of that relation of superior and inferior between the large planter and the small tenant or farmer which had existed, and was still to some extent existing, in Virginia. As to the white population, society started on the plane of practical equality.
Where the city of Lexington now stands, the first block-house was built in April, 1775, by Robert Patterson, “an early and meritorious adventurer, much engaged in the defense of the country.” A settlement soon formed under its protection, which was called Lexington, in honor of the Revolutionary battle then just fought in Massachusetts. The first settlers had to maintain themselves in many an Indian fight on that “finest garden spot in all Kentucky,” as the Blue Grass region was justly called. In an early day it attracted “some people of culture” from Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. In 1780 the first school was built in the fort, and the same year the Virginia legislature — for Kentucky was at that time still a part of Virginia — chartered the Transylvania Seminary to be established there. In 1787 Mr. Isaac Wilson, of the Philadelphia College, opened the “Lexington Grammar School,” for the teaching of Latin, Greek, “and the different branches of science.” The same year saw the organization of a “society for promoting useful knowledge,” and the establishment of the first newspaper. A year later, in 1788, the ambition of social refinement wanted and got a dancing-school, and also the Transylvania Seminary was fairly ready to receive
