Digital Access Project Creates Searchable Database of 91,000 Pages of Historical Records
In February 13th’s Council Work Session, Council heard an update from Deputy County Clerk Shea Brown and Dr. Vanessa Holden on the Digital Access Project (DAP), a program led by the Fayette County Clerk’s office in partnership with the Bluegrass Community Foundation, the University of Kentucky's Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies, and the Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative. Starting in May 2022, volunteers and paid staff for the DAP have digitized historic Lexington property records that show transactions and ownership of enslaved African Americans and created a searchable database for the records.
From May 2022 to December 2023, 176 books of property records were digitized, and 91,000 individual pages of records were scanned. The DAP plans to use the records to develop educational programming for community members about the history of slavery in Lexington, create digital exhibits, and potentially train other County Clerk offices in Kentucky on replicating the project in other Kentucky counties.
Deputy Clerk Brown and Dr. Holden’s team of staff and volunteers have scanned all of the Fayette County Clerk’s documents up to 1865. Records after 1865 begin to show more information about the creation of Lexington’s rural Black settlements called Hamlets. District 12 Councilmember Kathy Plomin has been working on a program called A Sense of Place to celebrate the history of Lexington’s Hamlets, which will likely incorporate a lot of the work from the Digital Access Project.
You can access the database now at the Fayette County Clerk’s Online Land Records Portal. You can head here to the Fayette County Clerk’s website for instructions and helpful information on how to use the database.
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