Waveland: Daniel Boone's Great-Grandnephew and His Greek Revival Estate
Near Lexington, Kentucky
Waveland State Historic Site sits six miles south of Lexington, and its connections reach back to the earliest years of Kentucky settlement. The land was first claimed around seventeen eighty-six by Daniel Boone Bryan, a relative of Daniel Boone. Joseph Bryan, a grandnephew of Boone himself, completed the Greek Revival mansion you see here in eighteen forty-eight, naming the property Waveland for the appearance of its fields of grain and hemp when wind moved through them.
The house represents antebellum Kentucky plantation life at its most refined: several outbuildings survive, including slave quarters, a smokehouse, and an icehouse. Joseph Bryan and his family lived here for decades. The property became a Kentucky State Park and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-one.
Tours today address both the family that owned the house and the enslaved people who built and maintained it.
