Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of Kentucky to the General Assembly of Virginia 1769 to 1792

In this work the author, in chronological order, presents essentially all of the significant petitions of Kentucky County, Virginia, residents submitted to the Virginia legislature between the years 1769 and 1831, and before Kentucky’s admission to the Union. The petitions are printed verbatim, with the thought that they will be more useful and interesting to the student of history in the language of the pioneer inhabitants of our first Commonwealth west of the Alleghany Mountains. There are more than 4,000 names of Kentucky’s earliest inhabitants included in this work, as well as clarifying footnotes and an index. The topics that make up the subject-matter of the petitions may be summed up as follows: The system of landholding, the establishment of courts, the organization of a militia for protection from Indians, the organization of the community into counties and towns, the establishment of communication by ferries and roads, the inspection of tobacco, the building of gristmills, the perfecting of a medium of exchange, the foundation of an educational system, the status of slavery in the western country, the effort to secure better social conditions in the care of orphans and in the performance of marriage rites, and finally the movement of the population toward separation from Virginia.