Florence, Kentucky

Florence, the largest city in Boone County, has gone by more names than most Kentucky towns care to admit. The crossroads that became Florence was first called simply Crossroads, then Polecat, then Maddensville, and then Connersville, under which name it got its first post office in eighteen twenty-eight. That name caused confusion with another Connersville in the state, so the Kentucky General Assembly stepped in and incorporated the town as Florence on January twenty-seventh, eighteen thirty, with a population of sixty-three people on about five acres of land.

Florence was the name that finally stuck, probably chosen for its pleasant sound rather than any particular person. The first house on the site had gone up around eighteen nineteen. Today Florence anchors the northern Kentucky suburbs across the Ohio River from Cincinnati and is home to the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport.