Fredericks Landing
Wilder
History of Frederick's River discovered
on June 2, 1775 by Dr. Thomas Walker
By Jeanette Schindler and Lenora Bacon
One of the first explorers in Kentucky was Dr. Thomas Walker. Dr. Walker was born January 15, 1715 in the Colony of Virginia. He became a respectable physician and an excellent woodsman. He had also married a widow, Mildred Thornton Merriwether, who owned an estate called Castle Hill. Together Thomas and Mildred had twelve children. Dr. Walker gave us his medical practice to take a job with Loyal Land Company of Virginia as a surveyor.
Dr. Walker and a group of woodsman set out to explore an unknown land which later became Kentucky. On their journey, Dr. Walker named the Cumberland Gap after the Duke of Cumberland, William Augustus. he also name the Louisa River, now know as as Levisa Fork. On June 2, 1775, Dr. Walker and his band of men found a river that seem to come from the mountains (which was Magoffin County) and this river joined another larger river now called the Ohio River. To these men this river became known as Frederick's River.
Shortly after this discovery Dr. Walker and his men returned to Virginia. Dr. Walker died at Castle Hill on November 9, 1794. Friderick's River became known as the Licking River because of the licks of salt and the meadows. The settlers used the work "lick" to describe the salt beds and they used an old Saxon word "ing" meaning "a pasture of meadow, generally one lying low, near a river," to form "Licking". This name has been handed down through the centuries.
Today this river is our own Licking River. The river, is used for pleasure more than transportation as it was in the settler's days.
NOTE: Frederick's Landing is on the west side of the AA highway in Wilder north of I-275. One can launch small pleasure boats and there is a picnic area. In the same area behind a chain link fence, was the original Corpus Christi Cemetery, but because of the floods from the Licking River, Corpus Christi Church only used it for a few years. They then moved the cemetery up the hill next to the St John the Baptist Church and called it St Josephs Cemetery. If one were allowed behind the chain link fence, one could still see some of the stones left behind.