Bracken County Links

On September 1, 1870, the Post Office Department
listed these towns in Bracken County as having
Post Offices: Augusta, Berlin, Bradford, Brooksville,
Browningsville, Foster, Harmon, Locust Mills, and Powersville.

In 1876, the R. L. Polk Company published The Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, which listed information about virtually every town in Kentucky. The listings from Bracken County are these:

Augusta	Berlin	Brooksville
Foster	Germantown	Lenoxburg
	Powersville

An earlier Gazetteer published in Louisville, was George W. Hawes’ Kentucky
State Gazetteer and Business Directory, for 1859 and 1860. It's pre-Civil
War, and has detail on these four towns:

In 1919, there was a farm census, counting livestock, crops and farms. Bracken County's is here.

Powersville was first settled in 1783 by Captain Philip Buckner, a
revolutionary war veteran was is buried in the western edge of town.

Ferry from Chilo, Ohio to Bradford, Kentucky
(or, I've also seen it listed as the Ripley Ferry)

Information on the thirteen covered bridges that used to serve in Bracken County are listed in the data base at web site of Kentucky Covered Bridges, here. Some pictures, too.

In 1969, Edna Talbott Whitley compiled a list of Cabinetmakers
in Kentucky. The Bracken County portion of that list is here.

The Kentuckiana Digital Library has a number of Bracken
County images. Quality is erratic, but it's worth a look, here.

The Kentucky Historical Society's Bracken County images can
be found here. Click on the Bracken Box when you get there.

Remember when the Licking River flowed north to Hamilton, Ohio, and the Ohio River began at Manchester, Ohio? No? That’s because you were born after the last glacier left the area. Read all about it, here.

Bracken County's Francis M. McMillen is Bracken County's only winner of the US Medal of Honor. Born on March 25, 1832, he won his medal by capturing the enemy flag in a Civil War Battle in Petersburg, Virginia on April 2, 1865. He's buried in Washington Courthouse, Ohio.

A list of Bracken officials, merchants, doctors and attorneys, from 1847, is here.

What traveling companies were told about
Augusta's Russell Opera House, in 1901, is here.

This list of Bracken County deaths from WWII is from
the National Archives. There's a key to what the
various abbreviations mean here, and the actual list is here.

You can get information on Bracken County ancestors by subscribing
to the mailing list created for that purpose. You'll get periodic
information, and can submit your own questions, all via email.
Sign up here for Bracken County.
Here is a list of all available lists on Kentucky.

A site that has post a lot of older high school yearbooks
of Kentucky schools is here. They invite your scans.

"W. O. Blackerby, in the Brooksville Review, says: 'On Friday night about midnight about twenty-five riders went to Edward Johnson's, near Willow, and burned his old log barn containing about 3000 pounds of tobacco. The barn, we understand, belonged to his father, Noah Johnson, of this place.'" from the Falmouth Outlook of October 22, 1909.

1909 makes this the work of Night Riders. More on them, is here.

Covington's Mary Ann Mongren Library has one of those "Wow!" features online. If, after going here, and entering Augusta, Germantown, Brooksville, or whatever, you sometimes - not always - get back actual links to high quality images of Northern Kentucky Newspapers from the 1800's. I find it more helpful to sort them by the oldest article first. They're pdf images. There's a feature in your Adobe pdf viewer that let's you magnify the images. Play with it - I think you'll find it a great feature, and you'll be surprised at how much information from "outside I-275" is in the early Covington and Newport papers.

If you have an interest in Slavery and the Underground Railroad in the Bracken County area, you absolutely want to find a book called Beyond the River, by Ann Hagedorn. It's the story of Ripley, Ohio's John Rankin, and has detailed information about slavery days in Bracken and Mason Counties. That's a handy link to Amazon for you to get a copy at the left.

Two Major League Baseball Players came from Bracken County
Brooksville's Herbert Moford's record is here.
Germantown's Carl Edward Bouldin's record is here.

In October 1986, around the time PBS film producers were releasing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was filmed in the area, the New York Times wrote a piece about Augusta, Maysville, and Washington called "Old Kentucky Towns" which provides a wealth of history about the area. Here.

"The Ku-Klux in Bracken county took out two brothers (Tucker) for seducing two sisters, Vivian Bailey for knocking his wife down, John Watson and Duncan Strayler for laziness, Mr. Maybreier for keeping a house of ill repute, and Blevin Dixon for instituting a suit against one George Fowler for twenty five acres of land, and whipped each one soundly. Dixon's son was badly injured in an attempt to rescue his father" from Covington's The Ticket, 6-24-1876.

The Bracken County Roots Web site is here, and the Bracken Gen Web site is here.

Read about Bridgeville's Uncle Tommy
Kenton's 99th Birthday party, in 1886, here.

TV star Don Galloway was born in Brooksville. A List of all of his roles is here.

from a January, 1900 Augusta Chronicle: Perry McDowell, of the Disher neighborhood, some three miles above Bridgeville on the North Fork, caught an otter last week in a steel trap. The animal weighed 23 pounds and measured three feet and ten inches. This is the first one caught or killed in this section for years, as they have become a rare specimen of animal.

Who went to the penitentiary from Bracken County from
1808 t0 1830, and why? There's a list, here.

"Licenses to vend spirituous or malt liquors in this the Augusta
precinct, expired with both our saloons last Saturday. We are
now a temperance city now." from Covington's The Ticket, 4-21-1877.

	This graph shows the relative populations of the eight smaller counties of Northern Kentucky Views, from 1800 to 2000.
	This graph shows the relative populations of the Boone, Kenton & Campbell Counties from 1800 to 2000.
	This graph shows the relative populations of the Boone, Kenton, Mason & Campbell Counties from 1800 to 1860, along with Jefferson and Fayette, just for reference.


These two charts both present slave population from Northern Kentucky. On the left is actual populations; on the left, is the number of slaves as a percentage of total population. Remember some counties were established later than others. More on these numbers, including a link to the mega-load of population data, is here.