Lexington

“ The Michler Bros., two very enterprising young men, whom I met at a later day, are likewise successful in both their nursery and florist business.
Lexington, unlike many other Southern cities of its size, shows a remarkable growth and commercial development since my first visit in the Autumn of 1889. Among other things, Lexington is famous for its swift horses and beautiful women; and any traveling man who, like myself, has visited Lexington time and again, can well attest to the deservedness of its fame. ”

“ MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON
"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to the Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charming regions—Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart of Margaret Junkin Preston. ”

“ In that event, I will halt on the road, and arrive there on Saturday, lie over Sunday, and reach Lexington on Monday. I am very anxious to get to Lexington, and think nothing on the route will benefit me, as I feel much concerned about the resumption of the college exercises. Mr. John Stewart, Misses Mary and Marian, Mr. Price, and his daughters came over from the Hot yesterday to see me. The Stewarts are there on Miss Belle’s account. Give much love to everybody. I hope you reached Lexington safely and comfortably and that all are well. I hope to see you Monday. ”

“ Holmes has remarked, American cities and villages all like to think of themselves as the “good old” this and that; but at Lexington more than anywhere else out of Italy I felt that the village was to its people the patria. With us the great Republic is repeated and multiplied in several smaller and diminishing republican governments, each subordinate to the larger, all over the land; and ever since its separation from Cambridge, Lexington has, like other New England towns, had its little autonomy. Twice a year the citizens convene and legislate in town meetings ”

“ Just as the Boston Massacre has been insistently pointed out as the first blood shed for American liberty, so the Battle of Lexington has been drilled into our school children's minds as the first organized armed resistance to the British. Without wishing at all to detract from the glory of those who fought at Lexington, there is every reason not to let the youth of this country grow up with the notion that Massachusetts was the first to put itself formally under arms against the mother country. ”

“ The locality which Clay selected was Lexington in Kentucky,--then a small village in the midst of beautiful groves without underbrush, where the soil was of virgin richness, and the landscape painted with almost perpetual verdure; one of the most attractive spots by nature on the face of the earth,--a great contrast to the flat prairies of Illinois, or the tangled forests of Michigan, or the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi. ”

“ Lexington is commercially important as the market for the ‘blue grass’ district, and is well known also for the manufacture of Bourbon whisky. The manufactures include also flour, saddlery and harness, carriages and wagons, canned goods, and planing-mill, foundry, and machine-shop products. The government is administered under a charter of 1894, by a mayor, elected every four years, a bicameral council, and subordinate officials, the majority of whom are chosen by the people. ”

“ A branch of the James River is called North River and this stream waters the county, flowing diagonally across it. Some of the richest soil in all the Valley is found in Rockbridge. Lexington, which is the county-seat, takes its name from the town of Lexington in Massachusetts and was founded in 1778. The first buildings of the old town were mostly destroyed by fire in 1794 and were replaced with substantial brick buildings. An Englishman who was visiting America long ago described the little town in these words:
"The town as a settlement, has many attractions. ”

“ Perhaps there is not on the earth a naturally richer country than the area of sixteen hundred square miles of which Lexington is the centre, yet there is a something wanting to please the eye of taste—a variety, like the fertile plains of the Milanese, contrasted with the neighbouring Alpine scenery, and studded with the noble lakes, and streaked with the meandering rivers of that delightful region, which has given such inimitable taste and execution to the pencils of so many eminent painters. ”

“ I was very glad that the Lexington people gave the singing and playing family a good house, and I fancy that they do not refuse any fit occasions for amusing themselves. The young men seem not to go away from home so generally as they do from most country towns in New England; it is perhaps because their pleasant village is so near the city; at any rate they remain at home even after being graduated at Harvard. They have sleigh-rides, and dances at the Town Hall during the winter; I was told that the Lexington “germans” are not despised by the undergraduates of Cambridge ”

“ Glorious old Tyler and Lexington! primitive, ungainly, weather-beaten, wooden craft, but the salvation, in this crisis hour of the fight, of our out-numbered and wellnigh borne-down left. A signal party, stationed a little above the upper landing and halfway up the bluff, was communicating in the mystic language of the code with another upon our side the river. ”

“ The leading industries are farming and dairying, and the manufacture of leather binding. Population, in 1890, 3197; in 1900, 3831. Settled in 1640, Lexington was a part of Cambridge and was known as ‘Cambridge Farms’ until 1691, when it was made into a separate precinct, and given its present name from Lord Lexington. ”

“ It is worst, of course, on the shore, and delicate people who cannot live in it there are sent to Lexington, and thrive. The air is very dry and pure, and that is perhaps the reason why even the east wind is tolerable. Lexington Common, they say, is as high as the top of Bunker Hill Monument in Boston; and the locomotive pants with difficulty up the heavy grade of the road near the village. Perhaps there is something in the grouping of the low hills — in the embrace of which the village lies on an ample plain — that gives it peculiar shelter ”

“ Born of an old and distinguished Philadelphia family, so proud of its name that in his instance they had doubled it, the usual bluntness and roughness of the sea were tempered by this gentle birth and breeding, and by frequent attrition with men and women of the politest society of the largest and most important city of the colonies. Offering his services as soon as the news of Lexington precipitated the conflict with the mother country, he had already made his name known among that gallant band of seamen among whom Jones, Biddle, Dale, and Conyngham were pre-eminent. ”

“ In 1838 her parents removed to Kentucky and settled in Lexington, that they might superintend her education. She received a thorough education in a seminary in that town, and became a polished scholar and an intelligent student of history and literature. In 1845 she became the wife of Claude M. Johnson, a wealthy citizen of Lexington. Mrs. Johnson at once became a leader in society, not only in Lexington, but in Washington and other cities. ”

“ Nature has done much to make it a paradise; art very little. The farm-houses are in the Kentucky style,—piazzas, great chimneys outside, negro cabins,—presenting at one view and in close contrast the extremes of wealth and poverty, power and weakness, civilization and barbarism, freedom and slavery.
The city of Lexington is a place of the past. Before railroads were projected, when Henry Clay was in the prime of manhood there, it was a place of enterprise and activity. The streets were alive with men. It was the great political and social centre of Central Kentucky. ”

“ This microcosm of democracy is the more interesting in Lexington because it is in many things an image of what the New England town was a hundred years ago, — a sufficiently remote antiquity with us. The Irish have their foothold there as everywhere; but they have not acquired much land; and though they remain faithful Catholics, they have Americanized in such degree that it is hard to know some of them from ourselves in their slouching and nasal speech. ”

“ MONUMENT AT LEXINGTON. [4]
The road between Concord and Lexington passes through a hilly but fertile country. It is easy for the traveler to conceive how terribly a retreating army might be galled by the fire of a concealed enemy. Hills and hillocks, some wooded, some bare, rise up every where, and formed natural breast-works of protection to the skirmishers that hung upon the flank and rear of Colonel Smith's troops. The road enters Lexington at the green whereon the old meeting-house stood when the battle occurred. ”

“ At Lexington, not far from Concord, there was a sharp fight in which several men were killed. This, in history, is called the Battle of Lexington. It was the beginning of the war called the Revolutionary War. But the king's soldiers did not find the gunpowder. They were glad enough to march back without it. All along the road the farmers were waiting for them. It seemed as if every man in the country was after them. And they did not feel themselves safe until they were once more in Boston. ”

“ Lexington entered nine protests in the House of Lords (Rogers, Complete Collection of Protests, 1875, vol. i. Nos. 85, 127–131, 135–6, 166) , but there is no record of any of his speeches. Extracts from his official and private correspondence during his mission to Vienna were published in 1851 under the name of ‘The Lexington Papers.’ His letters during his residence at Madrid as ambassador are in the possession of Mr. J. H. Manners-Sutton, the present owner of Kelham Hall. ”

“ It is traversed by the Boston & Maine railroad and by the Lowell & Boston electric railway. Its area is about 17 sq. m., and it contains three villages—Lexington, East Lexington and North Lexington. Agriculture is virtually the only industry. ”

“ But of all the scenes that might have been observed in Lexington on that day, the most remarkable occurred in front of the old court-house at the hour of high noon. On the mellow stroke of the clock in the steeple above the sheriff stepped briskly forth, closely followed by a man of powerful frame, whom he commanded to station himself on the pavement several feet off. A crowd of men and boys had already collected in anticipation, and others came quickly up as the clear voice of the sheriff was heard across the open public square and old market-place. ”

“ The ladies used to bring out their sewing or knitting, and chat round the fire; the men had their newspapers and cigars; as the evening wore on there was whist or euchre at the tables; sometimes people from the outside world dropped in; and if you went down late (as hours go with us in the country) , you were likely to find the landlord and his brother smoking before the fire and telling stories of Lexington as they remembered it when boys. ”

“ How the countrymen, forced suddenly to arm, without guides or counsellors, took instant counsel of their courage! The mighty chorus of voices rose from the scattered farmhouses, and, as it were, from the ashes of the dead. "Come forth, champions of liberty; now free your country; protect your sons and daughters, your wives and [24] homesteads; rescue the houses of the God of your fathers, the franchises handed down from your ancestors." Now all is at stake; the battle is for all.
Lexington, in 1775, may have had seven hundred inhabitants. ”

“ Take our own little city of Lexington where some 17,000 of them are congregated, living in discomfort and poverty in most cases; yet their nature is to depend in some fashion upon their white neighbors and employers. ”

“ She stayed with me until I was ready to pay my Christmas visit to Lexington. She then was put on the train and sent to Staunton, where I met her. I found there Colonel William Allan, a professor of Washington College, who had a buggy and no horse, and as I had a horse and no buggy, we joined forces and I drove him over to Lexington, “Lucy Long” carrying us with great ease to herself and comfort to us. ”

“ LEXINGTON. A town and the county-seat of Rockbridge County, Va., about 45 miles northwest of Lynchburg; on the north fork of the James River, and on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and a branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (Map: Virginia, E 4) . It has picturesque surroundings, and is the centre of a fertile agricultural region. There are some manufactures. ”

“ See also in Lippincotts Maga-rine, May, 1889, my paper embodying the correspondence of Washington and Boucher.
But on April 19th came the "massacre at Lexington," as it was commonly called. How great a matter is kindled by a small fire! A man whose name remains unknown, forgetful of Captain Parker's order to his minute-men not to fire until fired on, drew his trigger on the English force advancing to Concord; the gun missed fire, but the little flash was answered by a volley; seven men lay dead. In the blood of those patriots at Lexington the Declaration of Independence was really written. ”