Last Friday, residents and families of Fayette County’s Fort Spring welcomed visitors for a Juneteenth event spotlighting the historic Black hamlet. For many, it was an occasion to celebrate the community they have called home for generations.
Fort Spring, also called Fort Springs, is located west of Lexington, past Keeneland and Blue Grass Airport. New Vine Baptist Church is its focal point, sitting on top of a hill overlooking the rest of the hamlet.
“This is where my husband's family lived, in the house up the road here, a little bit. He lived here. We married in 1950,” said 91-year-old Helen Beatty, who has been a member of the church for decades.
According to the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, the area that eventually became Fort Spring was established by white residents and originally referred to as Reform, and later Slickaway.
Jennifer Jones, who grew up in Fort Spring, said her research shows the earliest record of land ownership was recorded in the 1790s, by enslavers.
“We're trying to dig more of that information now. It's like the land is speaking to us, and we're trying to find out just how rich the history is here, because I don't think anyone's ever done a deep dive,” she said.
Henry Clark, a formerly enslaved man, bought the land that eventually became Fort Spring in 1826. By the 1880s, it became a primarily African American community.
During the American Civil War, the hamlet’s tavern was used as a fort. A spring under the tavern gave Fort Spring its name in the 1890s.
For residents, New Vine has been Fort Spring’s heart for generations. A Sense of Place, a Fayette County nonprofit, works to preserve such landmarks and their stories. Nearby, a former school has been converted into a museum showcasing the history of Fort Spring.
“You can go into the museum and see the first Bible, the first wedding, the first deed,” said JoJuana Leavell-Greene, a Sense of Place committee member. “It's just amazing that the community has come together and sent all those artifacts over here.”
A Sense of Place, has identified more than 20 Black hamlets throughout Fayette County. The communities sprung up between the 1800s and 1920s, each with their own churches, schools, stores and cemeteries. Fort Spring is one of just four of those hamlets that predate the Emancipation Proclamation.
“If you go around Lexington, you don't really see the stores anymore, and Cadentown is the only one that still has a school,” Leavell-Greene said.
Jones said New Vine in particular has always been a Fort Spring staple.
“There was no, ‘I've got practice,’ no, ‘I'm going shopping, I'm tired,’” she said. “No, you got up every Sunday, regardless, and you came to church. And for the most part, you came on time until you were a teenager and you start driving and that type of thing.”
Jones said it was common for congregations from churches in other Black hamlets across Fayette County to mingle on Sundays. That experience has slowly disappeared over the years.
“We don't have those places to go and get to know the larger community now,” Jones said. “We really know people well here in Fort Springs, but we don't have that type of larger community anymore, and that's really sad, because I'm old enough to remember I got a taste of what that was like.”
After the end of segregation, many Fort Spring residents moved into Lexington for opportunities in the city. But those who keep ties to the area still host events and gatherings to celebrate their shared history.
“Some people have to move for opportunity, you know. We understand that, but I think it's good to come home whenever you can to just pick up on the closeness and the sense of community and family that we have here,” Jones said.
Despite change, families who built Fort Spring generations ago — including the Beatty family — are still part of the New Vine congregation. Eunice Beatty was New Vine’s resident historian for decades.
“It is still made up predominantly of about four families that all grew up here in Fort Springs,” she said. “Now, yes, we do have other families that have come into New Vine, but still 90% of the members are members who had family and neighborhood here.”
Beatty said there are development plans for the area, spearheaded by others who have called Fort Spring home and want to see it thrive. Homes on land owned by families for generations are being rebuilt and modernized by Webb-Beatty Homes — a construction company also owned by a Beatty family descendant.
“I see it being a really vibrant community. I do not see it going away. I think it will flourish in some way, and being right across from Keeneland, it has so much potential, and it'll be interesting to see,” Beatty said.
