Mount Sterling: Scotland in Kentucky

Mount Sterling was founded in seventeen ninety-two by a Scotsman named Hugh Forbes, who laid out lots and called the place Little Mountain Town for the low ridge it sat on. When Montgomery County was established in seventeen ninety-six, the town became the county seat and received a more formal name, Mount Sterling, a nod to the Scottish city of Stirling. By then it already had thirty-three town lots, four retail stores, and three taverns.

Montgomery County was named for Richard Montgomery, the Revolutionary War general killed at Quebec in seventeen seventy-five. Mount Sterling grew as a commercial center for the surrounding farm country, and the first of seven county courthouses was built here in the seventeen nineties. It remains the county seat today, a small city sitting at the edge of the Kentucky Bluegrass.