Barbourville City

Knox County, Kentucky

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Barbourville City Hall is located at 196 Daniel Boone Drive, Barbourville, KY 40906.
Phone: 606‑546‑6197.

Barbourville as described in 1939 [1]

Barbourville the county seat of Knox County, lies in a broad valley of the winding Cumberland River. It is surrounded by thickly forested ridges that rise in the southern part of the county to a height of 2,000 feet. The soil, a sandy loam and clay, is productive and well adapted to agriculture. When Knox County was created in 1799, it included 5,000 acres belonging to Richard Barbour, a Virginian. By 1800 the land had passed into the possession of James Barbour, a kinsman, who gave this town site to the county and persuaded it to donate half the proceeds from the sale of lots to a fund for erecting public buildings. The town was named in his honor.

Union College (co-educational), a Methodist institution housed in plain red brick buildings, was founded in 1879. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges, and has an enrollment of 400 students. The college library contains approximately 11,000 volumes. Dahlia growers from a wide area participate in a Dahlia Show, held each October in the Union College Gymnasium.

The George Owens Collection. Knox St., contains arrowheads, pipes, tomahawks, beads, bone objects, fossil remains, pottery, and other Indian relics and objects of archeological interest.

In an old frame building (open) on Liberty St. (R), built in 1846, were the LAW Offices of Samuel F. Miller and Silas Woodson. Miller (1816-1890) was Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1862-1890). Woodson was Governor of Missouri (1873-1875). This small, one-story building has never been altered and is (1939) in need of repair.

Joseph Eve, a circuit judge and the only American minister sent to the Republic of Texas (1841), lived in Barbourville.

  1. Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Kentucky, University of Kentucky, Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State, American Guide Series, Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, 1939.

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