Downtown Lexington was the site of one of the biggest slave markets in the Southeastern United States. Thousands of transactions recorded in Fayette County contained names of large segments of the enslaved population prior to emancipation and the official end of slavery on December 6, 1865. In the late 1890s, newspapers across the country contained ‘information wanted’ ads placed by formerly enslaved people looking for family members who had been sold and separated from them in Lexington, Ky. Publishing Fayette County’s historical property records online will help answer these questions that still linger for many Black families today.
Bringing these documents online and into a searchable database will take humanpower, specialized equipment, historical expertise, and funding. Thanks to the Digital Access Project partnership, Fayette County will be the first county in Kentucky to digitize its historical property records dating back to the late 1700s.
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