Leslie County, Kentucky is part of Appalachia. It was formed in 1878, the lower portion being taken from Harlan County, the northwestern part from Clay County and the northeastern section from Perry County.

The county seat of Leslie County is Hyden. Hyden is located on US 421 and at the mouth of Rockhouse Creek, a branch of the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River. It was founded on John Lewis's farm in 1878 as the seat of the newly established county. Named for John Hyden (1814 - 1883), then state senator from Clay County and one of the commissioners appointed to establish Leslie County. The post office began operation in March 1879 with Leander Crawford as Postmaster. The town of Hyden was incorporated in 1882.

Surrounding counties are: Clay County by Sheri Bush, Perry County by Sheri Bush, Owsley County by Mike Dye, and Harlan County by Vickie Sturgill.

Downtown Hyden, Kentucky

NOTE:  See Hyden, Kentucky at YouTube!   (Hyden is the county seat.) New!  Added Leslie County Korean War Casualties. (on the Military Page) . New!  Added Leslie County WWII Casualties. (on the Military Page) . New!  Added a Leslie County Mine Deaths. (on the Death Page) Notice: I am Sheri Bush, the new Coordinator for Leslie County. Please email me with comments, broken links, complaints, submissions or tell me what you would like to see for this site! I think I have this site working well now. The original data here was in text form behind the scenes, but the pages gone. Now the text files are accessible. Some of the data was possibly lost during a move many years ago. I've looked at the WayBack Machine and the old pages and cannot find anything else that was here. If you would like to submit, I am ready to get it online. (my email above) I will be working on new data soon! Happy Hunting!
There are many places to keep your trees. Here are 3.
Great source material! FamilySearch Trees, lots of mistakes.	My Favorite!	They do offer free Ancestry Public Trees.
Important Places.
Clerk's Office 22010 Main St. P.O. Box 916 Hyden, Kentucky 41749 Phone: (606) 672-2193	Leslie County Historical Society Only At Facebook	Leslie County Library P.O. Box 498 Hyden, Kentucky 41749 (606) 672-2460

Above: Leslie County, Kentucky Courthouse.
Photo from Wikipedia: By W.marsh - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leslie_County_Kentucky_Courthouse.jpg).

Kentucky needs volunteers. If you would like to volunteer, email State Coordinator, Jeff Kemp. Thank you!

*When emailing me, please put Leslie County in the subject line. ~Thank you!