Carlisle: a county seat in Kincart’s peach orchard

Its county court first met in 1800 at the home of Martin Baker Jr. at Lower Blue Licks, then in a new courthouse at Blue Licks.

In 1805 the seat moved to a new town, Ellisville, laid out on James Ellis’s farm along the Lexington–Maysville road, where the county’s courthouse stood until 1816. That year the seat moved again. John Kincart, born in 1791 in what became Nicholas County, had inherited his father Samuel’s 200-acre farm in 1813, and in 1816 he gave 50 acres, including the family’s peach orchard, for a new town named Carlisle.

Streets and lots were laid off around the center of the tract, and Kincart took town lots as payment for his land. The present Nicholas County Courthouse is the third on that site, and a monument to Samuel Kincart stands on its north side. Daniel Boone had lived in the county from 1795 to 1799, and his restored cabin in Carlisle is kept by the Carlisle Tourism Commission. The map pin marks the courthouse square.