Mason County
Maysville, Mason County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Mason County, 1788. Established by the Va. Legislature, original county taken from Bourbon; included area of 16 present-day counties and parts of 3 others. Named for George Mason, Virginian, author of the Va. Declaration of Rights, 1776, foundation for the US Bill of Rights. He also drafted the Va. Constitution. Delegate to Continental Congress, 1777, US Constitutional Convention, 1787.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
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.
Why it matters
A Kentucky county carries the name of a founding thinker whose insistence on protected rights shaped the American Constitution itself.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- National Underground Railroad Museum0.3 mi away
- Kentucky Gateway Museum Center0.3 mi away · 215 Sutton Street, Maysville, KY
- Aberdeen–Huntington Township Museum0.6 mi away
- Albert Sidney Johnston House3.2 mi away
- Harriet Beecher Stowe Slavery to Freedom Museum3.3 mi away · 2124 Old Main Street, Maysville, KY
- Ohio Tobacco Museum7.4 mi away · 703 South 2nd Street, Ripley, OH
Food & drink
- Domino'snearby · 114 East Second Street, Maysville, KY
- Delite's0.2 mi away · 222 Market Street, Maysville, KY
- Crowe Bar0.2 mi away · 220 Market Street, Maysville, KY
- Caproni's on the River0.6 mi away · 320 Rosemary Clooney Street, Maysville, KY
- Dairy Yum Yum0.7 mi away
- The Hogs Trough0.8 mi away
Places to stay
- McCann’s Motel0.7 mi away
- Sapp’s Motel0.9 mi away
- Days Inn by Wyndham Maysville Kentucky0.9 mi away · 484 Moody Drive, Maysville, KY
- Browns Motel0.9 mi away
- Beverly Hills Inn1.9 mi away
- Quality Inn2.0 mi away · 1428a KY 10
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · George Mason
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fleming County
Flemingsburg, KY
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.
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.
Clark Stone House
Anderson Township, OH
When James Clark raised these stone walls around 1801, Ohio was raw frontier — barely settled country on the far edge of the young republic, where a durable stone dwelling was a rare mark of permanence among log cabins. Clark himself carried an older story in his bones: as a boy soldier he had beaten a drummer's cadence at Yorktown in 1781, the siege that effectively ended the Revolutionary War. Two decades later he was among the pioneers pushing west across the Appalachians into the Northwest Territory, trading a battlefield for a homestead in the Ohio wilderness.
Revolutionary War Soldiers Memorial Tablet
Cincinnati, OH
Placed in 1909 by the Cincinnati chapter of the Sons of the Revolution, this tablet honors Revolutionary War soldiers who, after winning independence, moved west to help settle the Ohio country and now lie buried in Hamilton County. The dates 1775 and 1783 mark the span of the war for independence. The memorial links the founding generation to the westward push that opened the trans-Appalachian frontier.