Grayson County Named, 1810
Leitchfield, Grayson County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
County Named, 1810. For Col. William Grayson, 1740-90, aide-de-camp to Gen. Washington. Lawyer; in Revolutionary Army, 1776-79; Board of War, 1780-81; Virginia Assembly and Continental Congress, 1784-87; State Convention ratifying Federal Constitution, 1788; and first U.S. Senate, 1789-90. Washington once owned 5,000 acres in county, which was formed from Hardin and Ohio counties.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
When Kentucky carved Grayson County from Hardin and Ohio counties in 1810, lawmakers honored Col. William Grayson (1740–90), a Virginia lawyer who served as aide-de-camp to George Washington during the Revolution and later sat on the Board of War, in the Continental Congress, and in the very first U.S. Senate. The marker also recalls that Washington himself once held 5,000 acres within the county's bounds. Grayson helped ratify the new Federal Constitution at Virginia's 1788 convention before his brief Senate tenure ended with his death in 1790.
Why it matters
County-naming markers like this one knit the young republic's national founders into the local landscape of the trans-Appalachian frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William Grayson
- · George Washington
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Morgantown & Daniel Morgan
Morgantown, KY
Founded as Funkhouser Hill, this Butler County seat was renamed Morgan Town in December 1810 to honor Daniel Morgan, one of the American Revolution's most gifted battlefield tacticians. The settlement grew from a nucleus of Revolutionary War veterans granted land for their service, mingling with pioneers streaming westward across early Kentucky. Morgan himself, born around 1735, rose from a French and Indian War teamster to the general whose double-envelopment of Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens in 1781 earned him a gold medal from Congress.
Green County
Greensburg, KY
Created in 1792 as the last of seven counties formed by Kentucky's first legislature, Green County was named for General Nathanael Greene of the Revolutionary War. Greene fought at Trenton, Brandywine, and Monmouth before Washington sent him south, where his Carolina campaign helped drive the British from Charleston in 1782.
Rogers Station, 1780
Nelson County, KY
In the dangerous years of the Revolution, frontier surveyor and soldier James Rogers marked out a thousand-acre claim here in 1775 and by 1780 had planted a fortified station on it. A veteran of Dunmore's War and the Revolution, Rogers was commissioned a militia colonel and justice of the peace by Virginia's governor Patrick Henry, and he signed the early petitions asking that Kentucky be separated from Virginia. Stations like his were the seeds of permanent settlement.
Nelson County Named, 1784
Bardstown, KY
Nelson County, formed in 1784, honors Thomas Nelson (1738–89), a Virginia planter-statesman who served in the House of Burgesses, the first provincial convention, and the Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. As commander of the Virginia militia and wartime governor, he is remembered for ordering American guns to fire on his own house at Yorktown when the British made it their headquarters.