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.
Explore topics related to Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) in this space for youth, grades 3-12.
Learn how the Lexington Public Library Foundation empowers change within our library system.
Learn or develop a personal or professional skill with LinkedIn Learning classes, available for free with your library card.
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The Kentucky Images collection contains postcards, photographs and slides of people, architecture, and locations in Kentucky and Appalachia.
Join us for a walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s historic sites. The full tour is available as a single MP3, or you can download individual tracks. For the single MP3, music will play between the stops. You can pause the track while you walk between stops.
This tour covers a walking distance of 1.1 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: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/
The Lexington Public Library’s Digital Archives provide open access to researchers and students to learn more about the rich history of Lexington and Fayette County. It contains a fraction of the Library’s physical holdings, which are housed and available for reference in the Kentucky Room at the Central Library. New material is being digitized and added constantly, so there's always something new to find.
The archives have a simple keyword search, and it is possible to browse the collections by subject, area, or decade. The Lexington Public Library actively reviews and labels materials in our archives with statements that indicate how you may reuse the images, and what sort of permission, if any, you need to do so. Please check the information for each image to determine its legal status.
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Wonderful podcasts and walking tours have been created by our staff. Please enjoy!
These tours are guided audio walking tours with a variety of topics focused on Downtown Lexington, KY. Music will play in between each stop, and the listener can pause the track while walking between stops.
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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!
Fayette County's local businesses and organizations contain a wealth of information about local residents.
Meet with a librarian for one-on-one consultation. Please submit the Book a Librarian Appointment Request Form or call 859-231-5500 during business hours to schedule an appointment. Appointments are scheduled Monday-Friday during Library business hours and typically last 30 to 45 minutes.
Amended and Restated Bylaws of the Friends of the Lexington Public Library, Inc.
Major Henry Clay McDowell purchased the Ashland Estate from Kentucky University in 1882 with his wife, Anne Smith Clay McDowell, who was a granddaughter of Henry Clay. The McDowells took great care to revive the grounds to their former glory and made several lasting improvements, including the construction of a glass conservatory adjoining the terrace, which is visible in several of the collection's images. During the period that Ashland was owned by Kentucky University, a large Mechanical Hall was erected on the grounds, which the McDowells converted to a stable and used to reestablish Ashland as a thoroughbred stock farm. The tenure of the McDowells at Ashland was marked by numerous celebrations and social events on the grounds.
This photo collection shows one of many gatherings of friends and family, taken circa 1894, which included a parade of the estate’s horses. Thoroughbreds Impetuous, King Reine, Oratorio, Argentina, and Bracegirdle are all being proudly shown at this event. Photos also show members of the McDowell family in attendance, including Major McDowell and his wife, and their daughters Nanette, Julia, and Madeline. The author John Fox Jr. was a frequent guest of the McDowells at Ashland and can be seen in one image playing a banjo on the lawn.
Information on the history of Ashland from Ashland: the Henry Clay Estate by Eric Brooks, 2007.
Join us for a walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s African American Heritage Sites. The full tour is available as a single MP3, or you can download individual tracks. For the single MP3, music will play between the stops. You can pause the track while you walk between stops.
This tour covers a walking distance of 1.7 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: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/
The Knowles Postcard Collection contains images of notable Kentucky locations, such as Ashland, Keeneland, and Mammoth Cave, as well as county courthouses, farms, schools, and many others. The 84 images are both artist-drawn and photographs from the early to mid-20th Century.
The Knowles Postcard Collection was donated to Lexington Public Library by Johnson and Catherine Knowles, along with their son Colin, in 2006. The Kentucky postcards are part of a larger collection of 14,000 cards inherited from Johnson’s mother, JoAnn Baxter Zeisler, which consisted of images from across the United States. Upon inheriting the collection, the Knowles family decided to donate sets of postcards to their respective locations in museums, libraries, and historical societies throughout the United States.
The Fayette County Postcard collection contains images of well-known sites in Central Kentucky, such as Keeneland, Transylvania University, Ashland, and many others. The 80 images provide an interesting perspective of Lexington architecture, industry, and culture in the early 20th Century.
Alex Garcia is originally from Los Angeles, California. He attended the University of Kentucky in 2004 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology in 2008. He then attended the University of Kentucky College of Law and earned his law degree in 2012. After graduating from law school, he began his legal career working at the Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney Office prosecuting serious felony crimes such as murder, robbery, kidnapping, and assault. He then joined the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office as a Special Prosecutor in January 2020 and now focuses on complex criminal cases statewide. Alex also has the honor of serving as an Officer in the United States Army Reserve and serves as an attorney for the Judge Advocate General’s Corp (JAG). Alex has been a member of multiple local organizations in Fayette County and he currently sits on the board of Partners for Youth, a non-profit organization, and the Fayette County Bar Association. He enjoys promoting and observing positive youth development within the Lexington community and believes in surrounding our youth with a positive community and providing mentorship to those who are at-risk.
Elmer L. Foote served as official photographer of the Cincinnati Public Library for many years, and produced photographs that appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune during the early years of the twentieth century. Lantern slides are glass positive transparencies, viewed through a back lit projector. The Lexington Public Library does not have record of when the slides were donated, or the donor’s name. Records do indicate that the library purchased a projectoscope for viewing glass slides in 1912, and a separate lantern slide collection was donated to the library in 1919. The slides contain examples of posed portraiture, scenery from around Kentucky, documentation of the new High Bridge, as well as several historic buildings and homes, some of which are unidentified.
He was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut on February 27, 1863, the son of Edwin Foote and Ellen Hodges Foote, both natives of Connecticut. He came to Cincinnati about 1884 and married Estelle Allee of Cincinnati in 1888. Foote died at age 56 in Norwood, Ohio on September 21, 1919 and is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio. Foote's obituary in the Commercial Tribune of September 22, 1919 describes him as nationally known, and mentions his "photographic genius." The article further describes Foote's pictures taken among the Cumberland Mountains and outdoor scenic snow views, appearing at intervals in the Commercial Tribune, as photographic classics.
Lena Hart Tobey (1869-1939) was born in Mississippi to Thomas and Susan Watson Hart. In the 1890s, she attended school in Lexington, Kentucky. She married Ellis Tobey in 1896 and died in 1939 in Arkansas.
After Lena Hart Tobey's death, her daughter Myrtis inherited a collection of photographs in a scrapbook. The family donated the Lexington, Kentucky marked cabinet cards to the Lexington Public Library in 2001. Some of the young adults in the photos have been named, though most have not.
This is your gateway to our most popular resources. Search for books and eBooks, access tools for research and learning, and discover our unique collection of genealogy and local history materials.
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.
The Kentucky History collection contains Kentucky-related documents not specifically related to Fayette County.
The Lexington Public Library welcomes your time and talents! There are a number of volunteer opportunities available. Apply now.
The Materials Selection Policy was initially adopted February 25, 1987 by the Lexington Public Library Board of Trustees and was revised March 24, 1993. The Materials Selection Policy was updated and renamed the Collection Development Policy which was approved by the Board on January 14, 2009. The Board of Trustees assumes full responsibility for all legal actions which may result from the implementation of any policies stated herein.
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 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.
Discover unique resources in our Digital Archives that tell the story of Fayette County. Visit cemeteries throughout Central Kentucky using our cemetery maps. Contact our resident experts in the Central Library's Kentucky Room with questions.
The Kentucky Room's collections contain Lexington's residential directories going back over 200 years, and are some of the most useful resources for researchers looking for family information, neighborhood histories, and house histories.
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.