Documents produced in Danville when the fledgling United States was only a decade old are being returned to their roots in a new exhibit opening Thursday, June 25 at Grayson’s Tavern in historic Constitution Square. “It Happened Here: The Political Club of Danville” will open at 5:30 p.m. and run through July.
The new exhibit features original documents, membership rolls, and notes describing the deliberations by frontier leaders who met at the tavern from 1786 to 1790 to discuss political issues in the new country.
Meetings covered aspects of the U.S. Constitution, drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 and ratified with amendments in 1789. A series of state constitutional conventions in Danville also occurred during the club’s existence. Kentucky became a state in 1792. The materials on display demonstrate important issues taking shape in a pivotal time.
The exhibit is the result of original research and investigation by the Story Center, an initiative launched by the Boyle County Public Library in 2024 to elevate local history and help county residents preserve family memories and records.
Maggie McAdams, Story Center director, said the exhibit grew from efforts to trace the history of Grayson’s Tavern itself. The county provided the historic structure for the library to house the Story Center as a start-up enterprise. McAdams said that research on the building’s history led to the materials detailing the frontier debating group.
The Danville historians’ trail led to Louisville. Thomas Speed, the Political Club secretary who was 22 when the group disbanded, had stored original documents in his desk. When a descendant discovered the papers, he turned them over to the Filson Historical Society. That group has now loaned a trove of original documents for the Story Center exhibit, which will be on display through July.
Among the materials are invoices bearing the signature of Ben Grayson, proprietor of the Danville tavern which served as a gathering point in a hotbed of civic discourse as a new nation began to expand.
“They were, for the most part, young men and Revolutionary War veterans who had ideals and passion from the war but were now busy building their own communities in the frontier,” McAdams said. “They also found it very important to create space for these essential discussions about how the government should work. As the Constitution was ratified, the club really did have a bearing on where Virginia would land.” During the years the group existed, Kentucky was a district of the state of Virginia.
Almost 250 years have passed since the documents recorded both high-minded discussions and ordinary organizational business. McAdams said it is rewarding to be part of reuniting the records with the spot where they originated.
“One of the biggest things for our team is honoring that sense of place,” McAdams said. “In many ways the club was short-lived, but people used that space so many years ago for something they found very important. It is gratifying to be able to revive that moment and those discussions right where they occurred.”
“It Happened Here: The Political Club of Danville” will be on exhibit at Grayson’s Tavern, 105 E. Walnut St., on Constitution Square in Danville. The Story Center is open 10-4 Tuesday through Friday and 10-1 on Saturdays. More information is available at boylepublib.org/storycenter or by e-mailing storycenter@boylepublib.org.