TOWNS
The Barren County Courthouse is located at 117 North Public Square, Glasgow, KY 42141; phone: 270-651-3783.
Prior to 1798 the area now known as Barren County was a large part of Logan County, the first jurisidiction created south of the Green River. This quadrant was subdivided into Warren County, and subsequently Barren was formed. The name "Barren", given to the county by surveyor Edmund Rogers, is not indicative of the infertility of the land, as the name might suggest. It does rather give title to the meadow lands, or barrens, as they were called, in the northern region of the county. Official organization came in 1799, and so too in the same year, the location of the county seat, Glasgow. By the turn of the century, five thousand settlers had.laid claim to some portion of Barren; the greatest number of them arriving from Virginia. [1]