The Lexington Record Archive

The Lexington Record began publishing in September 1890. The paper’s focus on Christian issues such as temperance, mission work, and most especially charities was sustained by noticeably few advertisements. Itself a philanthropic endeavor, proceeds from the sale of the Record went directly to the building of the Protestant Infirmary, today known as Good Samaritan Hospital of the University of Kentucky HealthCare system. So great was the Record’s support for the infirmary that nearly a full page of each four-page monthly issue was committed to fundraising for and reporting progress in the construction of its building under the heading, “Aunt Jean’s Letter”.

It was not the Record’s overt benevolence that made it unique for the time so much as its publisher and editor, Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts. Being female in a predominantly male industry, she was a rarity in newspapers, though she routinely addressed herself as “Mrs. Potts” in keeping with the social mores of the period. Well educated and a relatively prolific writer, Mrs. Potts was a native of Lancaster, Kentucky, and the daughter of attorney and U.S. Congressman from Kentucky, George W. Dunlap. She married Surgeon Major Richard Potts of Maryland who, siding with the Confederacy, kept the family in southern territory during the Civil War. This experience resulted in her most notable work: “The Song of Lancaster, A Kentucky Girl in Dixie.” Mrs. Potts wrote numerous articles and short stories as well, making her a writer of some note by the time she launched the Lexington Record.

For the most part, the Record published information that was relayed or written by or that featured women, either in name or deed. Not only was a woman the publisher and editor, but the business office was staffed by a woman as well--Mrs. J.W. McConnell (apparently no relation to the well-known Canadian philanthropist of the same name during this period), whom the February 1891 issue addressed as the Record’s“zealous founder.”  Both women were active in church affairs and devoutly interested in matters of Christian generosity, so it is not surprising that the paper was a shared enterprise. But it was Potts’ involvement in well-to-do political and military circles in concert with her genuine writing ability that made her a natural leader of an altruistic newspaper.

Nevertheless, in short time the Lexington Record’s constricted vision gave way to, or was perhaps the warm-up for Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts’ more viscerally expansive and successful serial: the Illustrated Kentuckian: A Journal of Art, Literature, Education, Religion, Society, Sports and General Information. The last known issue of the Record is dated May 1891. The Illustrated Kentuckian began exactly one year later in May 1892. It is unclear if the two publications overlapped or when the Record ceased publication.