By Thelma Taylor 1983

In April, 1775, John Hinkson and fifteen other men established the first fort in what is now Harrison County. His fort was abandoned in July, 1776. In 1779, Isaac Ruddle arrived at the abandoned fort and established Ruddle's Fort, about four miles south of Cynthiana, near Lair Station.

December 23, 1793, the Kentucky General Assembly passed an act forming Harrison County from Scott and Bourbon Counties; the act was signed by Governor Isaac Shelby on February 1, 1794.

Robert Harrison gave land for the courthouse square. The town of Cynthiana, the county seat, was named for Harrison's daughters, Cynthia and Anna. But the county was named for Benjamin Harrison, state representative for Bourbon County at the time. He died at New Madrid, Missouri, in 1808; his wife Mary Newell died there in 1812.

Historians have traced Robert Harrison to Portsmouth, Ohio. One of his daughters (we don't know which) made her home in Philadelphia. There is only one Harrison living in the county now - John Harrison of Cynthiana is a salesman at Cynthiana Motors.

Cynthiana was chartered January 28, 1868. Samuel January the first mayor, is buried in the old cemetery on North Main Street by the L&N Railroad viaduct. (Robert Harrison gave the land for the cemetery.)

Battle Grove is the cemetery now in use. It was formed after the Civil War on the spot where Confederate soldiers camped and the second Battle of Cynthiana was begun. This cemetery has the second Confederate monument to be erected in honor of the Southern dead.

The oldest church is Indian Creek Baptist, four miles from Cynthiana on the Millersburg Pike. Its logs are now covered with weatherboard. The church was built and began holding services in June, 1790. Three Revolutionary War soldiers are buried there - Moses Endicott, Henry Talbott and Hugh Wilson.

Charles Webb, who served the church as minister for 58 years, married Elizabeth Davis, sister of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, A story is told that she asked her husband to whip a disobedient slave. Pastor Webb took the slave to the meathouse, had him whip a sack of flour and yell.

Mrs. Webb asked, upon his return to the house, "Did you whip him, Charles?"

"Did you hear the yells?" was the answer that satisfied her.

Radio station WCYN operates in a log cabin built by Dr. James McPeters in 1780. It was in this cabin, directly behind the present day courthouse, that the first court was held in Harrison County; and it was here that Honorable Henry Clay defended Adam House, who was charged with murder... the first murder case tried in the county.

Henry Coleman was paid one pound, 4 S. to make the first county seal. The name Harrison County was around the rim with the word 'SEAL' in capital letters across the middle. It was decorated with a man holding a tomahawk and a gun.

The first courthouse was built in 1795, and was replaced in 1816 with a building that was destroyed by fire January 24, 1851. The county got $6,000 from the Protective Insurance Company of Cincinnati. In June a committee was formed to superintend the rebuilding - they were to "bind the county in a sum not to exceed $4,000. In July, the committee asked for $500 more to build the portico and were ordered to install a copper roof instead of the iron one they had planned. An additional $800 was requested.

The committee was ordered to borrow $800 at 6% interest; and later, $2100 was borrowed at the same rate. B. F. Pullam was paid $60 for plastering the pillars. (Modern technology certainly hasn't changed that aspect of building ... it still costs more than the estimate!)

The first train to travel through Cynthiana was on June 6, 1854 and the event was celebrated with a community barbecue.

James Robert Poindexter and Thomas Lowery built the present county jail in 1888 at a cost of $10,375 (contracted for

$8,850) and repaired the jailer's house for $1,520. Poindexter did the stone work for the Pleasant Street Bridge in 1884 and the Poindexter bridge in 1887. He built the dam at A. Keller in 1900, the same year he and A. T. Rees built the Cynthiana Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church on the corner of Main and Miller Streets. With VV. P. Humphrey, Poindexter built the Harrison Deposit Bank building in 1902, the First United Methodist Church in 1905 and the First Baptist Church in 1910.

In 1933, cholera swept the county.

A tornado swept an 18-mile area, one to 1 1/2 miles wide, from west to east in the county April 3, 1974. It cost $6.4 million in real estate damage, $1.1 million in farm machinery and livestock, $200,000 in fence, and many millions in the loss of production, BUT no lives were lost and there were few minor injuries.

Cynthiana boast one mansion – Monticello. It was built by Thomas Jefferson Megibben, a distiller and horse breeder, who was the beneficiary of a whiskey tax windfall. In 1882 the US Government levied a tax of $1.00 on a gallon of whiskey; and Megibben who had several warehouses full of whiskey on which a lower tax had already been paid, became a millionaire overnight.

Megibben founded the Latonia Race Track and Jockey Club and was president of the Shorthorn Cattle Breeders Association of Chicago.

The next prominent resident of Monticello was H.W. Bromley, prohibitionist and evangelist.

Death Valley Scotty was born just off the Leesburg Pike on Edgwater Road, the son of a tenant farmer who was an excellent horseman. Walter Scott was a good horseman too. He joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. He was a story teller. His gift of gab supplied newspapers and magazines with stories throughout the 1930s. He died propped up in an old rocking chair at Slim's Comer Saloon in Nevada leaving behind a pack of lies that made him a household name from Hong Kong to California and a roadside marker at this hometown of Cynthiana, Ky.

Other atricles about Harrison County and Harrison Countians.