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ELLIOTT COUNTY HISTORY
Elliott County, the 114th in order of formation, lies in the
foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in northeastern Kentucky. The county was
formed on April 1, 1869, from parts of Morgan, Lawrence, and Carter counties.
Bounded by Carter, Lawrence, Morgan, and Rowan counties, it has an area of 234
square miles. The county seat is SANDY HOOK.
The land is characterized by rolling hills and mountainous terrain, much-eroded
by early mining and logging operations. Reforestation by landowners, joined in
1955 by the Kentucky Division of Forestry, has been successful in revitalizing
the deciduous hardwood forest. Farms, raising principally tobacco and corn,
cover 47.7 percent of the land. The 2,712-acre Grayson Lake State Park lies on
the northern edge of the county.
The majority of the families who settled in the region that became Elliott
County came from southwestern Virginia or from the Rowan-SurryWilkes county
section of North Carolina and professed a strong allegiance to the South during
the war. Although no major battles were fought in the hills of eastern Kentucky
during the Civil War, both sides raided, foraged in, and recruited from the
area. Seven unknown soldiers, casualties of Confederate attacks on Union troops
withdrawing from Cumberland Gap in September 1862, are buried just south of
Sandy Hooks.
There is some disagreement whether the county is named for John Lisle Elliott or
his son, John Milton Elliott. Both were staunch members of the Democratic party.
The elder Elliott came to Kentucky from Scott County, Virginia, and served in
the Kentucky legislature as a representative and a senator from Carter County.
At the time it was created, Elliott had neither the population nor the economic
base to justify the authorization of a new county. The federal census of 1870
counted a population countywide of only 4,433, and in 1878 the report of the
commissioner of the State Bureau of Agriculture noted that Martinsburg had only
125 to 150 residents. It therefore seems likely that Democratic party
legislators were guilty of gerrymandering the Democratic precincts of Carter,
Lawrence, and Morgan counties to create a Democratic county in what was then the
Republican enclave of eastern Kentucky.
By 1900 Elliott County's population had grown to 10,387, and a decade later
Sandy Hook had almost three hundred inhabitants. Nevertheless, from 1900 to 1990
the federal population schedules show a fairly steady decline in the county's
population.
Although mining and logging businesses operated in the late nineteenth century,
agriculture remained the principal means of support for most families. After
1900 agriculture was not enough to sustain the population. Some people followed
the logging industry westward to Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon, but most who
left beginning around World War I moved to the industrialized communities along
the Ohio River.
Some mining and logging still take place in the county. Surface mines extracted
more than 140,000 tons of bituminous coal in 1987 and there is evidence of
titanium deposits in the area. Commercial petroleum and natural gas production
has served local needs, but the boom-and-bust nature of these industries, in a
county that lacks a railway and easy access to the interstate highway system,
has hindered development. Having failed to develop a strong economic base,
Elliott County has a high unemployment rate, and it faces possible elimination
of the tobacco subsidy as well as a declining coal market.
The population of the rural county was 5,933 in 1970; 6,908 in 1980; and 6,455
in 1990.
From The Kentucky Encyclopedia, edited by John Kleber. Copyright 1992. Reprinted
with permission of The University Press of Kentucky.
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