 It was named for Linn Boyd of Paducah, former U.S. congressman, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, who died in 1859 soon after being elected lieutenant governor of Kentucky.The earliest evidence of human habitation in Boyd County exists in the forms of numerous earthen mounds containing human skeletons and burial goods giving evidence that prehistoric Native Americans inhabited the area.A 1973 archeological find revealed a serpent-shaped mound built of rocks dating to 2000 BC and stretching for along a ridge parallel to the Big Sandy River south of Catlettsburg.