Paris, Kentucky

Paris is a home rule-class city in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in the United States. It lies northeast of Lexington on the Stoner Fork of the Licking River. It is the seat of its county and forms part of the Lexington–Fayette Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 8,553.HistoryJoseph Houston settled a station in the area in 1776, but was forced to relocate due to prior land grants. In 1786, Lawrence Protzman purchased the area of present-day Paris from its owners, platted for a town, and offered land for public buildings in exchange for the Virginia legislature making the settlement the seat of the newly formed Bourbon County. In 1789, the town was formally established as Hopewell after Hopewell, New Jersey, his hometown. The next year it was renamed Paris after the French capital to match its county and honor the French assistance during the American Revolution.Among the early settlers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were French refugees who had fled the excesses of their own revolution. One Frenchman was noted in a 19th-century state history as having come from Calcutta, via Bengal, and settled here as a schoolteacher.