Membership in the Shelby County Historical Society is open to all who are interested in the study and preservation of the history of Shelby County, its communities and families. Members receive newsletters keeping them informed of upcoming meetings, local projects and topics of local and regional interest.

Annual Dues are $25.00 per year payable in January to the Society at P.O. Box 444, Shelbyville, Kentucky 40066.

The Shelby County Historical Society was organized in 1963 and since that time has been instrumental in stimulating the interest of the citizens of Shelby County in learning more about their heritage and the county’s prominent role in Kentucky and American history.

The Society takes the lead in identifying historic sites and landmark homes. Reflective of these ongoing efforts was the dedication in 2003 of a marker adjacent to the Stanley-Casey House on Washington Street, the boyhood home of former Kentucky Governor Augustus O. Stanley. The Society also published Cemeteries of Shelby County, Kentucky, in 1979 which reflected a serious effort to rediscover neglected burial sites through the county.

In 2003 the Society published The New History of Shelby County, which was nominated by the Southern Kentucky Book Fair for the best non-fiction book published in Kentucky that year.

In 2006 the Society helped underwrite the cost of erecting two historical markers commemorating the epic journey of Lewis & Clark in 1803-1806. Both of these men traveled through Shelby County and it was in Shelbyville in 1809 that Clark first learned of Lewis’s death in Tennessee.

The Society holds several meetings each year at which time local and state speakers address topics which are of local and state interest to members and their guests.

There is also an annual picnic and, recently, members have been privileged to hold these affairs at several of the county’s beautifully restored homes.

The Shelby County Historical Society membership is now at an all-time high but there is always room for new members who are interested in exploring Shelby County history.