Mathias Harman Sr. (1736-1832)

Just east of here is the last home site and grave of Mathias Harman Sr., explorer, hunter, and Revolutionary War veteran. In 1755 Harman built a hunting outpost on the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River in present-day Johnson County, Kentucky, about 80 miles northwest of here. At the same site in 1789 he established Harman's Station, the first permanent European American settlement in eastern Kentucky. He and his wife, Lydia Skaggs Harman, settled here in Tazewell County ca. 1803.