Danville, Kentucky
Founded in 1783-4 by Walker Daniel, the first district attorney of Kentucky, Danville was named in his honor. Danville soon became the seat of Kentucky government following establishment of the Supreme Court for the Kentucky District, and the location for ten conventions to establish the district’s statehood. The first convention met in December 1784 and the last in April of 1792, producing an eighteen-page document that became the first constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Danville was the first location of Transylvania University, established in 1783 and relocated to Lexington in 1789 followed by establishment of Centre College in 1819. During the antebellum period, Danville was a prosperous and growing community, the home of James G. Birney, the presidential candidate for the Liberty party in 1840 and 1844; the site of Kentucky School for the Deaf, the first institution of its kind to be operated at public expense; and the Danville Theological Seminary founded in 1853. Following the Civil War, the city became a transportation and commercial hub as well as an educational center. In 1942, the state of Kentucky dedicated the John G. Weisiger Memorial Park in the center of Danville. Later known as Constitution Square State Shrine, the park celebrates the city’s role in Kentucky statehood and contains log reproductions of an early courthouse, church, and jail, as well as an original log structure reputed to have been the first post office west of the Alleghenies. Because of its many old houses and nineteenth- century appearance, Danville was chose as the location for the motion picture Raintree County in 1956.
Information taken from Richard Brown, “Danville,” The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992)
