Casey County, Kentucky

Casey County, Kentucky, was formed in November eighteen oh six from Lincoln County and named for Colonel William Casey, a pioneer settler who had brought his family to Kentucky in seventeen seventy-nine. The county seat, Liberty, was founded by Revolutionary War veterans, who selected the name as a patriotic expression. Casey County holds a geographic distinction unusual in Kentucky: it is the only county in the state located entirely within the Knobs region, a belt of isolated conical hills rising from the surrounding Bluegrass plateau. The county also has an unexpected family-tree footnote: Colonel Casey is said to have been an ancestor of Samuel Clemens, who took the pen name Mark Twain.