Appalachian Community Histories – Kentontown, Robertson County: From Newtown to a Rural Kentucky Crossroads
Today Kentontown is easy to pass without realizing that the quiet Robertson County community once had the legal standing and ambitions of a frontier Kentucky town. Long before Robertson County existed, before Mount Olivet became the county seat, and before railroads began redirecting trade through northern Kentucky, lawmakers at Frankfort had already placed a town on the waters of the Licking River near Cedar Creek.
They called it Newtown.
The Kentucky General Assembly established the settlement in 1795 on the lands of John Kenton, and its history would eventually become tied to one of Kentucky’s most famous pioneer families, a future governor, river improvement schemes, mills, tobacco houses, a long-lived country post office, and a church whose loss more than two centuries later reminded Robertson County how much history had accumulated around this small place.
Kentontown is also a good example of how easily the history of an Appalachian community can disappear when researchers search only under its modern name and county. Its earliest records do not belong to Robertson County at all. They are scattered through Mason County, Nicholas County, early Kentucky statutes, federal records, land patents, and the papers of local families who lived there generations before Robertson County appeared on a map.
Newtown on John Kenton’s Land
Kentontown’s documented beginning came during the November 1795 session of the Kentucky legislature. William Littell’s early compilation of Kentucky laws, and a later index prepared from those laws, identify Newtown as a town established on the lands of John Kenton in Mason County. The legislation named David Broadrick, John Getridge, William Baker, Joshua Baker, John Clarke, Edmund Collins, and William Kenton as trustees.
That list is important because it moves Kentontown’s origin out of the realm of local legend. Newtown was not simply a cluster of cabins that gradually acquired a name. Kentucky law recognized a town there during the first years of statehood, when communities across the Commonwealth were being formally laid out, divided into lots, and entrusted to local commissioners or trustees.
John Kenton was the older brother of the much better known Simon Kenton. Later histories would connect the community’s eventual name to Simon, but the earliest statute was specific about the landowner. It was John Kenton’s property on which Newtown was legally established.
A 2009 history published through the Robertson County Historical Society traces the larger land story still farther back, connecting property in the area with early Virginia patents involving James Monroe, William Henry, and John A. Binns. That account provides an important lead for land research, although the complicated transfer history should ultimately be reconstructed from the original warrants, surveys, patents, and deeds. What is certain from the statute is that by 1795 the legislature described Newtown as being on John Kenton’s land.
The location made sense for a new town. Newtown stood near Cedar Creek and the Licking River system, in a landscape where watercourses functioned as highways, power sources, boundary markers, and routes toward larger markets. Roads leading toward Washington and the older Mason County settlements connected the interior with the Ohio River country.
In 1795 there was no Robertson County. The community belonged to Mason County, a jurisdiction that then covered considerably more territory than it does today.
From Mason County to Nicholas County
The courthouse governing Newtown changed even though the town itself did not move.
Nicholas County was created in 1800 from portions of Bourbon and Mason counties. The old statutory index later identified Newtown as lying in Nicholas County, and legislation from the 1808 session provided for the election of trustees in the town. This is one of the more interesting pieces of evidence in Kentontown’s history because the law still referred to the place as Newtown several years after some later accounts say the name had already changed.
That makes the exact date when Newtown became Kentontown less certain than local tradition sometimes suggests.
Later Robertson County histories have said that the name Kentontown was in use by about 1800 and that it honored Simon Kenton, the celebrated frontiersman and surveyor. Lewis and Richard Collins, writing in 1874, likewise stated that Newtown’s name was later changed in honor of Simon Kenton, John Kenton’s brother. Yet the 1808 legislation’s continued use of Newtown suggests that the change may have happened gradually, that local and legal usage differed for a time, or simply that the traditional date is too early.
What can be established more securely is that by 1830 the federal postal system knew the community as Kentontown. Its post office began operating under that name on September 23, 1830, with Andrew Cameron as the first postmaster.
By then Newtown had effectively become Kentontown.
Mills, Tanneries, Stone, and the Licking River
The natural geography around Kentontown encouraged the kinds of businesses common to rural Kentucky communities before steam and railroads transformed transportation.
Local Robertson County history records an early sawmill along Cedar Creek that was later operated as a gristmill by the Gunsaulis family. A tannery reportedly operated near the Licking River, while another milling complex associated with Charles Bramel stood about two miles west of the community and included both a gristmill and a brandy distillery.
These were not minor conveniences. In an agricultural society, a mill determined where farmers took grain, where timber could be processed, and often where roads converged. Tanneries turned animal hides into usable leather. Distilleries converted surplus grain and fruit into products that were easier to store and transport. A settlement surrounded by those enterprises could function as an economic center even when its actual cluster of houses remained small.
Kentontown also became connected to one of Kentucky’s great nineteenth-century dreams, the attempt to make the Licking River a dependable commercial highway.
During the 1830s Kentucky pursued an ambitious internal improvement program involving roads, canals, rivers, locks, and dams. An 1837 survey envisioned twenty-one locks along the Licking River, including one at Claysville downstream from the Kentontown area. State planning documents from the period show just how seriously officials regarded the possibility of opening the Licking to regular navigation.
Local Kentontown history says stone was quarried in the area during the 1830s for the Claysville improvements. Even though more work in state construction accounts would be useful for confirming exactly where each load of stone originated, the claim fits a larger documented program of Licking River improvement. Kentucky archaeological research notes state appropriations for Licking River work in the 1830s and the river’s later use for transporting coal toward Claysville and Lower Blue Licks.
For a time it was possible to imagine that communities like Kentontown might prosper along a commercially improved Licking River.
The railroad ultimately changed those expectations. Rail lines offered faster, more dependable movement of people and freight, and communities that were not directly connected could lose trade to places that were. The same process damaged Claysville, where a nineteenth-century county history later stated that construction of the Kentucky Central Railroad several miles away had sharply reduced the river town’s business.
Kentontown never disappeared, but the transportation revolution worked against the kind of growth its founders may have envisioned in 1795.
Stonehammer Metcalfe Near Kentontown
Two miles east of Kentontown stands one of the strongest surviving physical connections between the community’s early years and Kentucky history.
Around 1810, Thomas Metcalfe built a stone house in the countryside near Kentontown. Metcalfe was a skilled stonemason and building contractor before becoming a major political figure. He would serve in Congress and eventually become Kentucky’s tenth governor, holding office from 1828 to 1832.
The National Park Service’s Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory identifies the house as Metcalfe’s first Kentucky home and describes it as the home of one of the state’s most renowned early building contractors. The property was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Metcalfe’s career earned him the enduring nickname “Old Stone Hammer,” and his house near Kentontown is an appropriate reminder that early rural Kentucky was not isolated from state and national affairs. Men who farmed, surveyed land, laid stone, operated mills, and traveled the local roads could later appear in legislatures, Congress, and the governor’s office.
The stone house remains while much of the commercial Kentontown that once surrounded it has vanished.
A Post Office at the Center of Community Life
For rural communities, a nineteenth-century post office was more than a place to collect letters. It placed the settlement within an expanding national network of information, commerce, politics, newspapers, and personal correspondence.
Kentontown’s office operated from September 1830 until November 1918. Andrew Cameron was the first postmaster, and the office’s nearly eighty-eight-year life shows that Kentontown remained a recognized community long after its frontier beginnings.
Cameron himself appears in the 1870 Kentontown census material as an elderly Pennsylvania-born resident, a small but useful connection between the postal history and the people recorded in federal schedules decades later.
Through that post office passed news of elections, wars, deaths, marriages, commodity prices, distant relatives, and changes occurring far beyond Robertson County. The office survived the Civil War, the creation of Robertson County, the growth of the railroad system, and the opening decades of the twentieth century.
Its closure in 1918 did not mean Kentontown ceased to exist. It did mark the end of one of the institutions that had once given the village a distinct place on federal maps and postal routes.
The Old Kentontown Church and Cemetery
Church and cemetery life provided another center for the community.
By the nineteenth century, Kentontown had a Christian congregation, and Collins identified its single church in 1874 as Reformed or Christian. Local tradition places the old two-story Kentontown church building in the 1830s. The structure became one of the most recognizable historic buildings associated with the settlement.
Fraternal organizations also formed part of local life. Grand Lodge records show that Arba Lodge No. 620 was chartered at Kentontown in 1883, evidence that the community supported organized social and fraternal activity beyond the church itself.
Around the old church grew Kentontown Cemetery. Local historical work identifies it as one of Robertson County’s oldest community burial grounds and records an earliest surviving marked grave dating from 1818. According to the same tradition, an 1883 storm damaged or destroyed a number of stones north of the church, and the cemetery was later enlarged.
The cemetery became a kind of historical record in stone. Pioneer families, veterans, farmers, merchants, mothers, children, and generations of Robertson Countians were buried there. Records of soldiers interred in the cemetery extend into the twentieth century, showing how the burial ground remained part of community life long after the original frontier generation had passed away.
The old church itself survived far longer than most nineteenth-century buildings in small rural settlements. It was being restored when fire destroyed it on May 22, 2007.
Two years later, residents and descendants dedicated a monument on the church site. The memorial did more than mark a lost building. It acknowledged that the ground around it represented more than two centuries of community memory.
Kentontown Christian Church continues to appear among the churches serving Robertson County today.
Robertson County Arrives in 1867
Kentontown was already more than seventy years old when Robertson County came into existence.
The Commonwealth established Robertson County in 1867 from territory taken from Bracken, Harrison, Mason, and Nicholas counties. The county officially began operating on August 1 of that year and was named for Kentucky jurist George Robertson. Mount Olivet became the county seat.
This late creation of Robertson County explains one of the biggest difficulties in researching Kentontown. Someone searching only Robertson County deed books, marriage records, wills, and court orders will miss much of the community’s first seventy years. Early Kentontown records may instead be filed in Mason or Nicholas County, with some surrounding families appearing in Harrison or other neighboring jurisdictions as boundaries changed.
Local history also remembers Kentontown as having lost out to Mount Olivet in the selection of a county seat. That tradition is plausible given Kentontown’s age and standing, but the available official county-formation summaries do not describe a formal contest. Until legislative journals, county court records, or contemporary newspapers establish exactly what happened, it is safer to say that local memory preserves Kentontown as a rival or possible site while Mount Olivet emerged as the permanent seat.
The result mattered greatly.
Courthouses attract lawyers, merchants, hotels, offices, newspapers, and travelers. By becoming the county seat, Mount Olivet obtained a concentration of public business that Kentontown would never have.
The Kentontown That Collins Saw
Only seven years after Robertson County was formed, Lewis and Richard Collins published one of the best early descriptions of Kentontown.
Their 1874 history placed the community about six miles from Mount Olivet and remembered its establishment in December 1795 on John Kenton’s land near the mouth of Cedar Creek. They described a very small village containing one Christian church, two stores, two leaf-tobacco houses, and forty-one inhabitants.
That description is revealing.
Kentontown was not a large town, but neither was it simply a handful of farms. Two stores and two tobacco houses serving a population of only forty-one suggest that the village drew business from a much wider countryside.
Tobacco was especially important. Robertson County’s nineteenth-century economy depended heavily on agriculture, and tobacco became one of its principal commercial crops. Kentontown’s tobacco houses connected surrounding farms with buyers and markets beyond the county. Robertson County’s official history continues to identify tobacco among the county’s traditional products and exports.
A few years later, an 1881 to 1882 Kentucky business gazetteer described Kentontown as a settlement of about seventy people, twenty-eight miles from Augusta, with tobacco as its leading shipment and a semiweekly mail service. It named F. M. Loudenback as postmaster and general storekeeper, M. D. Ellis as a carpenter, Mack Woods as a miller, and S. Phillips, J. F. Robins, and E. M. Taylor as physicians.
For such a small place to support three listed physicians, a merchant, a carpenter, a miller, postal service, and a tobacco trade says much about its role as a service center for surrounding farm families.
The Village and the Kentontown Precinct Were Not the Same Thing
Historical population figures for Kentontown can look contradictory until the boundaries are understood.
The 1870 federal census recorded 1,103 people in the Kentontown civil division, including 1,049 white residents and 54 Black residents. That number did not describe the compact village. It covered the much larger voting or census precinct surrounding Kentontown.
That distinction becomes clear when Collins reported only forty-one residents in the village itself in 1874.
The 1880 federal census was more precise. It separately identified Kentontown as a community inside Kentontown Precinct No. 3 and counted fifty-nine inhabitants in the village.
The business directory’s estimate of seventy residents shortly afterward may reflect a slightly different geographic definition, a simple estimate, or modest population change. Taken together, however, the records present a consistent picture. Kentontown remained a small village surrounded by a much larger farming population that depended upon it for stores, mail, milling, medical care, religion, and tobacco marketing.
The surviving 1870 census transcription puts names behind those statistics. Adkinses, Ashbrooks, Ashcrafts, Bramels, Camerons, Cashes, Clarks, Coopers, Curtises, and many other families lived within the Kentontown precinct, alongside Black families newly counted as free citizens in the first federal census taken after emancipation.
The federal mortality schedule for the precinct records another side of life. Consumption, tuberculosis, childhood disease, accidents, and other causes of death remind us that the nineteenth-century community experienced the same fragility found throughout rural America.
When Transportation Passed Kentontown By
Kentontown’s founders could not have known that the transportation system on which their settlement depended would eventually change almost completely.
The earliest town had been positioned around roads, creeks, mills, and access to the Licking River. The state later dreamed of turning that river into a lock-and-dam commercial artery.
Railroads changed the equation.
Communities directly on rail lines gained faster access to regional markets. Places several miles away found themselves dependent upon wagon roads leading to stations elsewhere. Kentontown remained useful to its immediate countryside, but its chances of becoming a larger commercial center diminished.
The decline was gradual rather than sudden. Collins still found stores and tobacco houses in 1874. The business directory found a functioning village in the early 1880s. The post office continued until 1918. Even after postal service disappeared, commercial directories in the 1920s and 1930s continued to recognize Kentontown, directing its banking connections toward Mount Olivet.
Kentontown had ceased growing into the town its 1795 founders might have imagined, but it had not ceased being a community.
The Day the Ground Shook
One of the strangest twentieth-century glimpses of Kentontown comes not from a county history or newspaper but from the United States Geological Survey.
On July 27, 1980, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake centered near Sharpsburg shook northeastern Kentucky. It became the largest historical earthquake known to have had an epicenter in Kentucky and caused damage across a wide area, particularly around Maysville.
USGS investigators traveled through the region after the earthquake and stopped in Kentontown.
Their field notes recorded a one-story, wood-frame grocery store. Nothing had fallen inside the store. Investigators spoke with three residents. Two reported that nothing had fallen in their homes, while another said a few objects fell in a bathroom. One person remembered that during the shaking it looked as though the walls were going to fall.
It is a small observation buried in a federal scientific report, but it captures something important.
Nearly 185 years after Kentucky lawmakers established Newtown, there was still a grocery store in Kentontown where people gathered, talked, and experienced a remarkable moment together.
What Remains of Kentontown
Modern maps still carry the Kentontown name. USGS mapping places the community amid the same network of roads, creeks, cemeteries, and rolling country that shaped its earlier history. Cedar Creek and the Licking River remain on the landscape, as does Kentontown Cemetery.
The old church is gone, although its monument and cemetery preserve the site. The post office closed more than a century ago. The tobacco houses, tannery, old commercial mills, and most of the businesses described by nineteenth-century writers have passed from the landscape.
Thomas Metcalfe’s stone house remains nearby.
So does the name Kentontown.
That survival matters because Kentontown’s history is larger than its modern size suggests. The community began as a legislatively established Kentucky town in 1795. It passed from Mason County into Nicholas County and finally Robertson County. It changed names and became associated with Simon Kenton. It supported mills, merchants, physicians, tobacco houses, churches, a post office, and generations of farming families. It watched state engineers imagine the Licking River as a commercial highway, then watched railroads change the direction of trade.
It was already old when Robertson County was new.
Why Kentontown Matters
The story of Kentontown shows how easily the importance of a rural community can be underestimated by looking only at what remains today.
A traveler sees a road, scattered homes, a church, fields, and a cemetery. The documents reveal something different. They reveal a planned frontier town, trustees appointed by Kentucky law, shifting county boundaries, merchants and physicians, river improvements, tobacco commerce, postal routes, a future governor building his first stone home nearby, and families whose graves span the history of the Commonwealth.
Kentontown never became a major Kentucky city. That is precisely what makes its history valuable.
Most Appalachian communities did not become cities. Many flourished for a generation around a mill, river landing, courthouse road, mine, railroad station, country store, or post office and then changed when transportation and economics changed around them. Their importance was measured less by population than by the countryside they served.
Kentontown began in 1795 with the confidence that a town should stand on John Kenton’s land near Cedar Creek and the Licking. More than two centuries later, the town envisioned by those first trustees has largely dissolved back into the rural landscape, but the name, cemetery, surviving landmarks, and documentary trail remain.
For anyone willing to follow that trail through Mason, Nicholas, and Robertson counties, Newtown is still there beneath Kentontown.
Sources & Further Reading
Barker, Elihu, and Mathew Carey. A Map of Kentucky from Actual Survey. Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1793. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3950.ct001246/
Burr, David H. Map of Kentucky & Tennessee Exhibiting the Post Offices, Post Roads, Canals, Rail Roads, &c. London, 1839. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/98688485/
Collins, Lewis, and Richard H. Collins. History of Kentucky. Vol. 2. Covington, KY: Collins & Co., 1874. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Collins-historical-sketches-of-Kentucky-History-of-Kentucky-Vol-II-part-111.htm
Dempsey, James G. “Old Kentontown Church (Robertson Co.).” Northern Kentucky Heritage 15, no. 2. Kenton County Historical Society. https://kentoncountyhistoricalsociety.org/northern-kentucky-heritage-magazine/
Grand Lodge of Kentucky Free and Accepted Masons. Book of Constitutions. Lexington, KY: Grand Lodge of Kentucky. https://glky.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-ai-assistant/0/Book_of_Constitutions_2024-2025-1.pdf
Hopper, Margaret G., and B. Glen Reagor. Field Survey of Intensity for the Earthquake of July 27, 1980, Sharpsburg, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 80-1242. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1980. https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1980/1242/report.pdf
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Research Guides.” Frankfort, KY. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Research-Guides.aspx
Kentucky Heritage Council. The Archaeology of Kentucky: An Update. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Heritage Council. https://heritage.ky.gov/Documents/TheArchaeologyofKYAnUpdateVol2.pdf
Kentucky Secretary of State, Land Office. “County Formation Table.” Frankfort, KY. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.sos.ky.gov/land/resources/Documents/County%20Formation%20Table.pdf
Kentucky Secretary of State, Land Office. “Legislation.” Frankfort, KY. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.sos.ky.gov/land/resources/legislation/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Secretary of State, Land Office. “Virginia and Old Kentucky Patent Series.” Frankfort, KY. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.sos.ky.gov/land/non-military/patents/vaky/Pages/default.aspx
Kentucky Secretary of State, Land Office. “Virginia Treasury Warrants.” Frankfort, KY. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://web.sos.ky.gov/land/vtwnew.aspx
Littell, William. The Statute Law of Kentucky; with Notes, Prælections, and Observations on the Public Acts. 5 vols. Frankfort, KY: William Hunter and others, 1809-1819. See especially vol. 1, 285, and vol. 4, 8. https://kygs.org/early-kentucky-settler-littell-laws-surname-index/
Munsell, Luke, and Hugh Anderson. A Map of the State of Kentucky: From Actual Survey; Also Part of Indiana and Illinois. Frankfort, KY, 1818. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3950.ct003777b/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Washington, DC. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837-1950.” Microfilm Publication M1126. Washington, DC. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Park Service. “Metcalf, Thomas, House.” National Register of Historic Places, NRIS No. 87000187. Listed January 8, 1987. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/87000187
R. L. Polk & Co. Kentucky State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1881-1882. Detroit: R. L. Polk & Co., 1881. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/Kentucky-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-1881-1882-Vol-III-pt-1-part-29.htm
Rand McNally & Company. Rand McNally Bankers Directory. January 1928. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRASER. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/rand-mcnally-bankers-directory-105/january-1928-598443/content/fulltext/rmbd_192801_14_accessiblebankingpoints
Rennick, Robert M. “Kentucky Gateway-Buffalo Trace Area Post Offices.” Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection, no. 161. Morehead State University, 1997. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/161/
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.
Rennick, Robert M. “Robertson County: Post Offices.” County Histories of Kentucky, no. 282. Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/282/
Robertson County, Kentucky. “About Robertson County.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://robertsoncounty.ky.gov/Pages/about.aspx
Robertson County, Kentucky. “Local Resources.” Commonwealth of Kentucky. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://robertsoncounty.ky.gov/services/Pages/Local-Resources.aspx
Robertson County Historical Society. “Kentontown History.” Paper No. 47, vol. 12, no. 7. Edited by Bill Wheaton. October 2009. https://kygenweb.net/robertson/pictures/kentontownhistory.html
Robertson County Public Library District. “Genealogy.” Robertson County Public Library, Mount Olivet, Kentucky. Accessed October 17, 2026. https://robertsoncountypl.specialdistrict.org/genealogy
Robinson, Lucien, and Robert M. Rennick. “Lucien Robinson Interview: Robertson County.” Robert M. Rennick Oral History Collection. Recorded April 16, 1978. Camden-Carroll Library, Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_oh_collection/156/
Russell, John. Map of the State of Kentucky with the Adjoining Territories. London: H. D. Symonds, 1794. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3950.ct002137/
Smith, W. T. The Statute Law of Kentucky: A Complete Index to the Names of Persons, Places and Subjects Mentioned in Littell’s Laws of Kentucky. Lexington, KY: Bradford Club Press, 1931. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/books/The-statute-law-of-Kentucky-A-complete-index-to-the-names-of-persons-places-and-subjects-mentioned-in-Littels-laws-of-Kentucky-a-genealogical-and-historical-guide-part-9.htm
United States Census Office. The Statistics of the Population of the United States: Ninth Census, 1870. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872. https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1870e-05.pdf
United States Census Office. Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census, June 1, 1880. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1883. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1880/vol-01-population/1880_v1-10.pdf
United States Census Office. Population of Kentucky. Eleventh Census Bulletin No. 139. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1890/bulletins/demographics/139-population-of-ky.pdf
United States Geological Survey. Piqua, Kentucky, US Topo Quadrangle. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Piqua_20130308_TM_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Field Survey of Intensity for the Earthquake of July 27, 1980, Sharpsburg, Kentucky.” Accessed October 17, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/field-survey-intensity-earthquake-july-27-1980-sharpsburg-kentucky
Wooley, Carolyn Murray. “Thomas Metcalf House.” Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory. Site RB-6. Kentucky Heritage Council, 1984. National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Collection. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/87000187_text
Author Note: Kentontown’s story is a reminder that some of Kentucky’s smallest communities once stood at the center of local trade, transportation, and public life. I hope this article helps preserve the history of a place whose surviving records reach back to the earliest years of Kentucky statehood.