Contributor

In 1861, Amos Barr of the 14th Union Infantry became the first person to be buried in what would later become the Lexington National Cemetery. The lot became a dedicated soldiers’ burial ground and was used more frequently in 1862 when Confederate General John Hunt Morgan invaded the Lexington area resulting in a series of minor battles over several months. There were a number of burials from wounded soldiers who had been brought to Lexington to be treated at the hospital. It was in 1863 as the number of burials had increased that the site was named a National Cemetery by Congress.  The Lexington National Cemetery is unique because of its arrangement of headstones in concentric circles around a 75-foot tall flagpole. It is ringed with white marble posts marked “U.S.” to illustrate the boundary between the city’s cemetery and the National Cemetery. The lot covers .75 acres and has over 1,300 people buried within it. There were 671 men buried there initially, while many others were relocated from other nearby burial grounds.  Since 1868, the cemetery has been maintained by the Lexington Cemetery after a deal was made between the company and the local government. Burials were made until 1939 when the lot was closed, although it is still well-maintained today. The cemetery used to feature a seacoast artillery gun which was placed on the grounds as a memorial in 1869. The memorial was removed in the 20th century – no other monuments are on the grounds today.

Marble Post marking the boundary of the cemetery.

Website

Learn More about the Civil War in Lexington, KY

More Info

The first burials in the Lexington National Cemetery date back to 1861 as Civil War soldiers were buried in a small lot. The lot is located on the edge of the Lexington Cemetery which itself has burials dating back to 1848. The lot was designated as a national cemetery in 1863 and has since become the final resting place of over 1,300 soldiers. A series of white marble posts mark the border of this lot which is centered around a flagpole. Nearby informational signs detail the history of the lot and the soldiers.  

Lexington National Cemetery

By the 1840s, most of the cemeteries in Lexington were either full or not well-tended. At the same time, a trend of parklike cemeteries that people could enjoy beyond paying respects to loved ones spread throughout the East and Midwest. A charter to create such a cemetery in Lexington was approved in 1848. The next year, a board raised the necessary funds to buy a forty-acre plot of land at the edge of the city. The land was already home to a small family graveyard, which was subsequently marked off as Section A of the cemetery.Local gardener Charles S. Bell was hired as superintendent of the cemetery and began laying out the sections, roads, and lots of the cemetery. The first burial in the new cemetery took place in October 1849. A decade later, an adjoining tract of land was added to the cemetery, which continued to expand over the coming decades. To keep the cemetery open and airy, lot owners were asked not to build fences or other obstructions around their lots, as had been the norm in other cemeteries. Keeping the lots open allowed caretakers to easily access and maintain graves, an important task in helping the Lexington Cemetery compete with others.Big changes came to the Lexington Cemetery in the following decades. In 1884, the cemetery’s trustees purchased a tract of land that included a rock quarry, providing gravel for the cemetery’s roads. In 1890, the entrance to the cemetery was torn down and replaced with a stone chapel and an office structure that stands in part today. During the Spanish Influenza pandemic that followed World War I, cemetery employees worked day and night to accommodate record numbers of burials (about three to four times the normal amount).Many notable Kentuckians have been buried in the Lexington Cemetery. Soldiers from both sides of the Civil War and from the Spanish-American War were interred here. Others include Vice President John C. Breckinridge and author James Lane Allen. Henry Clay, a longtime Congressman from Kentucky, was also buried in the cemetery. His gravesite features a one-hundred twenty-foot column topped with a statue of him.

Established in 1849, the Lexington Cemetery was Kentucky’s first “rural,” or parklike, cemetery. Originally only forty acres, the 170-acre property now features an arboretum and two large lakes. During the Civil War, a small lot for soldiers was set aside within the cemetery. In 1863, this lot became a national cemetery; this soldiers’ section later closed to burials in 1939. Other notable parts of the cemetery include the Romanesque gatehouse near the entrance, which replaced an earlier version in 1890, and a memorial to Congressman Henry Clay erected in 1857. The Lexington Cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. 

Henry Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia on April 12, 1777. After establishing a law practice in Lexington, Kentucky, Clay was elected to the state legislature in 1806. He would continue to serve as a Representative and a Senator for many years, at one point becoming the Speaker of the House. He earned the nickname “the Great Pacifier” due to his work with the treaty that ended the War of 1812 and for later spearheading the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. Clay died from tuberculosis in 1852 and requested that his remains be buried in Lexington. After Clay’s death, his body was taken to more than a dozen cities in ten days for various services before it arrived in Lexington. A few days later, it was interred in the Lexington Cemetery.Soon after Clay’s funeral, locals began planning a memorial for the cemetery. The final plan for the monument was designed by Julius W. Adams, a civil engineer and architect. John Haly of Frankfort was hired to bring Adams’s vision to life under Major Thomas Lewinski’s supervision. The cornerstone for the Clay family mausoleum was laid on the Fourth of July in 1857. It was not until 1864, shortly after Clay’s widow Lucretia Hart’s death, that his remains were moved to the finished structure. On July 21, 1903, a storm knocked the head off of the Henry Clay Statue. It was not repaired until after the General Assembly in charge of the monument’s care raised $10,000 in 1908. Charles J. Mulligan carved the new statue, which was put into place in May 1910. Merely a few months later, another storm struck the statue, causing damage to its right side. Another $10,000 were set aside to repair it. But, after decades of wear, the statue began to deteriorate. This time, however, the Clay Monument Association to longer existed to look after the statue’s maintenance. Because the Lexington Cemetery had deeded the monument’s property to the association, it was not responsible for upkeep, though employees did keep the grass trimmed and the mausoleum clean.Finally, the Fayette Circuit Court gave ownership of the monument to the Urban County Government in the 1970s. $35,000 were raised for the statue’s restoration. The M and A Company came down from Cleveland, Ohio for the job. The statue was scrubbed and painted. Its broken pieces, old mortar, and a lightning arrester were replaced. New iron gates were added. On July 29, 1976, the monument was rededicated.

This monument to Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay is located in the center of the Lexington Cemetery. Clay is most remembered as the driving force behind both the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. Clay died from tuberculosis in 1852 and was brought back to Lexington for his burial. Plans to erect a monument in his memory were made almost immediately, though they did not come to fruition until 1857. The monument consists of a limestone mausoleum, a 120-foot tall column, and a statue of Henry Clay. Clay and his wife Lucretia are interred in a vaulted chamber at the base of the monument.

Henry Clay Monument

Born to a well to do family in Virginia, William Solomon was a character made for a sitcom. [1] Growing up in the same area as Henry Clay, William would tell people that the two grew up and played together. Because of this often repeated story, he was a devout Whig voting for Clay in all Lexington elections. Even in the face of a liquid bribe, he held firm to his allegiance to Clay.[1] To become King was a feat, the story goes,<blockquote>"The owner of a leading dry goods store has Solomon to trim the branches outside the main door of his establishment. Solomon got right to work, but later took a whiskey break. He returned to work after a few too many, climbed up the tree and began sawing on a big limb. Sadly, he had been sawing the limb he was sitting on. He picked himself up and brushed the dirt off and went back to work. But people watching agreed that only a man as wise as King Solomon in the bible could have managed a stunt like that."[1]</blockquote> Following repeated arrest, the city of Lexington felt William needed to be taught a lesson that no jail could. He was sold as a servant to "Aunt" Charlotte for $13 for a term of 9 months.[2] The origin of vagrancy laws comes from post Black Plague England.[4] Their purpose was to ensure there was an adequate labor supply with a large portion of their population gone following the plague.[4] Their intent was to encourage people to find a job so they were not arrested or they would be forced to work while jailed.[4] When these laws made their way to the U.S. their purpose did not translate well as they just resulted in the arrest of the homeless. "Kings" punishment fit the purpose of the laws; make him work and he will no longer be a drunk, sleeping in the streets.  “Aunt Charlotte was a slave brought to Lexington, KY, in the late 1700s. She was freed and inherited property after her owners died. She supported herself by selling fruit and baked goods at the open market.”[2] Slavery in Kentucky was unique in comparison to the rest of the country. The image the state portrays is that slavery here was a "milder" form than what was found in other southern states which unfortunately was not true.[3] Slavery had been present since the frontier days and persisted to the completion of the Civil War. The origin of this misnomer comes from the fact that at the time of the Civil War the state was split in its allegiances to the Union and Confederate armies.[3] As a free slave Charlotte still had limited rights and opportunity for growth; despite these limiting realities she still had a prosperous life as a small business owner.  Her purchased servant, William Solomon, gains his Lexington fame in 1833 at the height of the Cholera epidemic. As the town drunk he was an unlikely hero, but what made him the town drunk also made him perfect for the job: whisky. Despite irreparable liver damage, Solomon not drinking the towns water was his saving grace. "Lexington's porous underground system of limestone caves and sinkholes leaves the area with a low-quality water that is dangerous enough on its own."[6] The danger was heightened by the further contamination caused by a recent flood. [6] “With no organized waste collection, the waste of households and manufacturers was tossed into the streets. Outdoor privies overflowed during flooding," and all of these "health risks" were lifted from the streets and Drained back into the wells, At the time of the outbreak drinking well water was a sure death sentence.[6] This reality of the time meant that most drank whisky and bourbon in place of water and it was completely normal.[6] "King" just had the misfortune of being homeless and drinking repeatedly until he passed out. "Aunt" Charlotte was not as fortunate as Solomon. She did not survive the outbreak. With bodies piling up, William Solomon alongside London Ferrell and Jefferson Davis buried the remaining bodies in the Old Episcopal Burying Ground. Doing so prevented the further spread of the disease; for his efforts, in 1854 he was honored with a memorial in the Lexington Cemetery.  The current Lexington cemetery is not the original site closer to the town center, as “people were realizing that family graveyards on farms and even in the town itself were not satisfactory, for property often was sold. Too, there was growing concern that burial of the dead in town created a menace to public health, contaminating wells and springs.” [7] Therefore, there was a necessity to find a new place for Lexington’s dead. The new cemetery was to be built to look like a park, a “garden Cemetery” [7]. Visitors can drive through the entire park and see that no group of headstones look the same. It was designed by Charles S. Bell and John Lutz and its creation alleviated the stress of the numerous bodies piling up on church and family plots that could not handle them. Additionally, there was a citywide effort to ensure that none of the land set aside to for the cemetery overlapped with the water system. Through his monument in Lexington Cemetery and his colorful history, "King" will live on in the hearts of the Lexington community as their unlikely hero in a time of tragedy.

The story of “King" William Solomon is one of historical and scientific wonder and irony. Solomon, the town drunk was sold as a servant to “Aunt" Charlotte, a free Black woman. He woke up from a bender and became a local hero during the Cholera outbreak of 1833. His work digging graves for Lexington is credited with saving hundreds more people from dying at the height of the pandemic. Supposedly protected by his love of spirits and justified aversion to water, his immunity to the disease made him the ideal worker for the cemetery. For his work, he is honored with a special plot in the new Lexington Cemetery with the engraving “For had he not a Royal Heart.” (image 3)   

“King” William Solomon  (1775-1854)

Laura Clay and her eldest sister Mary Barr Clay were a part of the Women’s Suffrage movement. Their father, Cassius M. Clay, had been a prominent abolitionist in Kentucky and served as President Lincoln’s ambassador to Russia. Their mother, Mary Jane Warfield Clay, pushed for her daughters to be given quality education. The women both became activists like their father after seeing the lack of protections women have under the law when their parents divorced.  	Mary Barr Clay traveled to St. Louis in 1879 as a delegate to the National Woman Suffrage Association. It was here that Clay was able to persuade Susan B. Anthony to visit Kentucky. During this visit, Anthony gave her famous “Women Want Bread, Not the Ballot!” speech which she had given across the country. Clay would go on to become the American Women Suffrage Association’s president in 1883. It was Mary who first connected her younger sister Laura with the Women’s Suffrage movement.  	Laura Clay was an outspoken advocate for both women’s suffrage and states' rights. Clay also was outspoken about her belief that suffrage should be extended only to white women. Despite conflicts with other leaders of the movement, Clay rose to prominence and held a number of positions including being the first president of the Equal Rights Association and founder of the Fayette County Democratic Club. Clay most notably served as a delegate for 1920 Democratic National Convention where she would be among those considered for nomination for President of the United States. Though Clay was not able to secure the party’s nomination, this was a notable accomplishment during the first election where women would be able to vote.

Laura and Mary Barr Clay were the daughters of Kentucky abolitionist Cassius Clay who was the cousin of famed Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. The women were major advocates for women’s suffrage both in Kentucky and nationally, though the sisters were against the enfranchisement of Black women. Both of the Clay women worked closely with the movement’s leaders, including Susan B. Anthony. Laura Clay was a delegate for the 1920 Democratic National Convention and was even included in a list of potential nominees. Both women are buried in the Lexington Cemetery in Section J, Lot 6.  

Laura and Mary Clay Graves

A Lexington, KY native, John C Breckinridge studied at Centre College and Transylvania University before launching his successful political career. His grandfather and father were both also heavily involved in the state’s political and legal scene. Breckinridge’s family ties connected him to a number of prominent figures including President Lincoln who would marry Breckinridge’s cousin, Mary Todd. Breckinridge began his civil service as a state representative and later served as a Congressional representative for the state of Kentucky from 1851-1855. After leaving Congress, Breckinridge was elected as the nation’s 14th Vice President and served under President James Buchanan, though the two were famously unwilling to work together. At the time, Breckinridge was just 35, making him the youngest Vice President in US history. During the campaign, Breckinridge gained a reputation for being a powerful speaker and had a knack for remembering names and faces which made him likable to voters.  As a politician, Breckinridge was an ardent supporter of slavery and attempted to secure federal protections for slaveholders. Despite his pro-slavery views, Breckinridge initially was against the formation of the Confederacy. He instead wanted the federal government to essentially comply with the desires of southern states and ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign on this platform in 1860. Breckinridge ultimately lost the election to Abraham Lincoln but remained in his Congressional office. His views led voters to see him as a moderate during an election year when moderate views were not widely popular.   Yet, as the strain between the north and south escalated, Breckinridge began advocating for the secession of Kentucky. His views caused him to fear capture and in 1861, just after the start of the war, Breckinridge fled south. Prior to holding national office, Breckinridge had served as a Major in the Mexican-American War where he gained the experience that, combined with his political fame, would later help him secure a position as a general in the Confederate army. During the Civil War, Breckinridge fought a number of notable battles including the infamous Battle of Shiloh which saw 23,000 casualties. His last office as a Confederate was as the Secretary of War beginning in 1865.   After the fall of the Confederacy, Breckinridge fled to Cuba, England, and Canada among other countries for four years before returning to Kentucky in 1869. Back in his home state, Breckinridge began practicing law again and would eventually serve on the boards of several local companies. He died in 1875 and is buried in the Lexington Cemetery in Section G, Lot 1.

Vice President John C Breckinridge, the youngest vice president in US history, is buried here in Lexington Cemetery. Breckinridge was a Lexington native and a successful politician, holding a number of state and national offices over the course of his career. A graduate of the nearby Transylvania University, Breckinridge worked as a lawyer in addition to being a politician and served in the Mexican-American War. He would later go on to become a general in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Breckinridge’s grave is in Section G, Lot 1 of the cemetery, not far from the grave of Senator Henry Clay. 

John C. Breckinridge Grave

The Ladies Memorial and Monument Association was founded by the wife of John C. Breckinridge on May 19, 1869, after she saw the unveiling of the Confederate Monument in Cynthiana, Kentucky. After six years of collecting funds, the memorial was dedicated on May 26, 1875.The statue features a marble cross, shaped as if made of logs. A broken sword and broken flagstaff are among the motifs, which include lilies, with rugged rocks being the motif for the limestone pedestal. It was designed by George W. Ranck (1841–1901), a Lexington historian. The cross was made in Italy, with the pedestal supplied by Louisville's Muldoon Monument Company. It was called "probably the most perfect thing of its kind in the South" by Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.It is believed that the memorial might have been inspired by a poem written by Abram Joseph Ryan, a Confederate chaplain:   Take that banner down! 'tis tattered;  Broken is its staff and shattered,  And the valiant hosts are scattered  Over whom it floated high. The Confederate Soldier Monument in Lexington is a few feet away, and was also part of the Civil War Monuments of Kentucky MPS.

The Ladies' Confederate Memorial was dedicated in 1874 in Lexington Cemetery, just nine years after the Civil War. This monument is located in a cemetery and reflects the grief of Southern mothers, wives, and families who lost loved ones in the war. It was constructed by the Ladies Memorial and Monument Association. The memorial was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 17, 1997. 

Ladies' Confederate Memorial

Lexington native Mary Desha is famous for being one of four founders of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Desha got her start attending schools in the city before the Civil War. During the war, Desha and her mother fled to Canada where they remained for several years. Their Confederate sympathies made their position in the region precarious and upon their return the family struggled to regain their prewar financial standing. Desha took on teaching roles in Lexington to help support the family and took a number of classes at State College which would eventually become the University of Kentucky.  In 1885, Deshar relocated to Washington D.C. and began work as a clerk in the federal government. Later in 1888, Desha briefly took on a government teaching position in Alaska but soon left the position and returned to the capital as she found the living conditions to be below her standards. She remained in Washington D.C for the remainder of her life and held positions in the pension office and the Office of Indian Affairs. In addition to her work with the DAR, Desha was also very involved with the United Daughters of the Confederacy and was a supporter of the women’s suffrage movement.  Desha, Mary S. Lockwood, Ellen Walworth, and Eugenia Washington began the DAR in 1890. The group would eventually be chartered by Congress in 1896. Those interested in joining the DAR must prove that they are descended from soldiers or political revolutionaries. Today the group has around 3,000 chapters. The DAR promotes history and service and provides a number of scholarship opportunities.

Best known for founding the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1890, Mary Desha was a Lexington native and schoolteacher. Desha also was involved in the United Daughters of the Confederacy and served as the DAR hospital corps’s assistant director during the Spanish-American War. The gravesite features a monument with the DAR’s seal which was dedicated in 1915.  

Lexington Cemetery

Lexington National Cemetery

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information