Henderson (Kentucky)

Henderson is a home rule-class city along the Ohio River in Henderson County in western Kentucky in the United States. The population was 28,757 at the 2010 U.S. census. It is part of the Evansville Metropolitan Area, locally known as the "Kentuckiana" or the "Tri-State Area".Notable residents have included the ornithologist, naturalist, and painter John James Audubon and blues legend W. C. Handy. For more than 100 years the city has been home to the Southern Cherokee Nation.NameThe city was named after Richard Henderson, an eighteenth-century pioneer and land speculator, by his associates Samuel Hopkins and Thomas Allin. Henderson County also shares this namesake.History18th centuryHenderson has its roots in a small, block-wide strip of land high above the Ohio River, the site of the present Audubon Mill Park directly south of the city's riverfront boat dock. A village on this site was called "Red Banks" by the local Cherokee on account of its reddish clay soil. By the early 1790s, Red Banks had a tavern and several European-American families along with the Cherokee. On November 16, 1792, resident Robert Simpson wrote to Alexander D. Orr in Lexington, requesting help to appoint a magistrate for Red Banks to deal with some of its 30 families he felt were of dubious (criminal) character. During this period, the Red Banks settlement had gained notoriety as a frontier haven for westward-moving outlaws and their families. One such family was that of Squire Samuel Mason. By that time, excluding the Cherokee, the free male inhabitants of Red Bank totaled 62.