The history of Louisville, Kentucky, USA, as a city is considered to have started on February 13, 1828, the date of the first city charter. From the time of its first organization as a village, on February 7, 1781, until its incorporation as a city, it was governed by a board of trustees. At the time when its growth and commercial importance demanded the change of its government, it was chartered by the state legislature into a city of five wards and placed under the government of a mayor and city council, the latter being composed of ten members, two from each ward.

History of the office

The first election under the Act of Incorporation took place in March 1828. All free white males who had lived in the city for at least six months prior to the election could vote, although mayors were not elected directly initially. The two top vote-getters were referred to the Governor, who selected the mayor from the two, with senate approval. The early mayor was relatively weak, acting mostly as a Justice of the Peace, serving a one-year term, and lacking a vote on the City Council except to break ties.

Louisville (generally pronounced ⁱ/ˈluːəvəl/ or ⁱ/ˈlʌvəl/ by natives, and ⁱ/ˈluːiːvɪl/ by others) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 30th-most populous city in the United States. It is one of two cities in Kentucky designated as first-class, with the other being the state's second-largest city of Lexington. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County.

Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark and is named after King Louis XVI of France, making Louisville one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachian Mountains. Sited beside the Falls of the Ohio, the only major obstruction to river traffic between the upper Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, the settlement first grew as a portage site. It was the founding city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which grew into a 6,000-mile (9,700 km) system across 13 states. Today, the city is known as the home of the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the University of Louisville and its Louisville Cardinals athletic teams, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and three of Kentucky's six Fortune 500 companies. Its main airport is also the site of UPS's worldwide air hub.

Kentucky (ⁱ/kənˈtʌki/, kən-TU-kee), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state located in the east south-central region of the United States. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth (the others being Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts). Originally a part of Virginia, in 1792 Kentucky became the 15th state to join the Union. Kentucky is the 37th most extensive and the 26th most populous of the 50 United States.

Kentucky is known as the "Bluegrass State", a nickname based on the bluegrass found in many of its pastures due to the fertile soil. One of the major regions in Kentucky is the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky which houses two of its major cities, Louisville and Lexington. It is a land with diverse environments and abundant resources, including the world's longest cave system, Mammoth Cave National Park, the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States, and the two largest man-made lakes east of the Mississippi River.

Kentucky (foaled 1861, died 1875), was a successful American Thoroughbred racehorse who won 21 of his 23 starts, including 20 consecutive wins.

He was by Lexington, who sired three colts in 1861 (out of Glencoe mares) and would each become one of the best race horses in America – Norfolk, Asteroid and Kentucky. Norfolk and Asteroid went undefeated throughout their racing careers, and one of the few horses who ever defeated Kentucky was Norfolk. Kentucky's dam was Magnolia, by the imported British champion Glencoe; Glencoe stood at John Harper's Nantura Stock Farm in Kentucky. His sire line traced back to Herod.

A rangy bay with a narrow white stripe and white off-fore pastern, Kentucky was owned by John Hunter, one of the founders of the Saratoga Race Course and co-owner (and the first chairman) of The Jockey Club.

Racing record

Probably trained by A.J. Minor (the facts are unclear), Kentucky won his only two-year-old start. At age three, racing for John Hunter, William R. Travers and George Osgood, he lost his second start in the inaugural Jersey Derby – coming in fourth to Norfolk. After that he won 20 consecutive races, including the first Travers Stakes in 1864 and the first two runnings of the Saratoga Cup at a distance of 2¼ miles. He also won the first Inaugural Stakes in four mile heats at the newly opened Jerome Park Racetrack. For three seasons (1864, 1865 and 1866), when races were two, three and four miles long, he was the undisputed champion of East Coast racing.

Kentucky is a 1938 Technicolor film with Loretta Young, Richard Greene, and Walter Brennan. It was directed by David Butler. It is a Romeo and Juliet story of lovers Jack and Sally, set amidst Kentucky horseracing, in which a family feud goes back to the Civil War and is kept alive by Sally's Uncle Peter.

Plot

During the Civil War, Thad Goodwin (Charles Waldron) of Elmtree Farm, a local horse breeder resists Capt. John Dillon (Douglass Dumbrille) and a company of Union soldiers confiscating his prize horses. He is killed by Dillon and his youngest son Peter (Bobs Watson) cries at the soldiers riding away with the horses.

75 years later, in 1938, Peter (Walter Brennan) now a crotchety old man, still resides on Elmtree Farm and raises horses with his niece Sally (Loretta Young). Dillon's grandson Jack (Richard Greene) and Sally meet, her not knowing that he was a Dillon. Peter Goodwin dies when his speculation on cotton drops. The Goodwins are forced to auction off nearly all their horses and Jack offers his services to Sally, as a trainer of their last prize horse, "Bessie's Boy", who falls ill.