HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicAmerican Revolution

Fleming County

Flemingsburg, Fleming County, Kentucky

Marker Inscription

Fleming County. Kentucky's 26th, was taken out of Mason, 1798. Named for Col. John Fleming who came to area to mark, improve land, 1776. Officer in Rev. War. Built Fleming's Station, second in county, 1788. Closely associated with other pioneers, John Finley, Michael Cassidy, and George Stockton, his halfbrother, who owned the land and who laid out and named Flemingsburg, 1796.

Erected by Kentucky Historical Society

The Story

Kentucky's 26th county, Fleming, was cut from Mason County in 1798 and named for Col. John Fleming, a Revolutionary War officer who came to mark and improve land here in 1776 and built the area's second station in 1788. He worked alongside fellow pioneers John Finley, Michael Cassidy, and his half-brother George Stockton, who owned the land and laid out Flemingsburg in 1796.

Why it matters

The marker preserves the founding generation of station-builders whose fortified settlements turned contested wilderness into permanent Kentucky communities.

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Related people

  • · John Fleming
  • · George Stockton
  • · Michael Cassidy

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Major George M. Bedinger

Robertson County, KY

On a nearby hilltop lie the home site and grave of Major George M. Bedinger (1756–1843), a Pennsylvania-born patriot who fought in the Revolution—helping defend Boonesborough in 1779 and serving at the siege of Yorktown in 1781. Returning to Kentucky in 1784, he was among the first to survey this region, later serving in the state legislature and in Congress. An opponent of slavery, he freed his enslaved people when each reached the age of thirty.

Mason County

Maysville, KY

Established by Virginia's legislature in 1788 out of Bourbon County, Mason County once sprawled across the area of some sixteen present-day counties. It was named for George Mason, author of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights—a foundation for the U.S. Bill of Rights—and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Boone's Station

Lexington, KY

Daniel Boone surveyed this site in 1774 and by December 1779 was living here with other families in crude shelters, building cabins and a stockade the next year. By 1783 the fortified station sheltered fifteen to twenty families on the Kentucky frontier—but at a cost: Boone's brother Edward, his son Israel, and his nephew Thomas were all killed in the closing violence of the Revolutionary War. Boone remained until 1784, and in the 20th century the land was willed to the state, opening as Boone's Station State Park in 1992.

Samuel Boone

Lexington, KY

Here lies Samuel Boone (1728–1816), eldest brother of the famed pioneer Daniel Boone. Born in Pennsylvania, he came to Kentucky from South Carolina in 1779 and settled at Boone's Station, joining the 1782 defense of Bryan's Station during a period of intense frontier warfare. That same year his son Thomas was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks, one of the last engagements of the Revolution in the West.