As Buckner’s term on the bench of Common Pleas continued in the late 1870s, Lexington and the Bluegrass region recovered much of the prosperity that the war and its aftermath had temporarily derailed. And rails, indeed, were the engine by which that Bluegrass prosperity was restored. Read more

The de facto collapse of slavery in the Bluegrass at war’s end had shattered more than white psyches and Frankfort’s relationship with Washington. Read more

As the Confederates invaded Kentucky in the summer of 1862, Josiah A. Jackson, outspoken Unionist and proprietor of the Red River Iron Works across the Clark County line in Estill, felt both his business and his personal safety under threat from the rebel forces in the state. Read more