Lexington. 1 City (1990 pop. 225,366), seat of Fayette co., N central Ky., in the heart of the bluegrass region; inc. 1832, made coextensive with Fayette co. 1974. The outstanding center in the United States for the raising of thoroughbred horses, it is also an important market for tobacco, livestock, and bluegrass seed as well as a railroad shipping point for E Kentucky's oil, coal, farm produce, and quarry products. Lexington has railroad shops and plants making fixtures, metal products, processed foods, machinery, and transportation and electronic equipment. The Univ. of Kentucky and Transylvania Univ. are there, as is Keeneland Racetrack.
Places of interest include “Ashland,” the home of Henry Clay (designed by Latrobe in 1806 and rebuilt with the original materials in the 1850s); “Hopemont,” the home of John Hunt Morgan (1811); the Thomas Hart house (1794); the home of Mary Todd Lincoln; and the library, which has a file of the Kentucky Gazette, founded by John Bradford in 1787. Lexington cemetery contains the graves of Clay, Morgan, J. C. Breckinridge, and the author James Lane Allen, and a national cemetery is near the city. The city was named in 1775 by a group of hunters who were encamped on the site when they heard the news of the battle of Lexington.
2 Town (1990 pop. 28,974), Middlesex co., E Mass., a residential suburb of Boston; settled c.1640, inc. 1713. On Apr. 19, 1775, the first battle of the Revolution was fought there (see Lexington and Concord, battles of). The site is marked by a monument on the triangular green, around which are several 17th- and 18th-century buildings, including Buckman Tavern (1710), where the minutemen assembled. Other attractions are Monroe Tavern (1695), British headquarters during the battle; and the Hancock-Clarke House (1698), where John Hancock and Samuel Adams were awakened by Paul Revere's alarm. The first state normal school in the country was established there in 1839. The theologian and reformer Theodore Parker was born in Lexington.
See F. S. Piper, Lexington, the Birthplace of American Liberty (11th ed. 1963).
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