Minerva
Minerva, often called the town of beautiful homes and famous people, is located at the junction of Ky. Rts, 435 and 1235, eight miles northwest of Maysville in Mason Co. The town was named for Minerva Green, an early settler and the first white woman to live there. Preacher and stonemason Rev. Lewis Craig built the first church at Minerva in 1793. The church, which was completely restored in 2005, is one of the oldest buildings in Mason Co. Its grandiose Greek Revival design seems to indicate that early residents hoped to create a town of high-quality buildings. Craig built a number of other structures in Mason Co. as well, including the first school in Minerva and the courthouse at Washington. A post office was established at Minerva in 1812, with James M. Runyon serving as postmaster. Minerva was incorporated on January 31, 1844; however, that town charter was later rescinded. The city’s first newspaper, the Minerva Mirror, began publishing in the mid-1850s. The 1876 atlas of Mason Co. listed a general store, a Masonic Order lodge (see Masons), and a tobacco warehouse in the town.
The most famous person born and raised in Minerva was Stanley Forman Reed, who became a Kentucky state senator and later a U.S. Supreme Court justice. His father, Dr. John A. Reed, was a physician in Minerva for many years. On nearby Tuckahoe Ridge there were several large plantation homes, which were described and made famous in a novel entitled Drivin’ Woman, by Elizabeth Pickett Chevalier, who lived on the ridge. Another of Minerva’s claims to fame was the town’s educational facilities. An 1885 newspaper article said that Minerva had about 200 residents and 5 schools, the largest number of schools per capita in Mason Co. The best known of the schools was Minerva College, a high-quality grade and high school. Monthly tuition was two dollars for the grade school and three dollars for the high school. Class sizes were very small, and the typical graduating class had only five or six members. A Minerva College graduate, Henry L. Donovan, later served as president of the University of Kentucky at Lexington. Another graduate, Cleo Gillis Hester, served for 33 years as registrar of Murray State University at Murray, where a dormitory, Hester Hall, was named in her honor. Minerva College operated from 1855 to 1909 and was then taken over by the Mason Co. School Board. Ironically, although Minerva now has a much larger population than during the 1800s, there are no schools operating in Minerva.
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