Bengal is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Taylor County,

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

, United States. Located west of the city of Campbellsville, the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

of Taylor County, it is served by Bengal Road from Campbellsville and by Route 323. Its elevation is 722 feet (220 m).

Name origin

It may have been named after an early street in Shippingport, Kentucky, now an area included within the city of Louisville. Another possibility is that it was associated with a French settler from

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

via Bengal, who first settled in Paris, Kentucky.William Henry Perrin, J. H. Battle, G. C. Kniffin, ''Kentucky: A History of the State''
Embracing a Concise Account of the Origin and Development of the Virginia Colony, Its Expansion Westward, and the Settlement of the Frontier Beyond the Alleghanies : the Erection of Kentucky as an Independent State, and Its Subsequent Development'', Adair County (Ky.): F. A. Battey, 1887, pp. 287, 294

History

The first settlers of Campbellsville and this part of the county arrived after the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...

. Many migrants used the

Cumberland Gap The Cumberland Gap is a Mountain pass, pass in the Eastern United States, eastern United States through the long ridge of the Cumberland Mountains, within the Appalachian Mountains and near the tripoint of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. At&n ...

to travel through the Appalachians. About 1802 Elias Barbee and Revolutionary War veterans James and Jonathan Cowherd established a school in the Bengal area, as churches were also being founded. Barbee served as a general during the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

. He and numerous other migrants to what became Taylor County were from Pennsylvania; while others were from Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland."Taylor County"
''The Encyclopedia of Kentucky'', ed. John E. Kleber, University Press of Kentucky, 2015, p. 871 In 1911 the community was provided service by the Bengal Telephone Company.
Biennial Report
', Frankfort, Kentucky: Auditor of Public Accounts, The State, 1911, p. 472

References

Unincorporated communities in Taylor County, Kentucky Unincorporated communities in Kentucky {{TaylorCountyKY-geo-stub