Pendleton County was the 28th county formed in Kentucky.  The law enacting Pendleton County was passed on December 13, 1798 and the county was formed on May 10, 1799 from parts of Bracken and Campbell Counties. Its boundaries are unchanged since April 22, 1882. It has an area of 280.5 square miles, making it the 74th largest of Kentucky's 120 counties.

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, but only has detail on these two towns:

Membership Lists from
the Masonic Lodges in 1911: (pdf's)

From the papers of E. E. Barton, comes this paper (pdf)  covering The History
 of Pendleton County Schools; The Medical Profession and its practitioners; and A History
 of the Judiciary and the Bar in Pendleton.  It's a BIG file, please be patient. The actual
 author  is unknown, the date appears to be c. 1900. 

A description of Pendleton County Barton wrote in 1917 is here.  (pdf)

     Barton published a newspaper, which in 1899 ran a list of all the Pendleton County Precincts and their officers, 1899, here.

T. M. Barton reports the Pendleton County news in 1877, here.

You should be aware that these excerpts from the work of E. E. Barton barely scratch the surface of the man's work.  There are dozens of reels of microfilm of his work, and you can find that microfilm at the library in Falmouth, and at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort.  It's a genealogical mother lode, if that's your thing.

“Slaveholders Convention – Emancipation in Kentucky.  It has been proposed to us, by several gentlemen who own slaves in Kentucky, that they (the slaveholders) hold a convention on Frankfort to adopt some plan for the Abolition of Slavery, and that we so announce it; and that the Hon. W. H. Luke, of Pendleton County, a Slaveholder, be appointed by the friends of the convention, as one in his part of the state to draw up a proposition for its gradual abolition.
 Newport (Ky.) News”  Reprinted in the New York Times of September 15, 1855.

"The force dispatched Wednesday night down the Lexington road, reached Falmouth safely at 3 a. m. yesterday.  No rebels were there, and all the bridges between that point and Covington were saved.  Additional forces from Gen. Heintzelman’s Department were received by Gen. Hobson, and dispatched down the road.  The One-Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Ohio (hundred day men) went down to Falmouth at 1 o’clock yesterday afternoon.  The bridges of the Kentucky Central Railroad, with the exception of that at Townsend [5.5 miles n, of Paris, near what is now Shawhan], can be easily repaired, and even that can be put in running order in five days.  The abutments and piers for a new bridge were nearly completed, and the timber prepared for the superstructure.  The company have everything in readiness to complete a new and more permanent structure at Townsend than that destroyed."   From the New York Times, June 12, 1864.

The Falmouth Outlook is on line here. 

You can buy their Forks of the Licking Bicentennial Edition history and picture book of Pendleton County by calling them at (859) 654-3332, or mailing a check to them at 210 Main St. in Falmouth.  Only $25.45, and that includes postage. Recommended.

"Falmouth, Pendleton County, is one of the old towns, dating from 1790, and claims something like two thousand people.  Pendleton is called 'the county which came back,' as some years ago, on account of the worn-out condition of the soil, about a third of the population moved away.  Then sweet clover was planted, the bees came and founded a great honey-making colony, dairying developed, and the county and county seat were reinstated on the map." from Samuel Wilson's History of Kentucky.

More detail on how sweet clover saved Pendleton County is here.

Butler

Demossville

Falmouth

Morgan

The Farmers Bank of Morgan

The Citizens Bank of Falmouth

The Butler Deposit Bank

The Pendleton Bank [Falmouth]

Butler

In 1908, the Falmouth Outlook published a selection of letters to Santa.  Some are here.

Mrs. Louis Woolery wrote on "Some Old Homes of Pendleton County," from 1940, here. (pdf)

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

Don't Miss Origins of Pendleton County Place Names, here.

A status report from the Superintendent of Schools in Pendleton County from 1900 is here.

Every county in America was supposed to write its history for America's Centennial in 1876.  Some did; some didn't.  Pendleton County did.  It's here.

Some Pendleton County Cemetery records are here.

Murder in Butler, October 9, 1877. Read all about it, here.

Detailed Presidential voting statistics from Pendleton County are here.

In 1930, Kentucky Progress Magazine ran a feature letting each of Kentucky's counties list their accomplishments for 1929.  What Pendleton County came up with is here. (pdf)

There are a number of  good links to historical Pendleton County on their Roots Web site, here.

Emma McClanahan noted in 1934 that Pendleton County, in 1910, had 3,108
colonies  of bees, and that by 1927 that number had grown to 20,000, with
annual honey shipments amounting to 2,000,000 pounds.

“Falmouth – The blue ribbons are still on the rampage, and expect to close their labors here this week, gong to Butler, Demossville and Boston.  They claim to have between five hundred and six hundred disciples in this place.  You can see big and little, whites and blacks, at every corner, with the inevitable strip of blue pinned to their lapels.”
  From the Daily commonwealth, December 12, 1877

If you go to Google Books and search for "Kentucky Public Documents Decoursey" (no quotes), you can find a government report with exhaustively detailed depositions given in regard to election fraud in Campbell and Pendleton Counties in 1865.  It's good, detailed stuff, especially for the time period.  On the other hand, if you download the pdf - and you can, free - note first that it's 781 pages long (it contains more than just Kentucky election fraud).

This Pendleton County Map is from 1931, and these are very large, but very detailed images.

The Pendleton County High School yearbook has been The Echo, for a long time.  Falmouth High School, on the other hand, changed yearbook names lots of times:

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

On August 4, 1852, the Cincinnati Daily Gazette published the State
 of Kentucky’s Hog Assessment – the number of hogs over 6 months
 old per county.  The number in Pendleton County was 5,430.

     “Falmouth tobacco dealers have bought as follows this year:  Bullock, Mullins, & Co., 250,000 pounds; Browning & Co., 200,000; H. N. Newman, 150,000.  Mr. J. W. Chowning, of Morgan, has received about 150,000 pounds.”  from Covington’s Daily Commonwealth, March 27. 1879

"Falmouth, Ky. - The Falmouth Electric Light and Motive Power Company has been incorporated, with a capital stock of $50,000.  J. C. Hamilton is one of the incorporators."  from the weekly Light, Heat and Power, April 3, 1890.