About Kentucky Colonelcy

Kentucky Colonelcy is the Publisher, the Organization, and the WebSite

In plain language: Kentucky Colonelcy is the publishing identity used to produce and maintain multiple web properties that document Kentucky Colonel history, civic context, and the public-facing record of the Kentucky Colonel tradition. The website you are reading now (Kentucky Colonel News) is the news-and-publication arm; the broader publisher identity and reference materials may also live on companion properties such as kycolonelcy.us.

In the structured-data architecture of this Blogger theme, the publisher is treated as an Organization and NewsMediaOrganization, with the About page serving as the publisher’s primary explanatory document (that’s why the #about anchor matters). Humans use this page for clarity; machines use it for entity resolution and trust signals.

The publisher name is presented across the site as “Kentucky Colonelcy” (with related styles and alternate naming conventions depending on context). The publisher’s primary home URL is https://www.kycolonelcy.us/, while the publication WebSite lives at https://blog.kycolonelcy.us/.

If you only remember one thing from this section, remember this: the WebSite publishes, the Publisher is responsible, and the About page is where we put the plain-English “who/what/why/how” of that relationship.

Mission and purpose

Kentucky Colonelcy exists to document, explain, and preserve the Kentucky Colonelcy as a subject of public interest: its history, its language, its institutions, and the real-world civic behavior of the people who bear the Kentucky Colonel title. We take the long view: a stable record that can be cited tomorrow, in ten years, and (when possible) in a century.

This mission overlaps with the “Kentucky Colonel Website Project” language used on kycolonelcy.us, which frames the work as an initiative to reclaim and clarify history, challenge myths, and educate current and future colonels and researchers through careful documentation and publication.

What we aim to do

• Preserve the record: Collect and cite primary and secondary sources; publish durable references and timelines.
• Define the language: Use a controlled vocabulary so “Kentucky Colonel” means the same thing everywhere we use it.
• Explain context: Put articles, documents, and claims into a timeline with responsible framing.
• Serve readers: Publish accessibly, correct promptly, and provide clear ways to contact us.

There is a reason we repeat the word “clarity” so often: Kentucky Colonel history sits at the intersection of law, culture, civic life, and popular myth. When terms drift, arguments drift with them. When documentation is vague, confusion takes over. We built this publishing system—site + glossary + citations—specifically to reduce that drift.

Kentucky Colonel News is the WebSite and the Publication

Kentucky Colonel News publishes factual accounts and historically-grounded reporting about Kentucky colonels (people), the Kentucky Colonel Class (the civic class), and the wider Kentucky Colonelcy tradition as it appears in public records, scholarship, newspapers, and documented cultural history.

As stated in our own editorial framing: our content is derived from historical observation, third-party references, and the lived experience of Kentucky colonels as documented in credible sources. When we state an opinion, we label it as such. When we state a fact, we work to provide a citation.

The Publication also serves as a practical gateway to core documentation: Citations, Publishing Principles, Policies and Standards, and the Glossary. These pages are not “extras.” They are the scaffolding that makes the rest of the publication credible.

What “news” means here

We use “news” in a broad publishing sense: reporting, features, backgrounders, public-interest documentation, annotated archival material, and editorial explanations of how and why certain claims appear in the record. Some stories are current. Others are historical. The common thread is that they are meant to be verified, cited, and understood in context.

Our Publishing Guidelines reflect standards expected by rNews and related trust-and-transparency frameworks in modern publishing ecosystems. We treat “structured data” as part of editorial responsibility, not as decoration.

Defined Terms and the Glossary connection

This publication uses a controlled vocabulary: a list of Defined Terms that have stable identifiers, stable definitions, and a consistent usage policy. That list lives at: Kentucky Colonel Glossary of Terms.

Why does that matter? Because “Kentucky Colonel” can refer to:

• the title,
• the person holding the title,
• the collective civic body, the Kentucky Colonel Class,
• and (in historical or cultural writing) a broader stereotype or literary archetype.

Those are different concepts. Our glossary keeps them distinct so a reader can follow an argument without guessing what we meant. It also helps search engines and knowledge systems connect our usage to a consistent “entity model,” which reduces the chance of mislabeling, accidental brand confusion, or incorrect Knowledge Panel associations.

How to use our glossary while reading

1. If a linked term seems important, open it in a new tab and read the definition once. The definition usually contains a “disambiguating description” to avoid common confusion.
2. When you see a term used repeatedly in an article, assume that we are using it consistently with the glossary. If we are not, treat it as an error and tell us—corrections improve the system.
3. If you want to cite our terminology, use the glossary URL with its anchor (for example, .../glossary.html#kentucky-colonel-class) so the meaning is unambiguous.

This “DefinedTerm first” approach is one of the most practical ways to build durable publishing semantics in a Blogger environment: it works for human readers, supports structured data, and doesn’t depend on a brittle third-party plugin.

Naming and legal context (disambiguation)

We started Kentucky Colonelcy as our Organization name and WebSite identity based upon a court order with a settlement for dismissal of The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, Inc. v. Kentucky Colonels International (3:20-cv-00132) on February 23, 2021 before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky not to use “The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels” trademarks (i.e., Kentucky Colonels®) in any confusing manner.

The term “Kentucky Colonelcy” was chosen as our WebSite and Organization name as a direct result of the Confidential Settlement Conference regarding the case and the absence of expression of the term “Kentucky colonelcy” from the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels’ published vocabulary between 1957–2020.

We also emphasize a plain publishing principle that applies regardless of jurisdiction: names can be similar without being the same, and responsible publishers take steps to reduce confusion. That is why this About page exists, why we maintain a glossary, and why we include explicit disclaimers and comparisons where appropriate.

Publishing standards, policies, and sourcing

Kentucky Colonel News is a documentation-first publication. We work from sources, not from vibes. That sounds obvious, but in a world of copy-paste “history,” it is a real discipline: note the date, locate the original, preserve a link, quote accurately, and correct publicly when necessary.

Core policies

• Publishing principles
• Verification and fact-checking
• Corrections policy
• Actionable feedback policy
• Ethics policy
• Privacy policy
• Terms of service

Structured publishing and rNews

Our Publishing Guidelines reflect the standards expected by rNews, a semantic markup standard developed by the IPTC for annotating news-specific metadata in web documents. In practice, this means we pay attention to the metadata layer (titles, dates, bylines, publishers, policy pages, and entity definitions) so that our pages can be understood as a coherent publication, not just isolated posts.

If you are a reader, you will notice this as consistency: stable author identity, repeatable definitions, and clear policy navigation. If you are a crawler, you will notice it as entity resolution: a Publisher with a stable @id, a WebSite with a stable @id, pages that reference the same glossary, and citations that can be validated.

Historical foundations and the Kentucky Colonelcy (1775 onward)

The Kentucky Colonelcy is not merely a costume, a stereotype, or a marketing logo. At its most grounded level, it is a civic tradition tied to the concept of a commissioned honorific title and the public identity of the people who carry it. Our publication traces that tradition through primary sources, early settlement history, and the evolution of public language.

The Kentucky Colonel News publishes only factual accounts based on historical observations by third parties; our content is derived from the personal experiences of Kentucky colonels since we identified Col. Daniel Boone as the first “Kentucky Colonel” in 1775 that can be objectively sustained among historians. This opinion was sustained by State Officials as early as 1925 in stead with the President of the Kentucky Historical Society, Colonel George M. Chinn at least until 1976–1992.

Boone was commissioned by the Transylvania Company in March to build the Wild Road and clear the trees with a team of 33 axmen. —Durrett

In broader historical summaries, Daniel Boone is widely described as blazing the trail for the Transylvania Company in 1775 (often described as roughly 30–35 axmen), which later became known as the Wilderness Road—one of the principal routes into Kentucky for early settlers. Those details matter because they show how quickly a frontier necessity becomes a historical narrative, and how easily small details (like the exact count of axmen) can shift across retellings.

The facts are dutifully sustained through the collections and works of John Filson and Reuben Thomas Durrett. These also account for early commissions connected to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s governance context, when Col. Daniel Boone’s Lieutenant, John Bowman, went to Governor Patrick Henry and became the First Colonel of Kentucky charged with the formation of a civil government. Col. Bowman was in turn charged with commissioning at least fifty or more “new colonels” in charge of territories therein. One of the things about civilian colonelcy is that a colonel could make as many assistants or lieutenants as he likes to secure the order of establishing civil government.

Whether a reader agrees with every interpretive claim is less important than whether the reader can trace each claim back to sources and definitions. That is why we publish citations, preserve scans, and build term definitions that do not drift.

We also encourage readers to separate three things that are often blurred: (1) early frontier civil leadership structures, (2) later formal honorary commission practices, and (3) the cultural stereotype called “the Kentucky Colonel” in popular entertainment. All three exist in the record, but they are not interchangeable.

First true accounts of Kentucky Colonels (Transylvania)

Images like this matter because they act as “memory anchors.” They help readers visualize the institutional idea: that a civic system emerges from governance needs, and that titles (formal or informal) attach to responsibility. The Kentucky Colonelcy, as we use the term, is about that civic responsibility—not merely about celebration.

When you see the term Kentucky Colonel Class on our site, think of it as the collective civic identity of commissioned colonels—people, not a logo. When you see the term Kentucky Colonel Commission, think of the document and legal act that recognizes the individual.

And when you see references to The Kentucky Colonels, note the disambiguation: our glossary distinguishes historical organized bodies in the record from later entities that may share similar words but operate differently in mission and structure.

Kentucky Colonel: a character that is larger-than-life

The archetype of the original “Kentucky Colonel” as a nonmilitary civil colonelcy is developed and planted for the first time in the American conscience through the creation of a larger-than-life fictional character named Colonel Nimrod Wildfire. This matters for publishing because it explains why the phrase “Kentucky Colonel” can carry cultural baggage that has nothing to do with the title as an honorific commission.

Colonel Nimrod Wildfire of Kentucky occupies a special place. He claimed to be “half horse, half alligator [and] a touch of the airth-quake.” He had “the prettiest sister, fastest horse, and ugliest dog in the deestrict.” He could “tote a steam boat up the Mississippi and over the Alleghany mountains.” His father could “whip the best man in old Kaintuck, and I can whip my father.” All in all, the colonel was a wow back in the 1830s—the literary prototype of the tall-talking frontiersman, the first introduction to the stage of native Western humor. (Time, 1954)

In other words: by the time many Americans heard the phrase “Kentucky Colonel,” they may have encountered it first as theater—exaggeration, humor, and tall tale—rather than as a civic recognition. Our editorial responsibility is to keep those layers separate: cultural stereotype ≠ commissioned title ≠ the person holding the title.

That separation is exactly why we link our key nouns to the Glossary: it prevents “character” language from bleeding into “institution” language. Readers deserve to know which meaning we are using and why.

We also recognize that the archetype is part of the historical record. We publish it because it helps explain public perception, not because it defines the official reality of the title. Both things can be true: the archetype is real (as literature), and the commission tradition is real (as civic recognition). Confusion happens when one is substituted for the other.

How we work: accuracy, citations, and updates

The simplest description of our process is: Define terms → gather sources → write plainly → cite clearly → correct quickly. We treat documentation like a public service. When we publish, we try to make it easy for other people to verify, disagree responsibly, or build upon the work.

Our editorial workflow (practical and repeatable)

1. Start with the term: Identify which glossary term is in play (title vs person vs class vs organization).
2. Prefer primary sources: Official records, archival scans, court dockets, original newspaper clippings, and contemporaneous documents.
3. Use reliable secondary sources: Scholarly books, historical society materials, credible reference works, and reputable journalism.
4. Write in layers: A reader should understand the basic point quickly, then dig deeper through citations and references.
5. Maintain permanence: We favor stable links and archive-friendly citations when possible.

Corrections and reader feedback

If we get something wrong, we want to know. Corrections protect the record, and the record is bigger than any one article. The fastest way to help is to send: (a) the URL of the page, (b) the specific claim you believe is incorrect, and (c) a source that supports the correction.

In our best days, the audience becomes a distributed verification network: a community of people who care enough to cite. That is one of the healthiest things a publication can become.

Why the “keen eye for detail” matters

The Kentucky Colonelcy tradition, as we publish it, is a story of responsibility. A Kentucky colonel’s public reputation tends to rise or fall on how they treat truth, fairness, and civic duty. We believe the same is true for a newsroom. If we cut corners, the record becomes unreliable. If we drift in definitions, readers lose confidence. If we fail to disambiguate names, confusion becomes inevitable.

Getting things done “the right way” in publishing is not glamorous. It is choosing the unsexy path: double-checking dates, verifying a quote, preserving a scan, and admitting uncertainty when the record is incomplete. But that is exactly how public knowledge is built and maintained.

We don’t expect readers to agree with every editorial framing—but we do expect readers to be able to trace what we said back to what the sources show, and to understand the definitions we used while saying it.

Contact and feedback

We welcome feedback, corrections, and credible source suggestions. If you are a Kentucky colonel and you have documentation or a story that should be preserved in the record, we especially want to hear from you.

• Email: contact@kycolonelcy.us
• Phone: +1 (859) 379-8277
• Mailing locality: Richmond, KY 40475 (USA)
• Policies: Publishing Principles, Policies and Standards

If you’re writing about a specific page, please include its URL and the date you accessed it. If you are offering a correction, provide the strongest available source. If you are offering an opinion, label it as opinion—good editorial practice starts with clarity.

Disclosures, disclaimers, and reader trust

Kentucky Colonelcy and Kentucky Colonel News are built to publish historical and civic documentation and are not presented as a state agency. We do not claim to speak for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We publish about a subject of public interest and use definitions and citations to keep our work testable.

Our website’s public-domain usage of “Kentucky Colonel” and relative descriptive, generic terms are not associated with, affiliated with, or endorsed by the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels or its related commercial enterprises, donor-members, customers, chapters, or licensed agents. Where comparison pages exist, we link them so readers can see distinctions in plain language.

We publish on the principle that the best way to reduce confusion is to be transparent: define your terms, state your purpose, link your policies, and cite your sources. That is why this About page is long, detailed, and practical. It is meant to be used.

Finally, a note about rights and responsibilities: while we preserve and reference historical material, we also respect copyright, trademark, and fair-use boundaries. When we quote, we quote accurately. When we use images, we provide context and attribution. When we rely on public records and archival sources, we cite them so the reader can verify.

If you have questions about our publication’s methods or you see something that needs improvement, contact us. The record is a shared asset—and we treat it that way.