The origins of the Lawhorn family are firmly rooted in their ancestral homeland of Wales. While connections between the Lawhorn family and the royal court of England have been debated for years among scholars, it is fairly well agreed upon that the ancestors of the Lawhorn family had strong ties Laugharne Castle as is evidenced by its name.

In 1584, Queen Elizabeth granted Laugharne Castle to Sir John Perrott (rumored to have been an illegitimate son of Henry VIII) who was responsible for converting the castle from a fortification into a Tudor mansion. Sir Perrott's daughter, Lettice, would go on to marry Rowland Laugharne and inhabit the castle for a short time. However, the Laugharne family would keep the St Bride's Castle of Pembrokeshire as their primary residence.

During the English Civil War, in 1644, Laugharne Castle was captured by Royalists forces, but then attacked by the Parliamentary forces lead by the grandson of Rowland and Lettice, Major-General Rowland Laugharne. The ensuing week-long siege resulted in most of the castle being leveled by cannon fire. Following the siege, the castle was deemed unsalvageable and left to become ruins.

In 1666, the same year of the Great Fire of London, Charles Laugharne was born to Richard and Joan (Russel) Laugharne in Pembrokeshire. Charles was the nephew of Rowland Laugharne who had held seige on the Laughharne Castle two decades years prior. Charles Laugharne did not have a particularly pleasant life. When he was only four years old, both of his parents died, leaving him as an orphan. While the events of his early life are unrecorded, there is evidence of his arrival at the Virginia colony in America in 1683. Given the price for travel to the New World, he was likely an indentured servant for someone of prominence within the colony. This was further corroborated by the presence of his names in a publication for "Child Apprenticeships" published by Peter Wilson Coldham. In this publication, Charles was record as having been recruited by Commander William Jeffries of the Concord on May 22, 1683 to travel to Virginia. While certainly an intriguing story, the Concord (known today as the "German Mayflower") set sail from Rotterdam and traveled to Philadelphia in a trip that took nearly 75 days. There is limited evidence that suggest that the ship traveled to Virginia and the available manifest listing 57 passengers does not include Charles Laughharne,  making  this story questionable at best.

Another possible man of prominence that could have helped to pay for Charles Atlantic passage could have been his elder cousin, John Laugharne. John had traveled to the Virginia colony a decade earlier and had established himself a wealthy estate in Warwick, Virginia known as "Gambell". A royal grant of an additional 1000 acres in 1681 certainly would have given John the means to bring his orphaned cousin to the colony.

Regardless of how he arrived, Charles Laugharne found himself on the frontier of the New World. After surviving for several years in America, he married a fellow colonist, Nancy Atkins, who was the daughter of Danish immigrants. Together the couple would have a son, Thomas Lawhorn who would be the progenitor of the Americanize Lawhorn surname in the United States.

During the next three generations, the Lawhorn family would continue pushing westward from Williamsburg to Richmond, then to Charlottesville and finally across the Appalachian mountains into the foothills of Kentucky.

Near Richmond, VA in 1746, Thomas Lawhorn Jr. (grandson of Charles and Nancy) was listed as neighbor of the Tuckahoe Plantation seated by Peter Jefferson, father of the well-known politician Thomas Jefferson. Many years later, Thomas Jefferson would help to pay a debt owed by Thomas Lawhorn's son., suggesting that the two son's were at least friendly acquaintances. 

Continuing westward, Benjamin Bennett Lawhorn was the first Lawhorn to make the challenging journey through the Appalachian mountains. Benjamin was born in Fluvanna Co. VA in 1776 where he remained for nearly three decades. During that time he married Sally Thomas and had six children between 1802 and 1809. He was listed in the 1810 census as a resident of Fluvanna Co. VA.

Within the next four years, Benjamin moved his family westward following the old "wilderness road" that had been originally mapped out by Daniel Boone in 1775. By 1814, the Benjamin, Sally and their children were living in Casey Co. Kentucky as evidenced by the birth certificate of their seventh son, Nathan Lawhorn.  In Casey Co. Sally bore six more children bring the total to thirteen children between 1802 and 1832. In 1834, Benjamin was given a generous land grant along the Green River in Casey Co. In his Will, Benjamin refers to this land several times while also entertainingly adding and subsequently removing relatives from the Will as they lost his aged favor. Benjamin's son, Benjamin F. Lawhorn. would expand his fathers claim by acquiring additional land where the Green River and South Fork converge.

After the long journey to Kentucky, the Lawhorn family became deeply entrenched in the small communities of Casey County. Aside from the occasional wunderlusting cousin, most members over the next five generations of Lawhorns remained in the bucolic  farm towns of this region. It should be noted that by the fifth generation of prolific Kentucky Lawhorns, there were thousands of living descendants of Benjamin and Sally Lawhorn. Due to this fact, it would be unreasonable to describe all the families here. As a result, only the most relevant genealogies have been highlighted.

The three most relevant generations to the Lawhorn families of Cincinnati were 1) Ruben and Nancy (Mills) Lawhorn, 2) Benjamin F. and Maud (Bell) Lawhorn and 3) Lawrence and Sadie (Wilson) Lawhorn, where each generation descended from the one before it.

The Great Depression in the 1930s had a profoundly detrimental impact on the rapidly souring economic opportunities available for those living in Appalachian communities such as Casey Co., Kentucky.

One of the most prominent effects of these economic hardships was the diaspora of rural Kentuckians to larger industrialized cities such as Louisville, Detroit, Chicago, and Cincinnati. The path of the diaspora during the 1940s and 50s followed along the modern-day I-75 motorway and as a result was often referred to as the "Hillbilly Highway" where the term "hillbilly" was almost always derogatory.

Several children of Lawrence and Sadie Lawhorn traveled from their homeland to Cincinnati, Ohio searching for jobs in factories and shops.  These children were Curtis, Carrell, Ralph, and Dorothy Lawhorn. The oldest son, Curtis Lawhorn had already started a family with Mattie Bell Patton by the time they moved their family to Cincinnati.

In 1942, Curtis traveled to Cincinnati to work at the Corcoran Brown Lamp Division of the Autolite company. He continued to return home to Kentucky as often as he could. In 1944, to be closer to Curtis, his wife, Mattie, moved the family north to Cincinnati permanently. Although she was pregnant at the time, she managed to pack up all the family's belonging and corralled her five children on to a bus heading towards the Queen City. Once in Cincinnati, the family lived in a small apartment on Liberty St. just east of Over-the-Rhine in the Pendelton neighborhood. Both Curtis and Mattie worked at Autolite for some time and Mattie also worked at a local laundromat. In 1948, the family moved to a two-room house on E. Miami River Rd. in Cleves, OH where they lived for the next twenty years.