Nelson County Named, 1784
Bardstown, Nelson County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
County Named, 1784. For Thomas Nelson, 1738-89. Member Va. House of Burgesses. In the first provincial convention, 1774; Continental Congress, 1775-77 and 1779. Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Commander of Va. Militia, 1777-81. Governor of Va., 1781. Commended for selfless patriotism in ordering guns to fire on his own home, the British headquarters, at Yorktown, 1781.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Nelson's willingness to see his own home shelled for the cause makes him an enduring emblem of Revolutionary self-sacrifice, carried west in a county's name.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Thomas Nelson
Related events
- · Siege of Yorktown
- · Signing of the Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
Brig. Gen. Elias Barbee
Campbellsville, KY
Elias Barbee (1763-1843) served in the Revolutionary War from Culpeper County, Virginia — as did all five of his brothers — before settling in what became Taylor County and rising through the Kentucky Militia to brigadier general. As a state senator he championed education for the disabled: in 1822 he introduced the bill, drafted by Judge John Rowan and signed by Gov. Adair, that on April 10, 1823, established the Kentucky School for the Deaf at Danville.
Fort-on-Shore
Louisville, KY
When George Rogers Clark and the settlers who had wintered on Corn Island came ashore in 1778, they raised Fort-on-Shore—the first building on the mainland at the site of present-day Louisville. Built on Clark's orders during the American Revolution, the stockade sheltered troops for four years before it was replaced in 1782 by the larger Fort Nelson. The island that gave the settlers their first foothold once lay in the Ohio River just off this spot.
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.