Lexington Cemetery tour highlights the city’s division during the Civil War

Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.

For the past 250 years, the Lexington Cemetery has held a special spot in Lexington’s history.

That history will be on display this weekend when the Mary Todd Lincoln House hosts “A House Divided” — a walk through the final resting place of some of Lexington’s most prominent citizens.

Part of 250Lex, the city’s celebration of Lexington’s founding, the walking tour of the Lexington Cemetery will highlight different areas of the cemetery grounds where Union and Confederate soldiers are buried, as well as members of former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s family and other Lexington residents who hold a place in the city’s history.

The cemetery is located near the spot where a small group of hunters gathered in 1775. They had ventured out of Fort Harrod to scout the area and had stopped to rest. They named the land Lexington after the Revolutionary War battle the colonists had recently won.

In 1849, the cemetery was officially opened. During the Civil War, Lexington remained neutral and supported neither the Union nor the Confederacy.

As the tensions over slavery grew, Kentucky remained deeply divided. Many areas relied on slavery and supported the Confederacy. Lexington’s Cheapside area was one of the largest slave auctions in the country.

But the cemetery maintained political neutrality, setting aside grounds for the burial of soldiers on both sides of the war.

The tours on Sunday show the reality of Lexington at the time. The self-guided walking tour will allow visitors to explore the cemetery with museum staff stationed along the route sharing stories of both civilians and soldiers. The walk also features family burial plots and visits to both Union and Confederate burial grounds.

One of the tour stops is the burial site of Elizabeth Parker, Mary Todd Lincoln’s grandmother. When Parker died in 1850, her will directed that three of the people she enslaved should “have their freedom given to them.” Two of those people — Prudence Jones and Ann Bell — are also buried in the same plot.

According to the Mary Todd Lincoln House, Lincoln was brought up in a household that held Black Kentuckians as slaves. During the war, her stepmother, Elizabeth Humphreys Todd, and 8 of her 13 siblings supported the Confederacy, despite her marriage to President Abraham Lincoln.

When Elizabeth died, she left money for a monument to honor her three sons — all Confederate soldiers.

The walking tour also includes stops at the grave of Robert Breckinridge, a Lexington man who supported Lincoln despite owning slaves and resisting Lincoln’s emancipation policies; and Gordon Granger, a U.S. General who publicly read General Order No. 3, declaring all those who had been enslaved were now free on June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas.

It was the reading of that order that gave rise to the Juneteenth holiday we know of today.

Tickets for the tours are $10 for the public, but free for museum members, and start at 2 p.m., 2:30 p.m., and 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 12. Tours will leave from the Henry Clay Monument at the cemetery. Organizers said the route is approximately one mile long and will take about 90 minutes to complete.

For more information, visit the Mary Todd Lincoln House website at www.mtlhouse.org.

Have a question or story idea related to Lexington’s 250-year history? Let us know at 250LexKy@gmail.com.