Morgantown & Daniel Morgan
Morgantown, Butler County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Morgantown/ Daniel Morgan. Morgantown- The county seat of Butler Co., it was originally called Funkhouser Hill. It was renamed Morgan Town in Dec. 1810 to honor Revolutionary War officer Daniel Morgan and was incorporated in 1813. It began as a settlement of Revolutionary War veterans, who were awarded land for military service, and pioneer settlers heading west. (Reverse) Daniel Morgan- Born ca. 1735, he was a hero of the American Revolution. He served as a civilian teamster in French & Indian War and in Canada as an officer in Va. colonial militia. His defeat of Col. Tarleton at Cowpens, in S.C., was considered a tactical masterpiece for which he received a gold medal from Congress. Elected to United States Congress & served 1 term before he died in Va., 1802.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The town's very name binds a Kentucky frontier community to the Revolutionary generation whose land bounties helped populate the trans-Appalachian West.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Daniel Morgan
- · Banastre Tarleton
Related events
- · Battle of Cowpens
- · American Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Muhlenberg County / Gen. Peter Muhlenberg
Greenville, KY
Muhlenberg County, formed in 1798, takes its name from Peter Muhlenberg, the Pennsylvania clergyman who famously declared there was "a time to preach and a time to fight"—and shed his pastor's robes to raise the 8th Virginia Regiment. He served from 1776 through the victory at Yorktown, then entered Congress and the Senate. Many veterans of his regiment became pioneers in this corner of Kentucky.
Todd County / Col. John Todd
Elkton, KY
Todd County, formed in 1819, remembers a Virginia-born frontier soldier who helped wrest the Illinois country from British control. John Todd fought at Point Pleasant in 1774, came to Kentucky in 1775, and rode with George Rogers Clark's daring 1778 campaign, afterward serving as civil commandant of the new Illinois County. A champion of setting aside land for public schools, he was killed at the disastrous Battle of Blue Licks in 1782.
Hopkins County / Samuel Hopkins
Madisonville, KY
Hopkins County, created in 1806, honors Samuel Hopkins, a Virginia officer who served on Washington's staff through the Revolution before coming west in 1797 as an agent of the Transylvania Company. He organized and led the first court in the sprawling original Henderson County, sat in both houses of Kentucky's legislature, and commanded American forces on the Western frontier during the War of 1812. He capped his career with two terms in Congress.
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.