Lexington’s African American Heritage Walking Tour
Join us for an on-demand walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s African American heritage sites.
Join us for an on-demand walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s African American heritage sites.
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The Publications Collection contains runs of historical Kentucky newspapers, almanacs, and magazines.
The Kentucky Gazette was the first paper established west of the Allegheny Mountains, founded by John and Fielding Bradford. The frontier paper focused on East Coast and International news, though some local announcements can be found. Later, the paper focused on disseminating opinions on politics and issues of concern on the frontier. When political parties emerged, the paper developed a Democratic (conservative at the time) bent. John Bradford handed the reins of the paper over to his son, Daniel Bradford, in 1802.
While still owned and occasionally edited by the Bradford family, the paper had several editors and publishers through the mid-1830s, when Daniel Bradford returned to the paper’s byline as editor. Daniel Bradford edited the paper until 1840, when he sold it to Jim Cunningham. The paper shuttered in 1848, due to Cunningham’s failing health, but was revived in 1866 and published until 1910 by different publishers.
The years 1841-1910 are not digitized as of January 2020, but are viewable on microfilm and in print in the Kentucky Room at Central Library. Selected articles are indexed in the Library’s Local History Index.
Fayette County, Kentucky, has changed enormously since it was created in 1792. This collection contains government documents for the city of Lexington, for Fayette County, and for the merged Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, as well as funeral notices, club directories, scrapbooks, image collections and a history of Lexington Public Library.
Content from over 80 Kentucky newspapers and news sources, including the Lexington Herald-Leader.
While the focus of content in the digital archive is Fayette County, many other counties are represented. This list is in alphabetical order by county name for non-Fayette County content.
Anderson County
Bath County
Boone County
Bourbon County
Boyd County
Boyle County
Breathitt County
Bullitt County
Caldwell County
Calloway County
Christian County
Clark County
Clay County
Floyd County
Franklin County
Garrard County
Graves County
Grayson County
Hardin County
Harlan County
Hopkins County
Jackson County
Jefferson County
Jessamine County
Johnson County
Knox County
Laurel County
Leslie County
Livingston County
Madison County
Mason County
Meade County
Mercer County
Muhlenberg County
Nelson County
Owsley County
Pulaski County
Robertson County
Rockcastle County
Scott County
Shelby County
Warren County
Washington County
Wolfe County
Woodford County
Old Kentucky Architecture is a comprehensive book by Rexford Newcomb that was published in 1940. It contains photographs and floor plans from significant architectural buildings all around Kentucky, but primarily focused on the central Kentucky region, that were built between 1767-1860. It also mentions several buildings designed by architect Gideon Shryock, as well as a few by John McMurtry.
The buildings included are Old Fort Harrod, Old Creel Cabin, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, William Crow House, Old Du Puy Farm House, Bardstown's Old Stone Jail, Colonel William Whitley House, Federal Hill, Liberty Hall, Wickland, Clay Hill, Benjamin Gratz House, Dr. John C. Lewis House, Rose Hill, The Grange, Ridgeway, Xalapa Farm, House on Edgehill Road, Castlewood, Woodlawn, Colonel Andrew Muldrow House, Dr. Ephriam McDowell House, Marshall House, Hopemont, Shropshire House, Eothan, Buford House, General McConnell Farm, Padgett House, Crittenden House, Layson House, Waveland, Bridge House, A. E. Hudnely Farm, Smokehouse, Ashland, Saint Joseph’s Church, Harrodsburg Old Physician’s Office, Old House, Orland Brown House, Diamond Point Passmore House, Chestnut House, Adams House, Moberly House, Mansfield, Showalter Residence, Professor McClure House, Brooker Residence, Rev. Dr. Robert Alexander Johnstone House, Scotland, Helm Place, Carrick House Whitehall, Old Capitol Building, Morrison College Transylvania University, Daughter’s College Harrodsburg, Centre College Old Main Hall, Giddings Hall Georgetown College, Jefferson County Court House, Bank of Louisville, Louisville Board of Education, Kentucky School for the Blind, Kentucky School for the Deaf, Cross Keys Tavern, Tomb of Matthew Shryock, Ingelside, Loudoun House, Mound Cottage, Botherum, Walnut Hill Church, Pigsah Church, Sexton’s Cottage Lexington Episcopal Cemetery, and the Abbey of Gethsemani.
Several of these buildings have been demolished.
The Kentucky Rally Songs pamphlet contains 42 songs compiled and printed by the state chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, to be used at the many gatherings and rallies that they organized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The songs, sung to popular tunes of the day, dealt with prohibition and women’s suffrage.
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was an organization founded in 1873 to promote social reform along with Christian moral principles, and the Kentucky chapter was extremely active. In addition to politically supporting sympathetic political candidates, the WCTU also held many social events to advocate for alcohol and tobacco abstinence, with a focus on overall moral reform.
Information from the Kentucky Historical Society.
Mountain Ballads for Social Singing contains 15 songs selected for the Vesper Hour gatherings at Berea College. The songs were part of a larger collection, English Folk Songs in the Mountains of the Southern Appalachians, which was published in 1918 as American-English Folk-Songs: collected in the southern Appalachians and arranged with pianoforte accompaniment.
The Kentucky Almanac was a regional almanac that began printing in 1788, at the office of John Bradford’s Kentucky Gazette in Lexington. The Gazette itself began publication in 1787, and other almanacs followed.
The almanacs contain information about local lunar and solar patterns, predicted weather patterns for the year, and also lists court days for all of Kentucky’s counties for that time. It continued being published through the 1840s.
Viewable Almanacs
The Kentucky Reporter was published from October 1817-April 1832, by William W. Worsley and Thomas Smith. It is the direct continuation of the The Reporter. Politically, it was a Republican paper (Jeffersonian Democratic Republican - liberal at the time.) It reported local and national news, elections, and speeches. The Library’s digital and microfilm collection ends in December 1830, but the bound volumes are available by request in the Kentucky Room Closed Stacks through 1832.
The Kentucky Pioneer Genealogy and Records Magazine published various articles about early Kentucky history as a quarterly publication from 1979-1985, then annually 1986-1988. It later became the official publication of the Society of Kentucky Pioneers.
All issues have been digitized. Most of the submissions focus on tax records, early military and militia records, family cemeteries, newspapers, and transcriptions of early vital records. They are word searchable.
The Kentucky Chautauqua Assembly presented an annual event in Lexington’s Woodland Park with days of programming. Presentations varied from live music and entertainment to lectures and speeches from national figures. The Kentucky Chautauqua began in 1887, to great popularity, and continued through 1903. After Woodland Park was taken over by the city and reconstructed in 1904, new Chautauqua series did take place by the Lexington Chautauqua and later the Redpath circuit Chautauqua.
The Lexington Public Library collection has two programs, detailing the events for the 1892 and 1896 Kentucky Chautauquas.
The Kentucky Progress Commission was formed in 1928 in order to draw tourism and business to Kentucky. It was formed by the Kentucky Legislature, and was a 12 person board. The “Kentucky Progress Magazine” was used by the board to promote Kentucky, and features local interest stories, photographs of people, places, and activities. It also features ads placed by various cities around the state.
Some issues contain material that is under copyright, but qualifies for display by libraries under Section 108(h) of US Copyright Law. It is the user's responsibility to determine the copyright status of the material they want to use. If a section is hidden, please contact us to view it.
Search, view, and download digitized historical Lexington, KY Newspapers covering the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The Around the Town in Lexington, Kentucky magazine pamphlet contains advertisements for local attractions, apartment homes, restaurants, and hotels. It includes a small section with details about travelling in Lexington, such as the time zone, post office location, and the hours of alcohol sales. There is a schedule of events for Lexington, and a Television Guide highlighting popular programs. The last half of the guide contains an in depth article about the local historic home museum, Waveland.
Around the Town in Lexington, Kentucky was owned and published by Wallace “Wah Wah” Jones, professional basketball player and politician until 1967. He was appointed as Malt Beverage Administrator in 1967 (Lexington Herald, 1967-10-12) by Governor Louis B. Nunn, and in 1969 resigned due to his involvement with the publication (Lexington Herald, 1969-08-12). Around the Town in Lexington, Kentucky contains numerous alcohol advertisements, and it was seen as a conflict of interest, though Mr. Jones claimed to have sold the publication prior to his appointment to the Alcohol Beverage Control board.
Illustrated Lexington Kentucky contains photographs, demographics, commerce and financial information about Lexington up to 1919. This work appears to have been commissioned by the Lexington Board of Commerce, and features an introduction including information about Lexington’s businesses, schools, parks, climate, infrastructure, and other amenities. There is a feature on Lexington and Fayette County’s financial health, written by Board of Commerce member J. Will Stoll. Photographs in this work include street scenes, agriculture, infrastructure, horses, prominent homes, and the interiors of many Lexington businesses.
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The Lexington Public Library offers an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service which allows cardholders in good standing to borrow books and magazine articles we do not own and cannot purchase. The Lexington Public Library also lends our books to libraries both inside and outside the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
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The library has a variety of directories and yearbooks with local information. In the library's current digital collection, there is a selection of residential and street directories, yearbooks, school directories, and organizational directories. These are all fully word-searchable.