Leitch’s Station, 1789

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Historical Marker #117 in Wilder remembers Leitch's Station, one of the first white settlements in Campbell County.

David Leitch, born in Scotland in 1753, immigrated to Virginia as a young man. Leitch fought in the Revolutionary War with fellow Virginian, General Robert Lawson, and earned the rank of major. In 1789, Leitch led a group of twenty settlers to Kentucky with the intention of founding a settlement. The group constructed a blockhouse and made their homes about six miles south of the Ohio River along the east bank of the Licking River. The settlement was named Leitch's Station in honor of their leader.

Leitch married Keturah Moss in 1790 and brought his new bride to the recently-settled Leitch's Station. Moss, originally from Virginia, moved to Bryan Station with her family in 1783. The couple was married for four years before Major Leitch died in 1794.

Several years after her husband's death, Moss donated part of Leitch's lands in what would become Grayson County with the condition that the county seat be named for her departed husband. The present day county seat of Grayson County is Leitchfield. A year after Leitch passed away, Keturah Moss remarried the executor of her husband's will, General James Taylor, who was the founder of the city of Newport. Upon her death, Keturah was buried alongside her first husband in Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate, Kentucky.