Garrard County - Lancaster, KY
Posted by: 
Don.Morfe
N 37° 37.142 W 084° 34.734
16S E 713677 N 4166303
Named for James Garrard, then governor of Kentucky, 1796-1804. A native of Virginia, served as militia officer in Revolution. He came to Kentucky in 1783. Member statehood and Constitution conventions at Danville, 1784-92.
Waymark Code: WM172AZ
Location: Kentucky, United States
Date Posted: 11/24/2022
Views: 1
TEXT ON THE KENTUCKY HISTORICAL MARKER
Garrard County, 1797-
Taken from parts of Lincoln, Madison, and Mercer, it was the 25th county formed. Lancaster, county seat, established in 1798. Named for James Garrard, then governor of Kentucky, 1796-1804. A native of Virginia, served as militia officer in Revolution. He came to Kentucky in 1783. Member statehood and Constitution conventions at Danville, 1784-92.
Location: On the grounds of the County Courthouse-Stanford Street south of Danville Road (Kentucky Route 52), Lancaster KY 40444
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The Place:
GARRARD COUNTY KENTUCKY
From Wikipedia
"Garrard County is a county located in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the county's population was 16,953. Its county seat is Lancaster. The county was formed in 1796 and was named for James Garrard, Governor of Kentucky from 1796 to 1804. It is a prohibition or dry county, although its county seat, Lancaster, is wet. Lancaster was founded as a collection of log cabins in 1776 near a spring that later provided a constant source of water to early pioneers. It is one of the oldest cities in the Commonwealth. Boonesborough, 25 miles to the east, was founded by Daniel Boone in 1775. Lexington, 28 miles to the north, was founded in 1775. Stanford, originally known as St. Asaph, is 10 miles south of Lancaster. It too was founded in 1775. The oldest permanent settlement in Kentucky, Harrodsburg, was founded in 1774 and is 18 miles to the west. Garrard's present day courthouse is one of the oldest courthouses in Kentucky in continuous use."
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The Person:
JAMES GARRARD
From Wikipedia
"James Garrard (January 14, 1749 – January 19, 1822) was an American farmer, Baptist minister and politician who served as the second governor of Kentucky from 1796 to 1804. Because of term limits imposed by the state constitution adopted in 1799, he was the last Kentucky governor elected to two consecutive terms until the restriction was eased by a 1992 amendment, allowing Paul E. Patton's re-election in 1999.
After serving in the Revolutionary War, Garrard moved west to the part of Virginia that is now Bourbon County, Kentucky. He held several local political offices and represented the area in the Virginia House of Delegates. He was chosen as a delegate to five of the ten statehood conventions that secured Kentucky's separation from Virginia and helped write the state's first constitution. Garrard was among the delegates who unsuccessfully tried to exclude guarantees of the continuance of slavery from the document. In 1795, he sought to succeed Isaac Shelby as governor. In a three-way race, Benjamin Logan received a plurality, but not a majority, of the electoral votes cast. Although the state constitution did not specify whether a plurality or a majority was required, the electors held another vote between the top two candidates – Logan and Garrard – and on this vote, Garrard received a majority. Logan protested Garrard's election to state attorney general John Breckinridge and the state senate, but both claimed they had no constitutional power to intervene."
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