Kentucky Colonelcy — K3C News

Statement of Identity: The Kentucky Colonel Class

The Sovereignty of the Title

The Kentucky Colonel Society, Kentucky Colonel Council or Kentucky Colonel Cooperative Commons (K3C) is the authoritative unincorporated civil society organization dedicated to the protection, heritage, and collective identity of the Kentucky Colonel Class of individuals. A Kentucky Colonelcy is not a membership to a club; it is an honorable title and a distinct class of personage bestowed by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Correction of Identity and Origin

It is a matter of historical and legal record that the Kentucky Colonelcy resides within the individual and the state, not within any private corporation.

  • Distinct Entity: The Kentucky Colonel Society is not affiliated with, nor a subordinate of, the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels (HOKC).
  • Representative Authority: The HOKC is a private 501(c)(3) charitable organization that represents a self-selected minority (estimated at 8-11%) of the Colonelcy. It does not speak for, nor hold authority over, the remaining vast majority of the Kentucky Colonel Class.
  • Historical Accuracy: We explicitly reject the "1813 narrative" often promoted as a corporate origin based on myth and propaganda, historians and the United States Government have affirmed that Col. Charles Todd was not made a Kentucky Colonel by Governor Isaac Shelby in 1813 or any other year. Such claims constitute a false designation of origin (as per Title 15 U.S.C. § 1125), misrepresenting a 20th-century private corporation as the historical source of a state-bestowed honor by trademarking and marketing the 1813 date and the ideal of the Kentucky Colonel.
  • Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels has a long record of bullying companies, universities and even the Kentucky Colonels basketball team in 2004 over using the state's iconic Kentucky Colonel, with fraudulent claims of origin for the personal enrichment of shareholders of Kentucky Colonels Collectibles (a for-profit subsidiary) to commercialize and dilute the meaning of the title through product merchandising.

Our Mission

The Kentucky Colonel Society exists to ensure that the honorific title remains a badge of the individual’s merit and relationship to the Commonwealth. We serve to protect the Class Identity of all Colonels from being subsumed or misrepresented by private interests, ensuring the dignity of the title remains untethered to charitable solicitation.

Official Declaration of the Kentucky Colonel Society.