![]() Specialists in the Kentucky slave trade often located their operations near the Cheapside auction block. old Picinniny,” “men accustomed to work in a Tan Yard,” “a good Factory hand” and farm laborers. To pick a few examples among the thousands: there was the 22-year-old man who was “well qualified to attend a steam engine,” the 52-year old “good Kennel Man,” Sallie, a 42-year old “Excellent Cook,” 23-year old Lize along with her “6 mo. Slave sales were a common, every day, aspect of life in Lexington during the antebellum years, yet their frequency should not obscure the magnitude of each event for the enslaved people touched by it.Īntebellum advertisements publicizing sales on the courthouse square give an idea of the skilled men and women who were sold at the Cheapside auction block. Many sales occurred simply because one or more black Kentuckians were deemed “surplus” to the labor requirements of a particular farm or commercial enterprises. In other instances, sales followed the death of their enslaver, if the enslaved were not willed directly to their next owner. In some cases, the sales occurred by order of the Fayette Circuit Court to settle their enslavers’ outstanding debts. Slave sales resulted from a variety of circumstances. No enslaved person was immune from the possibility of sale and the auction block at Cheapside was the spot where this fear became a reality for thousands of Kentuckians. Sales could shatter families and rip an individual away from the lives and communities they knew. Slave auctions were often cataclysmic events for the men, women and children who were sold. They were virtually powerless to influence whether their sale took them across the county, to the other end of the state, or “down the river” to the cotton-producing states farther south.” The African Americans who were offered for auction faced frightening uncertainty. Located in the heart of the Bluegrass Region, one of the most heavily enslaved portions of the state, Lexington’s Cheapside slave auction block served both local and regional markets. Historical Marker #2122 remembers Lexington’s Cheapside slave auction block and the thousands of enslaved Kentuckians sold here.įor decades before the Civil War, Lexington was the center of the slave trade in Kentucky.
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