374 markers in the database — showing 121–180.
Frankfort, KY
Methodism reached Frankfort early: the 1790 conference folded the then-frontier station into the Lexington Circuit, and by 1821 Rev. William Holman had organized the town's First Methodist congregation, whose first small church stood on Ann Street. The present site was purchased in 1856 and its building completed in 1858. Bishops H.H. Kavanaugh and E.I. Tullis both served here as pastors.
Hopkinsville, KY
Organized in 1813—by tradition through the pioneer minister and Cherokee missionary Gideon Blackburn—First Presbyterian is among Hopkinsville's oldest congregations. Its sanctuary, built between 1848 and 1852, still stands. During the harsh winter of 1861–62 the building served as a hospital for Confederate troops encamped nearby under Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, when disease swept the camp.
Paducah, KY
First Presbyterian Church of Paducah was organized in October 1842 in the Broadway home of Judge James Campbell, with just eight charter members and the Reverend A. W. Campbell as its first pastor. The young congregation met in homes and the courthouse until it built its first church in 1848, later moving to this location in 1888. Its present building was dedicated in 1933.
Frankfort, KY
Frankfort's Presbyterians organized in 1815 and built the city's first denominational church in 1824, an outgrowth of a Sunday School that Margaretta Brown had begun in 1810. The present modified Gothic building went up in 1849 under the Rev. Stuart Robinson, and the congregation's strong Union sympathies kept it intact through the divisions of the Civil War.
Glasgow, KY
This Barren County congregation formed around 1802, when member Isaac Robertson donated a lot for a log meeting house and the Reverend John Howe served as first minister. The present Gothic Revival sanctuary, built about 1853, features Tudor-arched windows and doors and brick pilasters, and the town's oldest cemetery lies behind it. The church has anchored the same site for more than two centuries.
Lancaster, KY
Organized in 1816 by the Presbytery of Transylvania with twenty-two members, this Garrard County congregation was first served by the Reverend James C. Barnes, who also ministered at nearby Paint Lick Church. Worshipers met in the shared Republican (Union) Church until 1846, built on Buford and Stanford Streets, and moved to the present site in 1879. Among its members was William O. Bradley, later a governor of Kentucky.
Greenville, KY
Presbyterians organized this Muhlenberg County congregation in 1804 on land given by Colonel William Campbell and his wife, in the early years when Kentucky was still a frontier being settled by pioneer families. Circuit-riding ministers such as Terah Templin and David Rice served the young church before it built its first sanctuary on Martin Street in 1825. The handsome Gothic-Revival building on South Main Street, its bricks made on a local farm, was begun in 1873 and dedicated in 1885 by the church founder's own grandson.
Danville, KY
On May 23, 1864, nearly 250 Black men—most of them enslaved—left Boyle County to march to Camp Nelson and enlist in the Union army, enduring stones and gunfire from hostile onlookers along the way. When they arrived, a Union colonel at first refused them because no policy yet permitted the enlistment of enslaved men. Their acceptance helped force a change in policy, opening the army to able-bodied African American men and setting the stage for more than 5,000 troops to be recruited at Camp Nelson.
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.
Greenville, KY
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry rode through Greenville three times on reconnaissance missions out of Hopkinsville during the winter of 1861–62. Here they captured Union arms and equipment, and in late December passed through on the way to a victory over a larger Federal force at nearby Sacramento. They returned in January to burn the Pond River bridges and slow the Union advance.
Madisonville, KY
In the late autumn of 1861, Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest passed through this area on a reconnaissance and foraging expedition toward the Ohio River. Riding with 300 horsemen, Forrest gathered hogs, horses, and cattle for the Confederate army as he ranged toward Caseyville and back to Hopkinsville. It was early work for a commander who would become one of the war's most feared cavalry leaders.
Providence, KY
Late in 1861, Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest passed near Providence during a reconnaissance and foraging sweep toward the Ohio River. Leading 300 riders, Forrest collected hogs, horses, and cattle to supply the Confederate army as he moved toward Caseyville and back to Hopkinsville. The expedition was among the first of the aggressive cavalry operations that made his name.
McCracken County, KY
After the Battle of Paducah on March 25, 1864, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry bivouacked about a mile southwest of this spot. The next day Forrest moved to Mayfield and paroled his men on a three-day furlough so they could visit their western Kentucky and Tennessee homes; every soldier rejoined him afterward at Trenton, Tennessee.
Paducah, KY
On March 25, 1864, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest raided Paducah with Kentucky and Tennessee brigades, but Union Fort Anderson held with the aid of gunboats on the Ohio. Forrest's men captured warehouse guards, burned part of the town, and carried off supplies as they withdrew. When a Union newspaper boasted that Forrest had missed a stock of horses, he sent General Abe Buford back to seize them—a stinging coda to the raid.
Ballard County, KY
In 1780, frontier commander George Rogers Clark built Fort Jefferson here as part of an ambitious plan conceived by Virginia's Governor Patrick Henry and carried on by his successor, Thomas Jefferson, to secure the young nation's western claims. The next year the Chickasaw, angered by settlement on their land, besieged the fort for five days until Clark arrived with reinforcements; the post was abandoned soon after. The strategic spot was resettled following the Jackson Purchase and later served as an important Union position in the Civil War.
Ballard County, KY
After Confederate forces seized Columbus in September 1861, Union troops occupied nearby Fort Jefferson, one of the first Kentucky positions held for the Union. From this base along the Mississippi, General Ulysses S. Grant directed a demonstration against Columbus in January 1862, and troops staged here helped capture Fort Henry the following month. It was one of four area river ports serving as Union supply bases for the war's western theater.
Richmond, KY
In the spring of 1775, a party of settlers pushing along Daniel Boone's newly blazed Wilderness Road threw up a small stockade here — remembered as Fort Twetty, and claimed as the first fort built in Kentucky. It was raised in the dangerous, contested days of late March, when the road into the Kentucky wilderness was just opening and the founding of Boonesborough lay only days ahead. The little fort marks the very edge of American settlement at that moment.
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.
Louisville, KY
On April 3, 1798, eight Louisville citizens pledged financial support for a new school, a commitment the University of Louisville still treats as its symbolic founding. That pledge produced Jefferson Seminary, which fed into the Louisville College and the Louisville Medical Institute of 1837. In 1846 these strands merged into the newly named University of Louisville, soon adding a law school.
West Liberty, KY
Edmund Wells settled this stretch of eastern Kentucky about 1814, running a mill, ferry, and tavern when it was still part of Floyd County. When Morgan County was created, its first court met at his home in 1823, and Wells gave the land for the county seat of West Liberty and built its first jail and courthouse. His grist mill, completed in 1816, anchored the settlement first known as Wells Mill and remained a landmark long after he sold it around 1838.
West Point, KY
In 1796 James Young and Samuel Pearman laid out West Point on Young's land, naming it for its standing as the westernmost English-speaking settlement below the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. Its position at the confluence of the Salt and Ohio Rivers made it a prosperous river town. Young ran an inn, operated a ferry across the Ohio to the Northwest Territory by 1797, and helped finance the Louisville-Nashville Turnpike that would one day become the Dixie Highway.
Paducah, KY
This Paducah congregation began in 1892 as a mission, with its first church at 10th and Trimble Streets. In 1908 the Fountain Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, South was erected on this site for $35,000 and has served continuously ever since, weathering the great 1937 flood that filled its basement. A Möller pipe organ was installed in 1945, and an education wing was added in 1947.
Whitesburg, KY
Whitesburg honors Burdine native Francis Gary Powers (1929–1977), the CIA pilot whose high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union made him a Cold War symbol. On May 1, 1960, his aircraft was downed deep inside Russia; he parachuted to safety, was captured, tried for espionage, and freed in 1962 in a swap for a Soviet spy. He later died in a helicopter crash while working as a news pilot.
Frankfort, KY
Soon after Kentucky achieved statehood, five commissioners were appointed in June 1792 to select a seat of government. A number of towns competed, but Frankfort prevailed—thanks to persistence and a generous package that reportedly included Andrew Holmes' log house for use as a capitol, town lots, hardware, glass, nails, and gold. The commissioners gave their recommendation to the legislature in December 1792.
Frankfort, KY
In 1860 Governor Magoffin signed a bill creating the Kentucky Institution for the Education and Training of Feeble-Minded Children, one of the era's new state institutions for people with disabilities. Renamed several times over the following century, it became badly overcrowded—built for 616 residents but holding as many as 1,129—and many residents spent their entire lives here, laboring unpaid to maintain the facility until it closed in 1972. More than 411 people lie in this cemetery, most graves marked only "unknown."
Frankfort, KY
Surveyed in 1773 and founded by General James Wilkinson, Frankfort rose on a bend of the Kentucky River as settlers pressed west across the mountains. Virginia's legislature chartered the town in 1786, and in December 1792 the young state of Kentucky chose it as capital. From a frontier river crossing it became the seat of a brand-new commonwealth.
Frankfort, KY
Surveyed in 1773 and founded by General James Wilkinson, Frankfort grew on the Kentucky River as pioneers streamed into the Bluegrass. Chartered by Virginia in 1786 and named Kentucky's capital in December 1792, the little river town won out over larger rivals to become the permanent seat of government. It has anchored the commonwealth's public life ever since.
Frankfort, KY
Franklin County was formed in 1795 from parts of Woodford, Mercer, and Shelby counties, three years after Kentucky became a state with Frankfort as its capital. The legislature had already met in the area, and in 1795 Frankfort was made the county seat. The county honors Benjamin Franklin, one of the architects of American independence.
Versailles, KY
Landmark Masonic Lodge No. 41 was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky on August 27, 1817, and in its first two centuries sent three members—John McKinney Jr., William Brown Jr., and Christopher L. Stout—to the office of Grand Master. Long a fixture of Versailles civic life, the lodge has served the town's youth for generations. Its rolls included former governor and baseball commissioner A. B. "Happy" Chandler and country entertainer John Conlee.
Frankfort, KY
Built in 1913, this Georgian home in Frankfort was the residence of Graham Vreeland, founder and editor of the Frankfort News, which later became the State Journal. It was designed by architect D. X. Murphy, best known for the grandstand and twin spires of Churchill Downs. The celebrated Kentucky watercolorist Paul Sawyier lived on the property in the years just before the house was built.
Lancaster, KY
Garrard County, the 25th formed in Kentucky, was created in 1797 and named for James Garrard, then the state's governor. A Virginia native and Revolutionary War militia officer, Garrard came to Kentucky in 1783 and helped shape its path to statehood at the Danville conventions before serving as governor from 1796 to 1804.
Frankfort, KY
This early nineteenth-century Frankfort house is notable for its unusual construction—timbers infilled with brick and mortar and sheathed in clapboard, a technique rarely seen in central Kentucky. Over the years it was owned by prominent families, including those of Thomas L. Crittenden and James Garrard. The Commonwealth acquired the property in 1973.
Georgetown, KY
Scott County native Basil W. Duke (1838–1916) served the Confederacy as the trusted lieutenant and brother-in-law of John Hunt Morgan, giving discipline and dash to the famed 2nd Kentucky Cavalry. Twice wounded in 1862 and captured during the 1863 Indiana–Ohio raid, he later took command of Morgan's brigade and helped escort Jefferson Davis in the war's final weeks. Afterward he practiced law in Louisville, entered politics, and wrote the History of Morgan's Cavalry.
Paducah, KY
This heroic statue honors General Lloyd Tilghman, a Maryland-born engineer who laid out the first railroad to reach Paducah before casting his lot with the Confederacy in 1861. He was killed leading troops near Vicksburg in May 1863. His sons and the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the monument in 1909, sculpted by the noted Boston artist Henry H. Kitson.
Owensboro, KY
In 1852, George Graham Vest helped establish Owensboro's second newspaper, The Gazette, before going on to serve as a U.S. Senator from Missouri from 1879 to 1903. He is best remembered for his "Tribute to a Dog," a spontaneous courtroom oration in defense of a backwoodsman's slain hound, "Old Drum." The eloquent plea won the case and brought Vest lasting fame.
Lexington, KY
George Shannon was the youngest member of the Corps of Discovery that crossed the continent from 1803 to 1806. He later settled into Kentucky life, studying at Transylvania University and practicing law from an office in Lexington's Jordan's Row. A member of the Masonic Lodge and patriotic societies, Shannon served in the Kentucky legislature and was appointed a state circuit judge before moving with his family to Missouri in 1828.
Louisville, KY
This memorial honors George Warren Fuller (1868–1934), a pioneering sanitary engineer whose work transformed America's drinking water. Fuller helped establish modern water filtration and disinfection, engineering some of the first large-scale treatment systems that made public water supplies safe. The plaque praises the engineering skill, diplomacy, and leadership that defined his career.
Munfordville, KY
Built between 1819 and 1822 by Colonel Aylette Hartswell Buckner, Glen Lily was in 1823 the birthplace of Simon Bolivar Buckner. He grew up to command Confederate forces in the Civil War, famously surrendering Fort Donelson in 1862. Buckner later returned to public life as governor of Kentucky from 1887 to 1891 and, in 1896, ran as a candidate for vice president.
Frankfort, KY
A Catholic presence took root in Frankfort in 1808, with worship held in private houses and, by 1837, a property secured by Bishop Flaget of Bardstown. Known first as St. Patrick Mission, the congregation grew rapidly after an influx of German and Irish immigrants in the 1840s and gained a permanent pastor in 1848. With the dedication of its church in 1850, it was renamed Good Shepherd.
Hopkinsville, KY
Born near Bardstown and trained at Transylvania University, Charles S. Morehead built a long public career—state legislator, attorney general, U.S. congressman, and governor of Kentucky from 1855 to 1859. As the nation fractured, he joined the 1861 Washington Peace Conference in a last effort to avert war; though he stayed officially neutral, his sympathy for the Confederacy and criticism of Lincoln led to his arrest and months of imprisonment. Warned of a second arrest, he fled abroad and died at his Mississippi plantation in 1868.
Barbourville, KY
Born in Laurel County in 1875, Flem D. Sampson attended Union College and built his law practice in Barbourville, once partnering with Caleb Powers, a figure in the notorious Goebel assassination case. He rose through the county, district, and appellate courts to become chief justice of Kentucky's Court of Appeals before serving as governor from 1927 to 1931, confronting the onset of the Great Depression.
Frankfort, KY
George Madison came to Kentucky as a young Virginian who had already soldiered in the Revolutionary War, and he spent roughly two decades as auditor of the state's public accounts after his appointment by Governor Isaac Shelby. Distinguished service in the War of 1812 lifted him to popularity, and in 1816 Kentuckians elected him governor. He died only weeks after taking office—the first Kentucky governor to die in office—and Lieutenant Governor Gabriel Slaughter completed the term. Madison rests in the state section of the Frankfort Cemetery.
Russellville, KY
This was the home of John Breathitt, who rose from Virginia-born newcomer to governor of Kentucky. Arriving in 1800, he built a career as a lawyer and legislator, was elected lieutenant governor in 1828 and governor in 1832, and died in office in 1834. A believer in the value of history, he urged the state to preserve its important documents, writing of "a laudable solicitude to know everything in respect to our history."
Russellville, KY
This corner was home to John J. Crittenden from 1811 to 1818, early in a career that made him one of Kentucky's most distinguished statesmen. He served in the War of 1812, sat in the legislature, became the state's fifteenth governor, and was U.S. Attorney General under three presidents and a five-time senator. He is best remembered for the Crittenden Compromise of 1860, a last, failed attempt to hold the Union together on the eve of the Civil War.
Russellville, KY
This marker records a remarkable political export: seven residents of Logan County went on to serve as governors of four different states—Kentucky, Florida, Illinois, and Texas—between the 1820s and 1865. Among them were John Breathitt, John J. Crittenden, and Ninian Edwards.
Paducah, KY
Founded in 1848 in a private home, Grace Church raised its first sanctuary from lumber cut in Louisville and floated down the Ohio to the Paducah riverfront, consecrating it in 1851. During the Civil War the federal government seized the property and pressed it into service as a hospital. The present Gothic church was begun in 1873 to serve a growing river city, and later survived the devastating 1937 flood.
Hopkinsville, KY
Organized in 1831 by Hopkinsville laymen with help from an early missionary who became its first rector, Grace Episcopal grew alongside the young town of western Kentucky. Its first sanctuary rose around 1850, and in 1875 the parish welcomed Jefferson Davis—an Episcopalian and Christian County native—to worship. The present church was built in 1883–84 and became a hub of the community's social and cultural life, surviving a tornado that toppled its tower in 1978.
New Castle, KY
The Grand United Order of Odd Fellows formed in 1843, when nearly every other fraternal order barred Black members, and after the Civil War it offered vital mutual support to African American communities. In New Castle, former slaves founded Washington Lodge #1513 in 1872, just seven years after emancipation, and the lodge has owned this building—one of the few surviving 19th-century facades in town—since 1886. It remains the only active GUOOF lodge in Kentucky and among the oldest Black fraternal organizations in the state.
Paducah, KY
Alben W. Barkley, the genial Kentuckian known as "The Veep," began his public life as McCracken County Attorney and rose to become one of the most influential figures in mid-century American government. He served decades in Congress, led the Senate Democrats for thirteen years under Franklin Roosevelt, and was Vice President under Harry Truman from 1949 to 1953. He collapsed and died in 1956 while giving a speech, having just declared he would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit among the mighty.
Leitchfield, KY
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.
Danville, KY
Before 1800, Benjamin Grayson kept Danville's first tavern in this building, where settlers gathered before roaring log fires to argue the burning political questions of the frontier. Here in 1786 met the Danville Political Society, the first organization of its kind in the West, whose members debated the future of the region as Kentucky moved toward statehood. Such taverns were the crucibles of early western self-government.
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.
Greensburg, KY
Raised between 1802 and 1804 by a handful of local builders—among them Thomas Metcalfe, a future Kentucky governor—the Greensburg courthouse is one of the oldest public buildings still standing in the state. It served the county's legal business for some 135 years and later housed a library on its second floor. Its sturdy stone walls have watched over Green County's civic life for more than two centuries.
Middletown, KY
When the Louisville and Frankfort Shortline railroad reached eastern Jefferson County in 1848, it seeded a cluster of communities—Anchorage, Berrytown, and Griffytown. Local tradition holds that in 1879 the freedman Dan Griffith bought an early settler's cabin, moved it to Old Harrod's Creek Road, and founded the settlement that still bears his name. The original cabin stood until it burned in 1956.
Paducah, KY
Gunsmith Ferd Hummel arrived in Paducah in 1861 and set up a small frame shop that soon served the Federal soldiers occupying the town, who brought their firearms to him for repair. When Confederate raiders looted his shop in March 1864, he had already hidden his best arms at home. He carried on his trade for years, earning a patent for a breech-loading firearm in 1881.
Paducah, KY
Built in 1897 and long known as the Fraternity Building, this downtown Paducah landmark took on a wartime role during World War II as home to the Paducah–McCracken County Draft Board. Nearly 5,000 area men and women served in the war, many of them processed through this very building. It was named a Kentucky Landmark in 2002 and continues in use as offices.
Lexington, KY
Hampton Court is one of Lexington's historic residential landmarks, recognized for its architectural and local significance during the city's growth as the commercial and cultural hub of Kentucky's Bluegrass region. Its listing on the National Register of Historic Places marks it as a place worth preserving—part of the fabric of a city long known for its stately homes, horse farms, and antebellum and Victorian-era building traditions.
Hanson, KY
Named for civil engineer Henry B. Hanson, who laid it out, this Hopkins County town was founded in 1869 and incorporated in 1873. Hanson grew into a bustling tobacco center whose "Hanson Twist" tobacco was shipped across the United States. A string of costly fires in 1889, 1894, 1905, and 1906 repeatedly reshaped the town's fortunes.
Louisville, KY
After the Civil War, as large Kentucky estates were subdivided, African American families settled the land along Harrods Creek and in nearby Prospect and "The Neck." In 1919 entrepreneur James Taylor purchased land from Mary Shirley Helm and began selling lots to Black families, and his Taylor Subdivision grew into a thriving suburban community. The Jacob School, built in 1916 and named for former slave Jefferson Jacob, still stands as a landmark of that world.
Munfordville, KY
Formed in 1819 from Hardin and Barren counties, Hart County was home to the Buckner family. Simon Bolivar Buckner, a West Point graduate and Mexican War captain, became a Confederate general and later governor of Kentucky; his son, Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., commanded the U.S. Tenth Army and was killed on Okinawa in 1945. Both rest in the Frankfort Cemetery.