Lewis & Clark Trip Day 3: Maysville Historic Washington District (5/10/2021)

Monday, May 10, 2021

*On 9/22 or 9/23/1803, Meriwether Lewis may have stopped in Maysville, which was the hometown of John Colter, one of the "nine young men from Kentucky" who joined the Corps of Discovery expedition.*

The Historic Washington District existed as the town of Washington when Lewis arrived, although it was inland from the Port of Maysville, KY.

Mefford's Fort (1787, built with the boards from the flat boat
upon which George Mefford, his wife, and 13 children
traveled along the Ohio River to settle here)

The former Methodist Episcopal Church South (1848),
which was established when the church split into
North and South over the issue of slavery

Paxton-Evans House (c 1800)

Paxton Inn (1810, in Federal style)

Washington Hall (c 1820 as a hotel,
an example of 19C commercial architecture)

Washington Courthouse (1793) Site

Pillsbury Boys' School (c 1812 as a residence,
converted into a school in 1865)

Boyhood home (c 1797) of Civil War Confederate General
Albert Sidney Johnston, who had attended West Point
with Jefferson Davis, and died in the Battle of Shiloh

Former First Reformed Christian Church (c 1848)
was later the Washington Meeting House

Row Houses (c 1795), which are thought to be
the oldest frame buildings in Mason County, KY

Stone House (c 1799, with two-foot thick limestone walls)

Reported to be the former Washington Branch
of the Bank of Northern Kentucky (c 1809)

Marshall Key House (1795, and 1807) is now the
Harriet Beecher Stowe Slavery to Freedom Museum,
as she was said to have visited this house in the 1833

Harriet Beecher Stowe did observe a slave auction on the lawn of the Washington Courthouse, and included the scene in her 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Brick Outbuilding (c 1795); the diamond shape of the
side vents indicate this was used as a smokehouse

Washington Presbyterian Church (1870,
in Gothic Revival style)

Washington Post Office (c 1789, as the first postal station
in Kentucky before it was formed as a state from Virginia)
is the only working log cabin post office in America

Haven's Chapel (established in 1882 as the Methodist Church,
rebuilt in 1941 after three fires) is now a lawyer's office

"Cane Brake" (c 1790) is one of the original 119 log cabins
built in Washington; a canebrake is a thicket of dense tall grass
 for which settlers looked as a sign of fertile soil

Simon Kenton Shrine (c 1790 as a general store)
was so-named to honor the frontiersman who
founded Washington, initially called Kenton Station

University of Kentucky Wildcats birdhouse

The UK Wildcats Birdhouse has
references to all the teams in the SEC

Next: Maysville, KY.