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is a city in Lincoln County, Kentucky, United States. It is the one of the oldest settlements in Kentucky, having been founded in 1775. Its population was 3,430 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Lincoln County.
St. Asaph
The name Stanford may have been derived from "Standing Fort", which Fort Logan became known as in the late 1770s as it survived multiple attacks by native americans. It may also have been named for Stamford, England. Although it was one of the smaller forts in Kentucky, it never fell to native attacks. In 1781, the original fort settlement expanded as Benjamin Logan donated a parcel of his own land for the construction of a courthouse. The original county court met at Fort Harrod (now Harrodsburg), although by 1786 the town of Stanford received its charter, making it one of the first towns in Kentucky County, Virginia to receive a formal charter. In 1787 the first courthouse opened, built of logs. While it has been expanded and upgraded over time, the basic courthouse remains on the same site to this day. Unlike most county courthouses in Kentucky, it has never suffered a fire or other major loss of records, so it has all its original records and archives dating to November 1789, including original land deeds kept on vellum, including deeds granting land to Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, making it one of the more complete archives of the history of Kentucky.
The first recorded church in Stanford was a Presbyterian church built in 1790, the building still stands to the modern day, and is now part of the Harvey Helm Memorial Historic Library and Museum on Main Street. Other denominations, including Baptist and Methodist, would not be established in the area until the 1830s. The local bias towards Presbyterianism reflected the staunch Presbyterian beliefs of the Logan family. The current Presbyterian Church in Stanford has stood on the same site since around 1850.
A small local library was first established in the 1830s, and the first school was built sometime in the 1850s, as the Male Academy. It was established in a building that is now the Fox Funeral Home on West Main Street. The corresponding Female Academy was built in the 1870s. The Stanford School was founded in 1900, and after much expansion, still serves to this day, now as the Lincoln County Alternative school. During the antebellum era the city generally grew very slowly. The library was renamed in 1970 in honor of Harvey Helm, a native son who became a noted Kentucky statesman and member of the United States House of Representatives between 1909 and 1917.
Generally untouched by the American Civil War (the nearest conflict was the Battle of Perryville, around 20 miles away), the city began to grow significantly after the war. In the late 1860s, the town opened its own newspaper, the
). In the 1870s and 1880s, the city began to grow, especially after the Louisville and Nashville Railroad built a station and line into the town circa 1865. The railroad line was closed, and the tracks removed, in 1988, leaving only a small spur line outside of town which connects to Mount Vernon, Kentucky, although in recent years the old rail depot has been restored. Stanford is also notable as the location of the first automobile garage in Kentucky, in 1905.