Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Calloway County was created out of Hickman County in 1822 and named for Col. Richard Calloway who came to Kentucky with Daniel Boone about 1776.  Calloway was one of the founders of Boonesboro and was killed there by Indians in 1780.

Calloway County is bounded on the north by Marshall County, on the east by the Tennessee River, on the south by the Tennessee/Kentucky border and on the west by Graves County.  When created, its northern boundary was the Ohio River.

As Calloway County grew, typhoid fever raged through the county, more severe in the warmer months.  The common house fly was identified as the carrier of the disease but as few windows had screens and sanitary conditions miserable, a rich breeding ground was readily available for the flies.    Warnings from various county and state officials sometimes generated sporadic campaigns to control the flies.  “The Women’s Club sponsored spring drives to get rid of the flies by awarding youngsters free movie tickets for each 25 early fly carcasses submitted in evidence, in late April and May, in the firm opinion that the destroying of the first flies would hold in check the summer’s population- Calloway’s first experiment in fly birth control.  The uncanny capacity of youth to outwit their elders found maximum ingenuity in perfecting a screen fly trap fashioned a bit along the lines of an ice cream cone shaped net.  Result:  A fly panic broke the Woman’s Club bank in a youth stampede on the Woodruff Opera House.  Moments later an official moratorium ended once and forever the Fly War of 1912.”  (The Story of Calloway County, 1822-1976, by Dorothy and Kerby Jennings, 1978, Murray Democrat Publishing Co., 615 Maple St., Murray, KY 42071, pages 168-169).

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