Warfield, first Martin County seat in 1870, was established about 1850 as a coal, salt, and lumber community by George Rogers Clark Floyd and John Warfield of the Virginia mountains, with products shipped by river boats to Catlettsburg. Floyd was the son of one Governor of Virginia and the brother of another. During the Civil War, the coal mines were used as a hiding place against marauding by the enemy. A Confederate detached force under Col. V. A. Witcher, plundering and burning, harassed eastern Kentucky and West Virginia during most of the war, and in the fall of 1864 took horses and cattle in this area from friend and foe. While Witcher's men made barbecue, Home Guards from Louisa attacked from a hill to the west, and after an exchange of fire both sides withdrew.