History of Lexington KY

25 companions came from Fort Harrod and erected a blockhouse. Cabins and a stockade followed, establishing a settlement known as Bryan Station. In 1780, Lexington was made the seat of Virginia's Fayette County. Colonists defended it against a British and American Indian attack in 1782, during the last part of the American Revolution.

The town was chartered on May 6, 1782, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly. The First African Baptist Church was founded c. 1790 by Peter Durrett, a Baptist preacher and slave held by Rev. Joseph Craig. Durrett helped guide "The Traveling Church", a group migration of several hundred pioneers led by the preacher Lewis Craig and Captain William Ellis from Virginia to Kentucky in 1781. It is the oldest black Baptist congregation in Kentucky and the third oldest in the United States.

By 1820, Lexington was one of the largest and wealthiest towns west of the Allegheny Mountains. So cultured was its lifestyle that the city gained the nickname "Athens of the West". One early prominent citizen, John Wesley Hunt, became the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies. The growing town was devastated by a cholera epidemic in 1833: 500 of 7,000 residents died within two months, including nearly one-third of the congregation of Christ Church Episcopal. London Ferrill, second preacher of First African Baptist, was one of three clergy who stayed in the city to serve the suffering. Additional cholera outbreaks occurred in 1848–49 and the early 1850s. Cholera was spread by people using contaminated water supplies, but its transmission was not understood in those years. Often the wealthier people would flee town for outlying areas to try to avoid the spread of disease.

Planters held slaves for use as field hands, laborers, artisans, and domestic servants. In the