Ah, Nickytown. . . home of my good friend Peter, who serves as the primary writer for this blog. I promised him that I would wait to do Nicholasville with him, so we headed into town one evening last week. The Jessamine County Courthouse is beautiful, and is quite a complex building.
Here at the right you can see the back of the building, which shows a lot of its complexity. I particularly like the lady justice that faces (I believe) west on the side of the courthouse. The folks in the courthouse were extremely friendly, offering to let us see the Circuit Courtroom and show us around. The courthouse was originally built in 1878, and was remodeled in 1964.I thought this little tidbit was pretty interesting. According to the county historical marker, Jessamine county was named for the Jessamine flower that grows so abundantly in the area, as well as the Jessamine Creek. Local legend apparently attributes that name to Jessamine Douglass, the daughter of an early settler to the area, who was allegedly "stealthily tomahawked" to death by a Native American as she rested on the creek. That seems to me to be a strange way to name a creek/county, but hey, who am I?
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Source: History of Jessamine County by Bennett H. Young.