Lazarus W. Powell, for whom the county was named in 1852, was born in Henderson County in 1812. He graduated in 1833 from St. Joseph's College in Bardstown and attended Transylvania law school. He served in the state legislature from 1836 to 1838, as Governor of Kentucky from 1851 to 1855, and in the U.S. Senate from 1859 to 1865. A resolution for his expulsion for Southern sympathy was defeated in 1862. He favored Kentucky neutrality. He died in 1867 and was buried in Fernwood Cemetery in Henderson, Kentucky.