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Voyages, Adventures and Situation of the French Emigrants, translated by A Lady
This work contains information about French Emigrants to America over the years 1789-1799, and provides a history of the French Revolution. The work was originally in French, and was translated into English by an anonymous translator using the pen name, "A Lady." Published in 1800 in Lexington, KY, this work uses the "Long S" depicted as an "f".
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The Independent Gazetteer (1803-1804)
The Independent Gazetteer was founded and printed by James Charless in 1803, with ads appearing in the Kentucky Gazette about its upcoming publication. The first issue was printed March 29, 1803. The paper was later sold to Robert Kay and then to T. Anderson. This collection contains issues from 1803 and 1804, though the paper may have been published through 1809.
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The Kentucky Reporter (1817-1830)
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.
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The Daily Argonaut (1895-1899)
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 paper focuses more on sensational news and tabloid-like reporting, though it later claims to be the only "Democratic Daily" in Central Kentucky. Many of the issues in this collection cover the Pearl Bryan Murder. The 1897 Courthouse Fire is also covered in detail.
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Clubs and Organizations Collection
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Bath County Memorial Library Collection
The Bath County Memorial Library was founded in 1949 by the Owingsville Women’s Club, and opened in January, 1950. It expanded into a bookmobile in 1953, and in 1963 moved into the old Farmer’s Bank Building at 24 W. Main St. Community response was high; a 1965 survey showed resident usage at 70%, and the library expanded again in 1996.
Both of those collections are owned by the Bath County Memorial Library, and held in their local history collection.
The two collections in Bath County’s Community Collection are both primary sources from Bath County residents.
- The Gilmore diary collection spans 1944-1955 and is written by Etta Evans Gilmore.
- The Young WWII letter collection was written by Bath County native Sergeant Johnston A. Young, during his time stationed in the Pacific theater during World War II.
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Lexington History Museum Collection
The Lexington History Museum began in 1998, 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. The Old Courthouse closed in 2012 for extensive renovations. The History Museum still creates exhibits and works on school and film collaborations to create an understanding and appreciation of local history.
The History Museum's Community Collections currently contains part of the exhibit "Our Fair City: The 1999 Lexington Fairness Ordinance," which was displayed in the summer of 2019 at the Lexington Public Library, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ordinance's passage.
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Katherine Pettit Diary
The diary (ca. 1899) of Katherine Pettit, details her settlement work for the Kentucky Confederation of Women's Clubs, made yearly trips to Hazard during this period and was a central figure in establishing the Hindman (Kentucky) Settlement School in 1902. Activities described here include teaching, reading, cooking, and hygiene. The diary also includes daily entries (August 3-September 13) detailing Pettit's travel from Lexington and Hazard with fellow settlement workers, her encounters with Hazard and mountain families, and the general scope of her work. Also includes a manuscript map of her camp.
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Kentucky Histories Collection
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Kentucky Events Collection
The library's collection contains many event pamphlets for Lexington and Kentucky counties, including county anniversary celebrations, suffragette songs, chautauquas, and community events and pageants.
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Brown Hocker Collection
The Brown-Hocker Collection is a community collection of photos and realia from African American events and people in Lexington and Kentucky history.
The objects in the collection are primarily for events in African American schools and churches. Several items also involve to civil rights activism in Kentucky. The 1964 March on Frankfort, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jackie Robinson, attracted over 10,000 marchers. The two volumes of “The Kentucky Club Woman” were published by the Kentucky Association of Colored Woman’s Clubs, which represented over 100 Kentucky clubs across the state. There are also several objects honoring the life and legacy of Whitney M. Young, Jr. (1921-1971).
The Constitution School and Booker T. Washington Elementary School were both segregated schools for African American children in Lexington. The Constitution School closed in 1972, but Booker T. Washington Elementary is still in use today.
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Keller J. Dunn Photograph Collection
The Dunn Photograph Collection contains images of Lexington, KY taken in the 1960s and 1980s. Keller J. Dunn (1917-2000) born in Lexington, KY, shot hundreds of pictures of Lexington, primarily in the center of the city, in an effort to capture on film a city changing due to urban renewal.
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Schools and Yearbooks Collection
The Schools and Yearbooks collection contains historical and modern yearbooks and other school documents owned by and donated to the Lexington Public Library.
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Military History Collection
The military history collection contains relevant histories and records that focus on Kentuckians involved at home and abroad, and includes a collection of United States Army Training Center Yearbooks from Fort Knox, Kentucky. Lexington was also the site for the Lexington Signal Depot, which was active during and after World War II.
US Army Armor School Collection
The library has several yearbooks published for graduating classes from the Army Armor School. The United States Army Armor School began in 1940 as the Armored Force School and Replacement Center at Fort Knox, Kentucky. It spent a few years post World War II as inactive, until the 3rd Armored Division was reactivated in 1947, and became the US Army Training Center, Armor (USATCA), in 1956. Both Army and Marines soldiers received training on a variety of subjects and equipment.
Fort Knox hosted the school until it moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 2010, as the US Army Armor School. The yearbooks in the collection contain the names and photographs of the officers, NCOs, and graduates of the 8 week basic combat training at Fort Knox. There are also many photographs of the various buildings, training, and activities.
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Aunt Tiny Belle Collection
The collection consists of an image, homemade brochures, flyers, pamphlets, and programs covering LGBTQ+ events and places from 1983 to 1999 in both Lexington and Louisville. Subjects include Leigh Angelique and other drag queens, Sweet Evening Breeze, Henry Faulkner, Greg Butler, the Royal Sovereign Imperial Court of All Kentucky and its Coronations, the Bungalow, the LMNOP, Jezebel’s, The Bar Complex, Crossings, Disco Circus, the Bluegrass C.O.L.T.S., AIDS Volunteers of Lexington, Johnny Angel’s, The Loft, and Trixie’s Hide and Seek.
The collection is named in honor of Tina Belle Green Winters Simpler Young, known as Tiny, a sex worker who in the 1920s and 30s sent $5.00 a week home to support her sister. For a time, she worked in the Crawl section of Frankfort, then moved to Lexington, and finally lived the rest of her life in Cincinnati.
The queerness of sex work, a marginalized woman using sex to support family, provides context both to this collection bearing her name and to the LGBTQ+ community that has historically formed families on the social margins.
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Government Documents Collection
Until 1974, Lexington and Fayette County had two separate governing bodies. Lexington itself was founded in 1775 and chartered in 1782 by an act of the Virginia General Assembly, since Kentucky itself did not achieve statehood until 1792. Fayette County was formed in 1780, and spanned what is currently about a third of the state, before achieving its current boundary lines in 1799.
The Lexington Fayette Urban County Government became a consolidated government in 1974. The digitized items in this collection are primarily Lexington city documents or merged city-county documents. The earliest digitized item is Lexington’s 1858 city charter and ordinances.
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Sam'l D. M'Cullough's Reminiscences of Lexington
This is a handwritten series of lectures detailing Samuel D. McCullough's memories of his childhood and life in Lexington, Kentucky, accompanied by letters and a photograph of his house. The lectures were apparently delivered before the Historical Society of Fayette County of which McCullough was a member. The lectures begin with a discussion of McCullough's early childhood, followed by reminiscences on local inventors, railroads, turnpikes, jails, punishment of crimes, mills, and the theater. Among Lexington inventors, McCullough details the careers of acquaintances Thomas H. Barlow (1789-1865), John Jones (d. 1849), Edward West (d. 1827), and Nathan Burrowes (d. 1846) Correspondence (2 items; 1869, 1870) consists of a note accompanying the donation of a pamphlet to the library and a letter to fellow members of the historical society concerning an historical map of Fayette County which McCullough proposed to create. Samuel D. McCullough was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1803 and attended Transylvania College, graduating in 1824. For fourteen years he conducted a female academy, after which he engaged in the manufacture and sale of mustard, having inherited a recipe from a relative, Nathan Burrowes.
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