Jessamine County experienced a fairly rapid settlement from 1790 to 1810, then fairly flat population until 1950. But beginning in the 1950s, the population rose rapidly. The period from 1790 to 1810 I will call a “frontier” period. From 1810 to 1870 I’ll call the “plantation” period. Then from 1870 until 1950 I will call the “rural” period. Finally, from 1950 to present I will call a “suburban” period.

The above chart compares the accumulated growth rate in Jessamine County to the rest of the Bluegrass and to Kentucky beyond the Bluegrass. All of the lines are benchmarked to 1860. As can be seen, Jessamine County and the Bluegrass leaped to their index-level population during the frontier period, while the state on the whole took more time. Then during the rural period, the state outgrew both Jessamine County and the Bluegrass, and the Bluegrass outgrew Jessamine County. In other words, the rural period was also a time where the rest of the state sort of left Jessamine County behind.

The above chart shows the 10-year lagged growth rates for Jessamine County, the Bluegrass region, and the rest of Kentucky. This makes it fairly clear that by the time my growth-rate data begins (1804, reflecting growth rates from 1799 to 1808), Jessamine County and the Bluegrass are already lagging in terms of growth. I exclude most of the 1790s because including it would create growth rates so high they blow out the scale: and that period is precisely when Jessamine County hits its stable population level. The “Frontier” period saw enormous population growth rates. But after the available land was parceled out, population growth slowed dramatically. By 1820, Jessamine County had reached population growth rates similar to other settled, developed areas, and in fact lower than today, despite much higher natural fertility.

During the plantation period, population growth was low or negative. This reflects large-scale out-migration. The county had no university, no substantial market town to speak of, and was essentially just farm-country. But not just farm-country, it was slave-country. As I’ll show below, slavery goes back as far as the state itself, especially in the Bluegrass area. But the point is, plantation-style agriculture made it hard for other white landholders to acquire and cultivate land in a financially viable fashion, so white out-migration rates were probably quite high. We don’t have much direct migration data for this period, certainly none available to me, so we’re left to some suppositions.

The post-Civil War rural period saw somewhat higher population growth despite high black out-migration rates: apparently because more whites stuck around. But the 1910s until the 1940s were hard on the Bluegrass, with population growth turning negative, especially around WWII. But, after the war, Jessamine County began to benefit from suburbanization, road expansion and increased car use, and, since 1960, has been one of the fastest-growing counties in Kentucky.

Jessamine County History

Race in Jessamine County

The racial mix in Jessamine County changed radically over time. You can explore it in more detail using this visualization, showing each decennial Census since 1820. In 1820, 30% of the county’s population was enslaved. That figure had risen to 40% by 1860.

Also, as I mentioned before, weak population growth from 1820 to 1870 was a result mostly of a declining white population in Jessamine County. Fertility rates were high, so this is a story of white people migrating. Big plantations don’t actually afford lots of opportunities for large numbers of people. The plantation economy was not in fact only a system of racial supremacy, but also a system of class supremacy. The vaunted “white egalitarianism” that Confederate apologists supported was a myth wholly dependent on ever-expanding new lands on the frontier. This new land was probably less useful as new land for slavery, and more useful as new land for whites shut out of the paths of power in plantation-land.

But then around 1880, things changed. The black population began a long decline, again despite initially high birth rates. Meanwhile, the white population grew, despite little change in birth rates. What could be happening? Well, free blacks were moving away from the land of their masters: call them the “Exodusters” and their like, or an early precursor to the “Great Migration,” at least in Kentucky, large-scale out-migration of blacks from plantation areas began nearly as soon as the fighting stopped. With black slave labor no longer available, and many blacks looking to leave, undoubtedly white hired labor became more common than previously. Thus, whites who formerly might have migrated instead stuck around and worked for wages.

The white population continued growing to the end of the rural period, while the black population shrank more and more. By the 1920s and 1930s, reductions in the black population outweighed growth among whites, so the county saw negative population growth overall.

But then, in the 1950s, the growth rate in the white population shot up, despite only a slight increase in fertility. High population growth for whites has continued to the present, despite declining fertility. As I’ll show below, this is due to migration: local migration from suburbanization, but also growing international migration due to globalization. Note that the population of Hispanic or Latino origins, as well as Asians and other races, grew rapidly in the last 30 years. Jessamine County is shifting from the classic suburbanization story (including “white flight” from the cities) to a globalizing story of immigration and transnational identities.