Historical Marker #2467 commemorates the Daviess County United States Colored Troops in the Civil War. In 1864, several hundred enslaved African American men joined the Union army in Daviess County. Many black recruits from surrounding counties…

Historical Marker #1873 marks the location of Bethabara Church, organized by dismissed members of Panther Creek Baptist Church, the first church in Daviess County. Bethabara Church was organized on October 5, 1825. Beginning as a log house, it…

Historical Marker #1843 marks the former site of Thruston Elementary School. It was named in honor of Algernon Sidney Thruston. Born in Jefferson County in 1801, Thruston was nine months old when his father died. His inheritance, two hundred…

Historical Marker #1747 in Daviess County commemorates the first Kentuckian to receive an award for more than seventy years of service with the Boy Scouts of America. As a youth living in Detroit, Hazen Dean first joined the Boy Scouts in 1913.…

Historical Marker #1456 commemorates the 1,747 men who served from Daviess County during World War I, between April 1917 and November 1918. Kentucky enlisted more than 80,000 men in the Armed Forces for the First World War. With more than 1,700…

Historical Marker # 1436 at the Owensboro courthouse honors George Graham Vest, who began Owensboro’s second newspaper in 1852. Vest was born on December 6, 1830, in Frankfort, Kentucky. He moved to Owensboro around 1852, where he edited the…

Historical Marker # 1333 marks the birthplace of Albert Smith Marks, the twenty-fourth governor for Tennessee. Born in Daviess County, Kentucky, Marks lived in Kentucky until he was nineteen years old. In 1850, at age fourteen, Marks’s father…

Historical Marker #1307 marks the site of the first “road” in the wilderness. This path allowed settlers to follow the trail to the site of present-day Owensboro. Herds of buffalo walked along this stretch, created the trail, and led to it being…

Historical Marker #1183 commemorates three Daviess County Confederate soldiers who were honored by Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. Albert M. Hathaway, John L. Bell, and Mathias Garrett were three of seventy-two Kentucky…

Historical Marker #1918 commemorates the Hawes family and their contributions to Daviess County’s history, particularly in the Yelvington area. Richard and Clary Hawes settled in the Yelvington/Maceo area in 1810. They arrived three years before…

Historical Marker #1081 marks the site of property that belonged to George Mason, the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights and Constitution. Although he owned about 60,000 acres of land in Daviess County, he died in 1792 without ever having visited…

Historical Marker #883 marks the home of Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daviess, a farm called “Cornland”, located on the Ohio River a mile and a half east of Owensboro. The original residence was a hewn log house, although none of that remains…

Historical Marker #744 marks the site of the first permanent settlement in Owensboro, settled by Bill Smothers (also known as Bill Smeathers) in 1797-98. Bill Smothers served in Kentucky’s “Corn Stalk Militia” as an ensign before becoming a…

Historical Marker #590, located on the courthouse lawn, notes the burning of the Daviess County courthouse on January 4, 1865, by a band of Civil War guerrillas. Formerly a captain in the 7th Kentucky Union Infantry Regiment, William "Bill"…