Maysville On The Banks Of The Ohio River

My Hometown

Maysville,formerly known as Limestone,is the county seat of Mason County, Kentucky, United States.As of the 2000 census, the population was 8,993, making it the fiftieth largest city in Kentucky by population. Maysville is on the Ohio River, 66 miles northeast of Lexington, Kentucky. Two bridges cross the Ohio River from Maysville to Aberdeen, Ohio: the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge built in 1931, and the William H. Harsha Bridge built in 2001.

Maysville was historically important in the settlement of the Kentucky bluegrass region. Frontiersmen Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone were among its founders. Later Maysville was an important port for the northeastern section of the state, exporting the region's production of hemp and tobacco.It was once a center of wrought-iron manufacture, sending fancy ironwork down the Ohio to decorate the buildings of New Orleans, Louisiana.Other small manufacturers located early in Maysville, and manufacture remains an important part of the modern economy.For most of the twentieth century, Maysville was home to one of the largest tobacco auction warehouse systems in the world.

Maysville was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, as the free state of Ohio was just across the river.Harriet Beecher Stowe visited the area in 1833 and witnessed a slave auction in front of the county court house in Washington (then the county seat, since annexed to Maysville).Stowe included the scene in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852.

Birthplace of Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed and entertainer Rosemary Clooney. President Ulysses Grant attended school here as a child.