestone in a cemetery on Upper Buffalo Creek reads, "Milly, wife of John Abner, died March 1846."

John Renty Baker and his sons, all of them gunsmiths, invented and developed hand-operated machines to rifle the barrels. John Renty Baker's father, Robert Baker, is sometimes credited with developing the firearm known as the "Kentucky Rifle".

John Renty Baker was one of the "Longhunters", spending more than a year at a time in the hunting and trapping in the forests of Kentucky and Tennessee. According to "The Conquest of the Old Southwest", Baker hunted in Kentucky in 1766 with Daniel Boone's brother-in-law, John Stewart. He lived on the Green River among the Cherokees and made trips down the Cumberland River to Spanish Natchez to sell furs.