Cheapside Park

Cheapside Park is a block in downtown Lexington, Kentucky between Upper Street and Mill Street. Cheapside was the town's main marketplace in the nineteenth century and included a large slave market before the Civil War. Today it is home to the Lexington Farmers Market and popular events like Thursday Night Live.

Cheapside Bar & Grill now resides near the historic site in downtown Lexington, KY

History

Cheapside was a major marketplace and one of the largest markets in the south prior to the Civil War. One of the largest slave markets in the south existed at Cheapside,[1] though it was detested by locals.[2] Cheapside was also host to the sale of "fancy girls", young women of mixed race sold as sex slaves.[3] The Kentucky General Assembly attempted to ban or at least cripple the slave trade in 1833 with the Non-Importation Act, which banned the importation of slaves into The Commonwealth for the purpose of selling them.[4] The slave trade was outlawed in 1864. The Cheapside market continued until 1922 when it was declared a public nuisance and banned.

Future President Abraham Lincoln was visiting his wife's family in 1846 when her father, Robert Todd, purchased five slaves at Cheapside. Lincoln may have been present during the auction.[5]

Origin of name

The earliest reference to the name dates to 1813 in an advertisement for Todd and Smith Wholesale Grocery, owned by Mary Todd Lincoln's father Robert Smith Todd. That building is now occupied by a bourbon bar known as The Bluegrass Tavern.[6] Cheapside is a common English name meaning "market place" from Old English ceapan, "to buy." The name frequently occurs in literature.[7]

References
  1. "African American Heritage Trail: Lexington, KY". www.visitlex.com. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2016-02-29.
  2. Wright, John Dean (1982). Lexington: Heart of The Bluegrass. ISBN 0912839066. Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  3. Coleman, Winston J. (1940). Slavery Times in Kentucky. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
  4. "Non-Importation Law of Kentucky, 1833". Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  5. Townsend, William H. "Lincoln and The Bluegrass". Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  6. Publishing, Smiley Pete. "Cheapside: More than a Name". Retrieved 2017-12-08.
  7. "Victorian London - Directories - Dickens's Dictionary of London, by Charles Dickens, Jr., 1879 - "CHA-CHR"". www.victorianlondon.org. Retrieved 2016-02-29.


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