Christian County, Kentucky: History
The county is named for Colonel William Christian, a native of Augusta County, Virginia, and a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He settled near Louisville, Kentucky, in 1785, and was killed by Native Americans in southern Indiana in 1786.
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, was born in Fairview, Kentucky (in the small part that is now in Todd County), in 1808. United States Vice President Adlai Stevenson I was born in Christian County in 1835.
The present courthouse, built in 1869, replaced a structure burned by Confederate cavalry in 1864 because the Union Army was using it as their barracks.
In 1955, the town of Hopkinsville located in the county allegedly had a family and their close friends enter a close encounter between several alleged aliens during a dinner now known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter
The United States Supreme Court case Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), arose out of a 1958 double-murder in Christian County, Kentucky.
In 2006 and 2008, tornadoes touched down across northern Christian County, damaging homes in the Crofton area.
In 2017, northwestern Christian County was the point of greatest eclipse for the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 that crossed North America. The center was in the Bainbridge/Sinking Fork area of the county, on the Orchardale farm.