Women played integral role in shaping Lexington’s 250-year history

Lexington museums will focus on the area’s famous women as they celebrate the city’s 250th anniversary.

As March is Women’s History Month, the museums in Lexington will focus on how women impacted the city’s politics, culture and quality of life. The exhibits are part of 250Lex, the city’s year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of its founding.

Mandy Higgins, director of the Lexington History Museum, said the exhibits would bring to life the work and times of the women who shaped Lexington.

“Lexington women had a significant influence in Lexington’s culture and politics,” she said. “They were responsible for a lot more than they’re given credit for.”

Higgins said the Lexington History Museum will continue its “Among Women” exhibit featuring the history of the Woman’s Club and Lexington’s social and cultural changes over the past century.

That includes significant contributions to the city, such as the establishment of the first public library, the influence of the club’s members on business and politics and the fashions of the day.

The first women’s organization in Lexington was the Woman’s Club of Central Kentucky. Formed in 1894, just after the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs was formed, the organization represented women from Bourbon, Boyle, Casey, Clark, Fayette, Jessamine, Madison, Mercer, Montgomery, Scott and Woodford counties.

The group’s goal was far-reaching: To “further the educational and cultural life of the community and to broaden the outlook of the women of central Kentucky by keeping them informed on matters of national and international scope.”

It has been instrumental in establishing the Carnegie Public Library in 1898, in public school reform, and in women’s suffrage in local school elections.

Today, the club focuses on childhood education, historic preservation, welfare and seniors.

The exhibit will run through March 31.

At the Mary Todd Lincoln House, visitors can see exactly how Lexington’s first lady lived. Mary Todd lived in the house on Main Street in the early 19th century.

The four-panel traveling exhibit features images and text that show just what life was like in Lexington during her time. The exhibit runs through April 30.

Born on Short Street in 1818, Mary Todd became the wife and most trusted confidant of US President Abraham Lincoln. Mary Todd was one of the most educated women of her generation, which made her a successful First Lady during the American Civil War.

Although history remembers her as troubled, Mary Todd’s life traumas included her mother dying young, her father dying in a cholera epidemic, witnessing her husband’s assassination, and three of her four children dying before adulthood.

Focusing on the experiences of women at Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, the estate’s museum will provide a “Women’s Voices” tour on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:45 p.m.

During those tours, visitors will learn about the nine women associated with the Henry Clay estate – from Charlotte Dupuy, an enslaved woman who went to court against Henry Clay to get her freedom, to Laura Clay, one of Kentucky’s leading suffragists.

Laura Clay organized and served as the first president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, which worked to secure equal rights for women through legislative changes in education, property rights and wages.

As the daughter of Cassius Marcellus Clay, the politician and emancipationist who worked for the abolition of slavery, she was inspired to fight for women’s rights after her father divorced her mother and left her mother penniless, property-less, and without custody of her four children.

She grew up on 193 North Mill Street.

Tickets to the Women’s Voices tours are available online at henryclay.org.

This story was originally published March 22, 2025 at 4:00 AM.