A history of Lexington,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Lexington from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Incorporated in 1836, the city was founded by European-American settlers after most of the Choctaw people, who had long occupied this area, were forced to cede their land to the United States and remove to the Indian Territory. The new settlers initially developed riverfront land along the Yazoo and Black rivers for cotton plantations, primarily worked by enslaved African Americans. The enslaved people were brought by planters with them from the Upper South or transported in the domestic slave trade. In total, more than one million African Americans were transported to the Deep South, breaking up many families. The African-descended enslaved people soon constituted the majority of the Holmes County population.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Lexington’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewSaturday afternoon, Lexington, Ho…, 1939: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Lexington
See all 14 →
Lexington, decade by decade
1990s
3 historic places in Lexington
Lexington has 3 listings on the National Register, and they protect 229 historic buildings, because Lexington Historic District alone counts 225.
Where they are
When they were listed
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Saturday afternoon, Lexington, Holmes Co., Mississippi, Oct (1939) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15From Wikimedia Commons (3) and the Library of Congress (3). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.