Graves County is a county located on the southwest border of the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 36,649. Its county seat is Mayfield. The county was formed in 1824 and was named for Major Benjamin Franklin Graves, a politician and fallen soldier in the War of 1812.

Graves County comprises the Mayfield, KY Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Paducah-Mayfield, KY-IL Combined Statistical Area.

Graves County is a "limited" dry county, meaning that sale of alcohol in the county is prohibited except for wine and beer in restaurants. In 2016, county residents voted on whether to become a "wet" county, but that attempt failed. Later in the year, a ballot measure was proposed and passed within the city limits of Mayfield (the county seat) to allow alcohol sales in stores and gas stations.

Graves County was named for Capt. Benjamin Franklin Graves, who was one of numerous Kentucky officers killed after being taken as a prisoner in the disastrous 1813 Battle of Raisin River in Michigan Territory during the War of 1812. He disappeared while being forced by the Potawatomi, allies of the British, to walk to the British Fort Malden in Amherstburg, Ontario. The Native Americans killed prisoners who could not keep up. Nearly 400 Kentuckians died in the January 22 battle, the highest fatality of any single battle during the war.

The fertile land attracted early settlers from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, who brought with them education, culture, and a fierce determination to succeed. They put down roots and created a unique political, economic, and social environment. Tobacco was important. Graves County developed the dark-fired and dark-air-cured leaf tobacco used in smokeless tobacco farming. In the early 20th of the counties involved in the Black Patch Tobacco Wars, as white farmers organized into the area to suppress violence, after tobacco warehouses and other properties, including tons of tobacco, were being destroyed.

A woolen mill began operating before the Civil War and continued to expand with the men's clothing market. Several clothing manufacturing companies were added in the area. The county seat's minor league baseball team was named the Mayfield Clothiers for this historical connection.

During the post-Reconstruction period, racial violence by whites against blacks continued in Graves County; they exercised terrorism to re-establish and maintain white supremacy. Whites lynched 6 African Americans here after 1877; most were killed around the turn of the 20th century. Four were killed during one week in 1896 in Mayfield, the county seat. Three were killed on December 23 in the so-called Mayfield Race War. Whites had heard rumors that blacks were arming elsewhere in the county in retaliation for the lynching of Jim Stone earlier that week. The whites recruited reinforcements from Fulton County and, overly tense, killed Will Suett, a young black man, as he was getting off a train to visit his family for the holidays. Two other black men were fatally shot soon after. Acknowledging that Suett's death was unprovoked, white residents took up a collection for his widowed mother.

Like many other counties in Kentucky, Graves retained prohibition of the sale or consumption of alcohol, voting to be a "dry" county after Congress repealed Prohibition in the 20th century. Graves County was a "limited" dry county, meaning that sale of alcohol in the county is prohibited except for wine and beer in restaurants. In 2016, the county voted on whether to become a "wet" county but that attempt failed. Later in the year, a ballot measure was proposed and passed within the city limits of Mayfield (the county seat) to allow alcohol sales in stores and gas stations.