The Tyler Settlement and Rural Historic District (established ca. 1785)

Rural land has all but disappeared in Jefferson County and with it the ties to Kentucky's early settlement. This priceless heritage has been preserved at the Blackacre State Nature Preserve and Historic Homestead and the Blackacre Conservancy lands. Blackacre's boundaries make up nearly half of the 600 acre Tyler Settlement, a rural historic district that was added to the National Register of Historic Places in May 1986. Remarkably, the pattern of fields, woods, and streams at Blackacre, remains much the same as it was 200 years ago.

In 1780 the Edward Tyler family came from the Virginia frontier to the wilderness that is now Jefferson County, Kentucky. Kentucky was still a wilderness from which these early settlers had to establish their homesteads. Edward Tyler, his wife Ann, and their children settled first in Louisville where he built a tavern and had warehouses. In 1783 Edward purchased 1,003 acres east of present Jeffersontown on Chenoweth Run for his sons and a nephew to farm.

This fertile land was suitable for numerous crops. Springs supplied pure water. Trees and rock outcroppings provided building material. William Tyler, probably the first of the sons to live on this land, established his farm south of present Taylorsville Road. His brother Moses and his cousin Robert came next in about 1785; and before 1790, Edward Sr. and Ann left Louisville with their youngest son, Edward Jr., to establish the fourth homestead nearby.

These farms soon became known as the Tyler Settlement and three of them survive today. Each has a stone, or stone and log, house and a springhouse constructed before 1800. Moses' farm, today’s Blackacre State Nature Preserve, also has a log barn from the same period. Moses' son, Presley, built Blackacre's brick farm house in 1844. The Tylers shared a cemetery, centrally located on the Settlement, and they also established a system of roads and lanes that connected their farms. Some segments of this historic road system can still be seen today, while others have become public roads.

Today, 600 of the Tylers’ original 1,003 acres have been designated the Tyler Settlement Rural Historic District. The district is located just east of the city of Jeffersontown and is loosely bounded by Taylorsville Road on the south, the NorfolkSouthern Railroad on the north, the Gene Snyder Freeway on the east, and the Jeffersontown city limits on the west. In addition to three original Tyler homesteads, the district includes about 17 early 20th-century houses and several recently subdivided developments. Because of the Blackacre Conservancy, as well the efforts of many individuals, land in the historic district remains primarily rural.