Some stories connected to Lexington’s historical markers are too large, or too layered, to fit inside a single marker article. This page collects those deeper dives, fuller explorations of people, places, and events tied to a marker, but that go well beyond what a marker’s plaque (or a standard marker post) can hold.
You can also browse every companion article in one place via the Companion Articles tag archive, which updates automatically as new ones are published.
The Lincoln School: Built in Lincoln’s Name, Closed to Black Children (companion to Marker No. 1876: Madeline McDowell Breckinridge): The story of the Abraham Lincoln School, a Progressive Era settlement school in Lexington’s Irishtown/Davis Bottom neighborhood, funded in part by suffragist Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and reportedly by Robert Todd Lincoln himself, yet closed to Black students for its entire 55-year existence as a public school.
The Eastern State Hospital Cemetery: What the Grounds Kept Quiet (companion to Marker No. 1033: Eastern State Hospital): The story of two forgotten burial grounds on the hospital’s grounds — an antebellum cemetery excavated in 2005–2011, and a second, later cemetery discovered in 1984 — and what the digs reveal about who the hospital buried, and how easily an institution can forget the same ground twice.
Statesmen, Soldiers, and Lexington Fame (companion to Marker No. 1550: Lexington Cemetery): A deeper look at ten of the politicians, generals, and public men buried at Lexington Cemetery, whose statues and monuments still dominate the grounds today, and the curated version of the city they add up to.
Reformers, Firsts, and the Cemetery’s Silences (companion to Marker No. 1550: Lexington Cemetery): A companion to the piece above, turning to ten women buried at Lexington Cemetery who built parallel legacies in medicine, suffrage, law, and engineering, several of them genuine national firsts, and closing with the one enslaved woman in the roster whose grave marker still describes her only in relation to the family that enslaved her.
