Martin County was named in 1870 for Col. John P. Martin, born in Virginia in 1811, who came to Kentucky in 1828. He served in the State House of Representatives from 1841 to 1843, in the U.S. Congress from 1845 to 1847, and as State Senator from 1857 to 1861. He was a delegate from the state at large to the Democratic National Convention in 1856 and a delegate to the futile Kentucky Peace Convention in September 1861. A Floyd County citizen for seventeen years, he died there in 1862 at age 51. Henry L. Clay, D.D., was one of the distinguished natives of Martin County, taught in the schools there and in Williamson, W. Va., and was ordained into the Methodist ministry, serving thirty-three years in W. Va. He was district superintendent in Ashland, Charleston, and Huntington, served on the committee that formed The Methodist Church in 1939 by uniting the Northern, Southern, and Protestant Methodists, and was born in Inez in 1875 and died in Florida in 1964.