THE HISTORIC LYRIC · CULTURE EXHIBITS
Across the Bluegrass, African American families built communities rooted in freedom, faith, education, landownership, and the determination to create a future for generations to come. Some of these settlements remain vibrant today. Others survive through family memories, church records, historic maps, and the stories passed from one generation to the next.
Regional landscape · Walnut Hall near Lexington, July 1940 · Marion Post Wolcott / Library of Congress
MORE THAN A PLACE ON A MAP
A hamlet could be small in size and expansive in meaning. Landownership, faith, education, work, and kinship shaped places that families called home. Their histories begin at different moments—and their stories continue in different ways.
Follow community stories across the Bluegrass, with an expanded Fayette County directory and starting points for further research.
1 Community StoryLiving History
Explore the people, places, and histories of Black communities in Jessamine County.
Artistic Interpretation
Featured Community
A Leestown Road community named for the Reverend Frederick Braxton.
Explore storyFayette County
Historic Lyric Theatre · artistic interpretation. Fictional people and setting.
The Bluegrass Region
Explore the people, places, and histories of Black communities in Scott County.
Browse the directoryThe Bluegrass Region
Explore the people, places, and histories of Black communities in Bourbon County.
Browse the directoryThe Bluegrass Region
Explore the people, places, and histories of Black communities in Clark County.
Browse the directoryThe Bluegrass Region
Explore the people, places, and histories of Black communities in Madison County.
Browse the directoryThe Bluegrass Region
Explore the people, places, and histories of Black communities in Jessamine County.
Browse the directoryThe Bluegrass Region
Explore the people, places, and histories of Black communities in Woodford County.
Browse the directoryCommunity Directory
Select a county. Map pins identify documented landmarks associated with communities.
Artistic Interpretation
A Leestown Road community named for the Reverend Frederick Braxton.
Historic Lyric Theatre · artistic interpretation. Fictional people and setting.
Archival Image
Land purchases, church life, and a surviving Rosenwald school anchor Cadentown’s story.
HABS KY-288, photo 3 · July 2004 · Library of Congress
Artistic Interpretation
Residents connect Jimtown’s name with Jim Sidener and land bought after slavery.
Historic Lyric Theatre · artistic interpretation. Fictional people and setting.
Historical Map or Document
An urban Black neighborhood across South Limestone from the University of Kentucky.
Sanborn Map Company, 1907, sheet 73 · Library of Congress
The Camp Nelson landscape provides an essential starting point for studying Black refugee life, emancipation, and the communities that followed.
Athens appears in rural settlement and Black hamlet research inventories; the specific Black community’s origins remain unverified.
Avon belongs in the Fayette County research inventory, with the limits of the evidence stated.
Historical Map or Document
Local memory identifies Boston and the Bottom in Georgetown. Archival records offer leads, but the neighborhood’s precise boundaries remain to be established.
Beers & Lanagan, Map of Scott County, 1879 · Library of Congress
Centerville is one of three distinct, closely linked eastern Fayette settlements.
Coletown belongs in the Fayette County research inventory, with the limits of the evidence stated.
Columbus is part of the adjoining Royster Road settlement landscape.
Reform, Slickaway, and Fort Spring connect several eras of one settlement’s history.
A community founded by a formerly enslaved veteran is remembered today through a park, oral histories, and the work of former residents.
Jonestown Lane preserves the name of a community changed by suburban development.
A Black community on Parkers Mill Road, beside a landscape transformed by the airport.
Families bought small lots from Samuel Maddox and built lives alongside Bluegrass farms.
Mitchelltown appears in the modern hamlet research inventory; its founders, first land purchases, and institutional history remain unverified.
Muir Station appears in the modern hamlet research inventory; its individual founding history remains unverified.
Calvin Hamilton and Primus Keene turned a land purchase into a community with space for homes, a school, a church, and a shared well.
Nihizertown is one of three distinct, closely linked eastern Fayette settlements.
Local historian Harry Enoch traces an 1867 subdivision and the African American buyers whose deeds illuminate family life and landownership.
Pricetown is one of three distinct, closely linked eastern Fayette settlements.
South Elkhorn belongs in the Fayette County research inventory, with the limits of the evidence stated.
Uttingertown is part of the adjoining Royster Road settlement landscape.
Warrentown belongs in the Fayette County research inventory, with the limits of the evidence stated.
Established in 1924 through a Jackson-family farm subdivision, the settlement was first called Stevenson Subdivision; its road became known as Willow Lane.
Once known as South Elkhorn Bend and Lenerson, Zion Hill sustained churches, stores, a post office, and a school.
There are no published community stories in this county yet.
01 / A GEOGRAPHY OF BELONGING
Choose a county or a community. Map points offer orientation, not historical property lines.
Loading the regional map. Every place is also available in the community list.
The Boston point marks Georgetown for orientation only. Mapped locations are approximate reference points or landmarks; no historic settlement boundaries are asserted. Fayette County has 21 sourced reference pins. These mark general places or public landmarks, including rounded map-derived references; they do not establish historic boundaries.
Bourbon County’s genealogy records and Madison County’s school and oral-history collections offer further leads. They require individual settlement and property research.
Bourbon records ↗Madison oral histories ↗02 / FEATURED COMMUNITY STORIES
Explore the people and places that shaped the Bluegrass.
SCOTT COUNTY · LAND & BELONGING
A land purchase. A community.
A future of their own.
Calvin Hamilton and Primus Keene purchased land in 1872, making room for homes, a school, a church, and a shared well.
1872 land purchase
Explore New Zion ↗
SCOTT COUNTY
A school, churches, and a community invested in its people.
Read the story ↗
WOODFORD COUNTY
A community founded in 1871, remembered through a park and oral histories.
Read the story ↗
GEORGETOWN · SCOTT COUNTY
Local memory preserves its name. Founding families and precise boundaries remain under research.
Read the story ↗03 / THROUGH THE YEARS
Select a moment to follow its evidence. Dates refer to documented events, not a single founding story for every community.
04 / WATCH AND LISTEN
Begin with Huntertown. These films and community projects are linked by the park’s own media archive.
05 / LOOK CLOSER
Enlarge a photograph or unfold a historical map. Read its address, date, and source alongside the image.
The house photographs document North Mulberry Street in Georgetown. Their relationship to Boston has not been established. HABS images: Library of Congress, no known restrictions on government-made photographs. Sanborn map: public domain.
06 / THE READING ROOM
Newspapers and local reporting connect family histories with the public record. Open the source to read further.
THE WOODFORD SUN · AUGUST 15 2024
A newspaper page records a community barbecue at the interpretive park, with photographs of the historical marker and former resident Richard Washington.
WINCITY VOICES · JULY 20 2023
Historian Harry Enoch follows the Winchester subdivision’s 1867 plat and the African American buyers whose property records preserve individual names and occupations.
Read Harry Enoch’s article ↗WKYT · OCTOBER 14 2021
Broadcast reporting documents the Huntertown park project and the effort to preserve community history. Read alongside the park’s official chronology.
Open the news report ↗A HISTORY OPEN TO FURTHER DISCOVERY
Published records support these stories. They do not yet provide a complete parcel-by-parcel history of every Black hamlet in the seven-county region. Boston’s boundaries, founding families, and present-day parcel uses remain under research.
Land records · 1872
Scott County’s deed book records land purchases by Calvin Hamilton and Primus Keene on November 23, 1872. Both handwritten entries are available to read.
Explore the New Zion deed sourcesHistorical map · 1879
The Georgetown inset on an 1879 Scott County map labels Boston. The neighborhood’s precise boundaries remain under research.
Explore the Boston map sourcesSchool inventory · 1929–30
Kentucky’s Rosenwald inventory records a one-teacher school at Zion Hill in the 1929–30 funding period, with a construction cost of $3,200.
Explore the Zion Hill school sourcesResearch reviewed November 6, 2026. Family testimony, legal records, maps, and published histories can describe different parts of the same story. Earlier settlement dates are identified as attributed accounts when they differ from recorded land purchases.
THE HISTORY CONTINUES WITH YOU
Family photographs, neighborhood maps, and remembered names can open the next chapter. Contact the Lyric about sharing a story or identifying a historical source.
Connect with the Lyric ↗From The Lyric Book Collection
Freedom, land, and the work of building communities in and beyond Kentucky.
Fiction
Toni Morrison
A mother and daughter reckon with the afterlife of slavery in a house haunted by a child’s return.
Reference
Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel, John A. Hardin
A reference work brings together people, institutions, and events in Black Kentucky history.
Essays
W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois explores emancipation’s aftermath, segregated education, and the experience he calls double consciousness.
