Brucetown (Lexington, KY)

The property was first purchased by Archibald Bruce, according to Brucetown Neighborhood website. During the U.S. Civil War, the land was used by the Union Army to house mules. Brucetown is located on the northeast side of Lexington in what was a low field, the 1865 community of Brucetown was established by William Wallace "W. W." Bruce (1822-1896). The land was subdivided and provided for the homes of African Americans employed by Bruce; Brucetown was adjacent to Bruce's hemp factory that was established in 1847. 

Those who lived in Brucetown were mostly laborers with a few who were self-employed. In May of 1874, the community grocery store and livery stable were destroyed when a fire was set on fire by unknown persons. The structures were owned by an African American man named Robert Johnson. There were more than 500 residents in Brucetown by the turn of the century. 

In 1878, there was a mistaken newspaper report that a white mob killed three African American men in Brucetown; the murdered men were suspected of having knowledge of the murder of a white man killed two weeks prior. The three dead men were Tom Turner, who was shot, and Edward Claxton and John Davis, both of whom were hanged; a man named Stivers had been hanged earlier for the crime.

It was brought to our attention by researcher Rico Thompson that the newspaper article was wrong. The deaths of the three men did not occur in Brucetown, but rather in East Hickman Precinct (south Lexington). The two men who were hanged were found in Simpson's Woods on Tates Creek Road, which was about 11 miles from Lexington in 1878. Tom Turner was killed in the cabin where he lived on McIsaac's Farm that was located on Jack's Creek Road, about a mile beyond Tates Creek Road. 

Sources (referred to by Rico Thompson): "The Kentucky lynchings" and "Two Negroes hanged and one shot in Kentucky" in the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, 01/19/1878, p.5; and "Hellish," The Courier-Journal, 01/18/1878, front page.

The Brucetown community continued to grow, there were churches and businesses, and the baseball team, Heavy Hitters of Brucetown. In 2001, the ninth Brucetown Day celebration was held on Dakota Street in Lexington, sponsored by the Brucetown Neighborhood Association.

For more information and maps see J. Kellogg, "The Formation of Black Residential Areas in Lexington, Kentucky, 1865-1887," The Journal of Southern History, vol. 48, issue 1 (Feb. 1982), pp. 21-52; Source: "Grocery store and livery stable burned in Brucetown," The Courier-Journal, 05/05/1874, front page.; "Negro Urban Clusters in the Postbellum South," Geographical Review, vol. 61, issue 3 (July 1977), pp. 310-321; "Mob Violence in Kentucky," The New York Times, 01/18/1878, p. 1; "Heavy Hitters won," The Daily Leader, 06/05/1899, p.7; "Brucetown plans annual festival," Lexington Herald-Leader, 08/08/2001, Bluegrass Communities section, p. 2; "W. W. Bruce dies suddenly of acute bronchitis yesterday at noon." The Morning Herald, 11/16/1896, front page.