Monroe County, Kentucky Monroe County, Kentucky Monroe County is a county located in the Pennyroyal Plateau region of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2010 census, the population was 10,963. Its county seat is Tompkinsville. The county is named for President James Monroe. It is a prohibition or dry county. Monroe County is the only county of the 2,957 in the United States named for a President where the county seat is named for his Vice-President. The county was formed in 1820; and named for James Monroe the fifth President, author of the Monroe Doctrine. The county seat was named for
James Monroe Trotter African Americans. His son William Monroe Trotter became a rights activist and was founder and editor of the "Boston Guardian", a progressive African American newspaper. James Monroe Trotter was born on February 7, 1842, twenty-five miles south of Vicksburg in the once-thriving community of Grand Gulf, Mississippi, in Claiborne County, Mississippi, although some sources give Trotter's date of birth as November 8, 1842. James was born into slavery; his mother Letitia was a slave and his father was her white master, Richard S. Trotter, then unmarried. After Richard Trotter married in 1854, he freed Letitia and their mixed-race children: James