The name Fincastle Ancestry Research has its origins in the history of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Kentucky was at one time a part of Fincastle County, Virginia. The town of Fincastle in Virginia is the county seat of Botetourt County, out of which Fincastle County was created in 1772. At the time, Botetourt County encompassed much of Virginia southwest of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
With frontiersmen moving beyond the mountains, the Virginia legislature created Fincastle County when it became apparent that the colony’s western country would be settled.
Migration to the west increased in the early 1770’s and the legislature determined that Fincastle County was not adequate to serve those who settled in Kentucky and the other parts of Virginia’s claim to lands west to the Mississippi River. Fincastle County was divided in 1776 into three new counties, one of which was Kentucky County, and the parent county ceased to exist:
WHEREAS, from the great extent of the county of Fincastle, many inconveniences attend the more distant inhabitants thereof, on account of their remote situation from the courthouse of the said county, and many of the said inhabitants have petitioned this present general assembly for a division of the same:
Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of the commonwealth of Virginia, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That from and after the last day of December next ensuing the said county of Fincastle shall be divided into three counties, that is to say: All that part thereof which lies to the south and westward of a line beginning on the Ohio, at the mouth of Great Sandy creek, and running up the same and the main or north easterly branch thereof to the Great Laurel Ridge or Cumberland Mountain, thence south westerly along the said mountain to the line of North Carolina, shall be one distinct county, and called and known by the name of Kentucky; and all that part of the said county of Fincastle included in the lines beginning at the Cumberland Mountain, where the line of Kentucky county intersects the North Carolina line, thence east along the said Carolina line to the top of Iron Mountain thence along the same easterly to the source of the south fork of Holstein river, thence northwardly along the highest part of the high lands, ridges, and mountains, that divide the waters of the Tenessee (sic) from those of the Great Kanawah, to the most easterly source of Clinch river, thence westwardly along the top of the mountains that divide the waters of Clinch river from those of the Great Kanawah (sic) and Sandy creek to the line of Kentucky county, thence along the same to the beginning, shall be one other distinct county, and called and known by the name of Washington; and all the residue of the said county of Fincastle shall be one other distinct county, and shall be called and known by the name of Montgomery.
The Virginia legislature divided Kentucky County into three separate counties in 1780. As a result of further division, there were nine counties in Kentucky when it was admitted to the Union as the fifteenth state on 1 June 1792.
Fincastle Ancestry Research is named to honor my ancestors, many of whom were Virginians who migrated over the Appalachian Mountains to make new lives for themselves and their families in Kentucky.
