December 29, 1783, Armistead Churchill bought a land warrant for 40,375 acres in Mason County; 11,415 of which are in the surveyed plat above. The metes and bounds of the survey are here.

 

Mason County, as formed, 1789, by the Commonwealth of Virginia, from Bourbon County, VA.		Mason lost area when Campbell was created, 1795.		Mason lost area when Bracken was created, 1797.
Mason lost area when Fleming was created, 1798.		Mason lost area when Floyd and Nicholas were created, 1800.		Mason lost area when Greenup was created, 1804.
Mason lost area when Lewis was created, 1806.				Mason lost area when Robertson was created, 1867.
Since Mason was created so early, most of it's county boundary changes are due to shrinkage by the formation of new counties. In addition to those changes mapped above, there have been minor boundary changes to accommodate unique land owners in 1854 (with Bracken), 1868 (with Robertson), 1888 (with Fleming), and 1890 (with Lewis).

 

From Limestone toward Frankfort, 1796.

 

Springdale Plat

Our source says this is c. 1800, but we suspect that's too early. The seller of the lots, one J. C. Gould of 30 East Fourth Street in Cincinnati we find running ads in the 1840's. On the plat, note Major Rodgers home, built in 1794.

 

 

The National Road
A source of significant controversy (Wikipedia).

A part of the controversy? Slavery

An argument for the road

 

Dover	Charleston	Charleston Bottom
West Maysville	East Maysville	Springfield
	In 1911-1914 the Corps of Engineers mapped the entire length of the Ohio River. You can see the whole thing, from Pittsburg to Cairo, at their web site. Clicking the maps shown here will take you to the appropriate Mason County map at the Corps' site.

 

Mason County, 1889 red lines are proposed railroads	Mason County, 1935 red lines are roads,  black lines are railroads	1940 Map of Magisterial Districts

 

	These are the maps used by the Census Bureau in 1950 to define Census tracts. The county map is dated 1948; the city map is undated. Note the small town insets on the county map.

 

Robert Rennick drew this map locating many of the places that had post offices at one time or another.

Maps in this section are from An Illustrated Atlas of Mason County, Kentucky, published
by Lake, Griffing and Stevenson in Philadelphia, 1876. 

 

Orangeburg Precinct, town map, and business listing, 1876

 

Murphysville Precinct, town map, and business listing, 1876

 

Lower Maysville Precinct	Upper Maysville Precinct	Maysville Wards	East of Maysville

 

First Ward		2nd & 3rd Wards	Fourth Ward	Fifth Ward

 

Maysville and Dover

 

 

 

Sardis Precinct, town map, and business listing, 1876

 

Dover town map and business listing, and precinct map, 1876

 

Mason County, c. 1880

Maysville, 1940

 

This section is a set of 7.5 topographical maps covering all of Mason County from the 1950's.
Dover (1952)	Very small tip (1961)
Germantown (1952)	Maysville West (1952)	Maysville East (1952)
Sardis (1952)	Mayslick (1952)	Orangeburg (1952)
Southwestern tip	Helena (1952)	Southeastern tip (1951)

This exceptionally detailed map of Maysville from 1886 is a Sanborn Fire Map, originally created to assist insurance companies to assess risk for underwriting fire insurance, hence “fire maps.” We've downloaded this single page from the Library of Congress' site for Sanborns. This map is one of nine in the set from 1886. They also have a set from 1890 (13 maps) and a set from 1895 (15 maps).

 

Highway 68, “the historic highway,” here.