Editing Lexington, Tennessee (section)

==History==
Shortly after the 1821 creation of Henderson County, a site near its center was chosen as a [[county seat]], and was named in honor of [[Lexington, Massachusetts]], site of the first battle of the [[American Revolution]].<ref>{{cite book |title=History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MJ8KT_aU9pEC&pg=PA804 |year=1886 |publisher=Southern Historical Press |page=804| isbn=978-0-89308-097-6 }}</ref> Land grant holder Samuel Wilson gave the land for the town, retaining a lot on the square where his house was already situated.  The square is oriented so the corners point to the cardinal points on the compass.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} The first [[county courthouse]] was built in 1823; Lexington was incorporated in 1824 and by 1830 had a population of 260.

As the lead-up to the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] began, Henderson County voted against [[secession]]. As the war progressed, both [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] and [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] regiments were recruited in the county. The area in and around Lexington was the site of a skirmish on December 18, 1862. Union Colonel Robert Ingersoll sent his troops to destroy a bridge over [[Beech Creek, Tennessee|Beech Creek]] to disallow the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] army moving into the area. Ingersoll's troops did not destroy the bridge, and General [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]]'s troops headed into Lexington. Forrest's troops overtook the Union soldiers, taking over 140 men, including Colonel Ingersoll, and collected artillery and supplies left behind by Union soldiers who escaped.<ref name="RebelsRout">{{cite web | title=Rebles rout Yankees in western Tennessee | work=This Day in History | publisher=[[History.com]] | url=http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-lexington-tennessee | access-date=March 19, 2012}}</ref>

In 1918, an African-American man called Berry Noyse, who was accused of killing the sheriff, was [[Lynching in the United States|lynched]] by a mob in the courthouse square and burned in the street.<ref name="lynching13">{{cite book |title=Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror: Second Edition: Report Summary |date=2015 |publisher=[[Equal Justice Initiative]] |location=Montgomery, Alabama |page=13 |url=http://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-second-edition-summary.pdf |quote=When Berry Noyse was accused of killing the sheriff in Lexington, Tennessee, in 1918, an angry mob lynched him in the courthouse square, dragged his body through the town, shot it dozens of times, and burned the body in the middle of the street below hung banners that read, "This is the way we do our bit." |access-date=October 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170429053159/http://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-second-edition-summary.pdf |archive-date=April 29, 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref>