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The collection contains non-Fayette County school yearbooks and images, dating from 1878-1968.

The Lexington History Museum began in 1999, and opened its doors in the Old Courthouse in 2003. Its purpose is to educate Fayette County about its rich history, and preserve pieces of that history for future generations.


Tina Belle Green Winters Simpler Young (1880-1930), was born in Elmville, Kentucky. Known as Tiny, she was believed to be a sex worker in the 1920s and 30s, and sent $5.00 a week home to support her sister.

The city reports and ordinances for Lexington contain a wide variety of information about the people, infrastructure, and businesses.

The Cyrus Parker Jones Funeral Notice collection contains 667 funeral cards of Lexington residents during the years of 1806-1886.


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.

The Daily Argonaut began in 1895 and seems to have ceased publication in 1899. This collection includes scattered issues from 1896, 1897 and 1898.

The Cochran Chronicle appears to be a neighborhood leaflet created by two school children, Philip Borries and Laurence Kraehe, living on Cochran Road in the Chevy Chase area of Lexington, KY in 1960.



The Daily Lexington Atlas ran from December 11, 1847 through November 20, 1848 and was Lexington’s first daily paper, and the first to publish information from the telegraph lines.

Are you just starting your family tree, or have you run into a brick wall tracing a distant ancestor? Join us to share tips and learn new research strategies. All levels of experience are welcome!
Join us for a walking tour of Lexington’s literary history!
Tour Length 1.05 miles
The music clips used in this tour are from “Walking Barefoot on Grass” by Kai Engel, and are used with a CCBY license. It is available here.

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.
When you log into many of our services, you'll be asked to provide a PIN (Personal Identification Number) in addition to your library card number. Your default PIN is typically the last 4 digits of the phone number on file for your account.

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.

