Mason County, Kentucky, 1889
(red lines are proposed railroads)

Looking for a runaway slave named Emily, 1853

The Mason County GenWeb site is recommended
 if you're looking for Mason County Links. 
 The GenWeb site is here; RootsWeb is here.

In 1876, the R. L. Polk Company published The Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, which listed information about virtually every town in Kentucky.  The listings from Mason County are these:

Shannon

 Minerva

Rectorville
Dover Helena Mays Lick
Lewisburg Orangeburg Washington

An earlier Gazetteer published in Louisville, was George W. Hawes’ Kentucky
State Gazetteer and Business Directory, for 1859 and 1860.  It's pre-Civil
War, and has detail on, other than Maysville, these two towns:

Dover Orangeburg

The Post Office Department, in 1870, listed these towns as having post offices in Mason County, Kentucky: Dover, Fern Leaf, Germantown, Helena, May's Lick, Maysville, Minerva, Mount Gilead, Murphysville, North Fork, Orangeburgh, Sardis, Slack, Springdale and Washington.

Mason County was first formed as a Virginia County in 1789.  It
was carved out of what was, then, a very large Bourbon County and is named
after George Mason, whose biography can be found here.

The mother of all Ohio River Steamboat sites is the Cincinnati Public Library's Inland River Photographs.  They estimate 19,000 photographs.  See'em here.

Courier-Journal's 1896 report on Mason Co Toll Roads, here.

Mason County Officials, Merchants, Doctors and Lawyers, 1847, here

Major leaguer baseball player Don Hurst was born in Maysville.
His bio, with a picture, is here, MLB stats here.

Information on the twenty (!)  covered bridges that used to serve in Mason County are listed in the data base at web site of Kentucky Covered Bridges, here.  Several have pictures.

The Kentuckiana Digital Library has a number of Mason
County images.  Quality is erratic, but it's worth a look, here.

The Kentucky Historical Society's Mason County images can
 be found here.  Click on the county search box when you get there.

A site dedicated to the bridges of Mason County is here.

Lafayette comes to Maysville.  Read about it, here.

"Simon's Kenton Ride" a painting from the Ky Historical Society showing Kenton
being tied on a horse, on his back, and sent through the woods, and across
the river.   It was meant as torture, and killed some who were forced to do it.

The Maysville Chamber of Commerce is here.

In 1969, Edna Talbott Whitley compiled a list of Cabinetmakers
in Kentucky.  The Mason County portion of that list is here.

Maysville citizens kidnap slave in Aberdeen, Ohio, 1851, here.

Mayville citizens kidnap citizen from Sardinia, Ohio, 1853, here.

Mason County's John Price escapes to Ohio, story here.

Mason County Historian Jean Calvert

Many very early travelers who wrote about their visits to the "western" part
of America came to Maysville and environs.  Here are several of them:

Andre Michaux, 1798 F. Cuming, 1810
Elias Pym Forham, 1817 James Flint, 1818
John Woods, 1820

In October 1986, around the time PBS film producers were releasing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was filmed in the area, the New York Times wrote a piece about Augusta, Maysville, and Washington called "Old Kentucky Towns" which provides a wealth of history about the area. Here.

18th Century Mason County Distillers, here.

Maysville's Frank O'Donnell Hurst played for the Cubs and the Phillies, in
a major league career that spanned 1928 through 1934.  His record is here.

Several ex-slaves told their stories to writers of the WPA Writers
Project in the 1930's. These six are all from Mason County:

Arnold Gragston Albert Burks
Charles Green Flora Mae Harris
Joseph Ringo Joe Robinson

Here's a list of the Mason county Historical Markers.

If you have an interest in Slavery and the Underground Railroad in the Mason County area, you absolutely want to find a book called Beyond the River, by Ann Hagedorn. It's the story of Ripley, Ohio's John Rankin, and has detailed information about slavery days in Bracken and Mason Counties.  That's a handy link to Amazon for you to get a copy, at the left.

Some Mason County Cemetery Records are here,  here, and here.

Census of Northern Kentucky's Paupers in Almshouses, 1910, here.

The City of Maysville is here

There are a total of six Mason Counties in the US.  Here's a list of the other five.

This list of Mason County deaths from WWII is from
 the National Archives. There's a key to what the
 various abbreviations mean here, and the actual list is here.

The World War I list is here.

A brisk cavalry skirmish took place near Helena, Ky., in which
 several rebels were killed and wounded on April 20, 1863.

You can get information on Mason County ancestors by subscribing
to the mailing list created for that purpose.  You'll get periodic
information, and can submit your own questions, all via email. 
Sign up here for Mason County. 
Here is a list of all available lists on Kentucky.

Current Events in Mason county can be found here.

One of the Arizona's first territorial Governors was
Benjamin J. Franklin, born in Maysville.  More about him, here.

In 1919, there was a farm census, counting livestock, crops and farms.  Mason County's is here.

Judge Roy Bean was born in Maysville, circa 1825.  The
biography of "The Law West of the Pecos," is here.

A site that has post a lot of older high school yearbooks
 of Kentucky schools is here.  They invite your scans.

The Mason County Museum is here.

Covington's Mary Ann Mongren Library has one of those "Wow!" features online.  If, after going here, and entering Maysville, Dover, or whatever, you sometimes - not always - get back actual links to high quality images of Northern Kentucky Newspapers from the 1800's.  I find it more helpful to sort them by the oldest article first. They're pdf images.  There's a feature in your Adobe pdf viewer that let's you magnify the images.  Play with it - I think you'll find it a great feature, and you'll be surprised at how much information from "outside I-275" is in the early Covington and Newport papers. 

Description of Maysville, from 1808, here.

A nifty little tool at the web site of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve will convert old prices (1913 and later) into current prices. Try it here.

A list of men who went to the penitentiary from Mason
County from 1798 through 1834 is here.

An excerpt from The Writings of Caleb Atwater (1833) 
describing his visit in 1829 to Maysville, is here.

This graph shows the relative populations of the eight smaller counties of Northern Kentucky Views, from 1800 to 2000.

 
This graph shows the relative populations of the Boone, Kenton & Campbell Counties  from 1800 to 2000.

 
This graph shows the relative populations of the Boone, Kenton, Mason & Campbell Counties  from 1800 to 1860, along with Jefferson and Fayette, just for reference.
 

These two charts both present slave population from Northern Kentucky.  On the left is actual populations; on the left, is the number of slaves as a percentage of total population.  Remember some counties were established later than others.
More on these numbers, including a link to the mega-load of population data, is here.

Home Back to Main Mason County Page   Contact me   Copyright