A few settlers had moved into the region of present-day Kentucky by 1748. Kentucky was under the jurisdiction of Augusta County, Virginia.¹ In 1774, all land lying between the Ohio, Kentucky, and Cumberland rivers was purchased by Richard Henderson for his Transylvania Company. Daniel Boone blazed the trail from the Cumberland Gap (at the junction of present-day Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee) to the interior. This path between the Cumberland Gap and central Kentucky became known, through the Transylvania Company’s publicity, as the Wilderness Road.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky became the 15th state on 1 June 1792. Early settlers included Revolutionary War veterans staking claim to bounty-land grants. They were joined by Scots-Irish, German, and English individuals and families from Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. My Coffman lineage came into Kentucky in either the late 1790s and/or early 1800s.