Kaufman County was settled in 1840 and named for a Texas congressman

In 1840, William P. King led forty pioneers from Mississippi into what is now Kaufman County. They built a fort called King's Fort. The county was officially created in February 1848 from Henderson County. It was named for David Spangler Kaufman — a lawyer, diplomat, and congressman who served in the Congress of the Republic of Texas, the Texas Legislature, and the U.S. Congress. King's Fort was renamed Kaufman and became the county seat in 1851.

The county sits in the Blackland Prairie, a belt of dark, clay-heavy soil that runs down the center of Texas. That soil made it good farmland — corn dominated before the Civil War, and cotton became the main crop after. By 1930, cotton production peaked at nearly 58,000 bales.