Lexington Progress

The Lexington Progress is a weekly newspaper published in Lexington, Tennessee, proudly serving Henderson County since 1884, in the paper's own masthead phrase. Founded by publisher William V. Barry and printed on a small hand-fed press, the Progress has been published under only three ownerships in more than 140 years: the Barry family for 62 years, the Franklin family for 76 years, and, since June 2022, Mirror-Exchange, Inc. It reports Henderson County government, courts, schools, sports and community life from Lexington, the county seat, in print and online at lexingtonprogress.com. Its files, preserved on microfilm at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, are so important to local history that a published book of selections from the paper covers its first six decades.

Founded by W. V. Barry in 1884

The Progress was established in 1884 as a Democratic paper in Henderson County. The Tennessee State Library and Archives dates its run from about July 4, 1884 to the present, as a weekly; a county history written in the 1880s gives the founding as April 1884, naming W. V. Barry as publisher and describing the Progress, even then, as strictly a home paper. Barry printed the first issues on a small hand-fed press. Subscriptions cost one dollar a year, but Barry readily acknowledged the hardships of running a country newspaper: in 1908 he observed that some subscribers paid in wood, some in corn and other produce, some with turkeys — and some never paid at all. The anecdote has been quoted ever since because it captures the economics of the nineteenth-century rural weekly in a single sentence.

The Barry Family's 62 Years

The weekly remained in the Barry family for 62 years, published by W. V. Barry & Sons until 1946, under the motto that the paper spoke of men as it found them and of lives as they were unfolded to it. Three generations of Barrys were involved — W. V. Barry, Henry D. Barry and William L. Barry. Under them the Progress reported local, regional and national politics alongside community news: births, weddings, obituaries and the doings of churches, clubs and other organizations. For Henderson County's large farming community, the paper prominently featured agricultural articles; in the 1910s it regularly printed the Farmers Letter, agricultural advice written for county newspapers by Captain Thomas F. Peck of the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, later replaced by the Finer Farming column of county agent H. A. Powers, who also encouraged readers to contribute their own farming news. During the First World War the Progress carried reports from overseas and of home-front efforts, and after the war Barry led a campaign to fund a monument honoring Henderson County's war dead, urging subscribers to give and listing those who had contributed.

A Rival Across Town

For four decades the Progress had competition. The Lexington Republican was established in 1893 — county histories date its first issue to January 1, 1894, founded by H. P. Barnes and Felix Creasy with machinery brought to Lexington for a church paper — and both papers published on Fridays. The rivalry was the classic American pattern of a Democratic paper and a Republican paper in the same county seat. The Republican continued until about May 1935, when it was succeeded by the Lexington Leader, published into the 1940s. The Progress outlasted both, and later rivals were brief: a Henderson County Times ran from 1978 to 1983, continued as The Times until 1985. The Progress's continuity — published, as its historians note, essentially every Friday across the Barry decades — made it the county's paper of historical record by default as well as by quality.

Why the Progress Matters to Historians

The Progress has an unusual distinction: it is a primary source for a county whose official records were twice destroyed. Courthouse fires in 1863 and 1895 destroyed almost all of Henderson County's early official records — land grants, deeds and family histories — leaving researchers with limited resources. The old Progress newspapers, preserved on microfilm and available through the Tennessee State Archives, fill part of that gap. A project of the Henderson County Bicentennial Committee produced W. V. Barry's Lexington Progress, 1884–1946, edited by Brenda Kirk Fiddler, a 254-page selection of articles showing the evolution of Lexington and Henderson County since the county's creation in 1821. Its editor praised Barry as a remarkable editor with a keen ear for news, a sharp pen and the courage to print all the news, whose local-color reporting makes the Progress fun to read more than a century later.

The Franklin Family Buys the Paper, 1946

In June 1946, W. T. Franklin Jr. — known as "Jew" Franklin — purchased the Progress from the Barry family, together with his wife Kathleen. Franklin became a statewide figure in Tennessee newspapering: he served as president of the Tennessee Press Association in 1973–74 and was instrumental in securing passage of Tennessee's Sunshine Law in 1974, which requires state and local agencies to announce public meetings properly and open them to the public — a fitting legacy for a country editor whose paper depended on access to local government. After Franklin's death on September 10, 1980, his son Tom Franklin became publisher, and the family business passed into a third generation, with Tom and his wife Donna at the helm and their children Brooke Franklin James and Blake Franklin serving as co-editors, raised in the newspaper business in the most literal sense.

Passing the Torch in 2022

In June 2022 the Franklin family sold the Progress after 76 years — only the third change of ownership in the paper's 138-year history to that point. The buyer was Mirror-Exchange, Inc., owned by Scarlet Elliott and Victor Parkins, second-generation newspaper publishers whose parents, Bob and Dorris Parkins, started the Mirror-Exchange in Milan in 1966; the company also owns the Trenton Gazette, the Tri-City Reporter and the Humboldt Chronicle. Tom Franklin said the family felt the time had come and was pleased with the buyers, who had helped the family after Brad Franklin's death in 2015 and who, in Tom's words, felt like family and knew the business. Victor Parkins became the paper's publisher and has carried its local-reporting mission into venues such as the Lexington Rotary Club, where he discussed his views on local news reporting in March 2023.

What the Progress Covers

The Progress is Henderson County's general newspaper of record. Its news pages carry county government and courts — grand jury actions, the county mayor's state-of-the-county address, city board decisions in communities such as Scotts Hill, sheriff's office reporting and election information including early-voting schedules — together with school news. Its sports pages follow Lexington High School's Tigers and Lady Tigers, the Scotts Hill Lions and Henderson County's other teams through their seasons and district tournaments. Births, weddings, obituaries and church, club and organization news, staples since the Barry era, remain part of the mix, as does the farming and rural-life material that has served the county's agricultural readers since the Farmers Letter column of the 1910s.

Digital Presence

The Progress publishes online at lexingtonprogress.com, organized into area news and area sports with stories posted through the week, extending the Friday print tradition into a continuous digital presence. Its website slogan carries the paper's founding claim — proudly serving Henderson County since 1884 — and its archives are further extended by digitization: the Lexington Progress archive on Newspapers.com draws on the same Chronicling America record that documents the Barry era, making more than a century of Henderson County reporting searchable for readers and researchers far beyond West Tennessee.