John May was the first teacher in the school at McAfee Station in 1779. In 1781 he was one of four Kentucky District delegates to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and in 1783 he became the first clerk of the Supreme Court of the Kentucky District and one of the original trustees of Transylvania Seminary. With Simon Kenton, a famed frontiersman, he owned land where Maysville, Kentucky, was established by Virginia in 1787, and it was named for May. McAfee Station was the site of a stockade built in 1779 by the McAfee, McCoun, McGee, Curry, and Adams families, one and a half miles west on Salt River on land owned by James McAfee. He and his brothers William, Robert, George, and Samuel marked and improved land in the area in 1773-5, and in 1785 New Providence Presbyterian Church was formed; the third church erected by this continuous body stands one mile north.