Paris, Kentucky
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Paris is a home rule-class city in Bourbon County, Kentucky, and 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 ...
. It lies northeast of Lexington on the Stoner Fork of the Licking River. It is part of the Lexington–Fayette Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of 2020, it had a population of 10,171.


History

Joseph 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 In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...
. One Frenchman was noted in a 19th-century state history as having come 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 Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...
, and settled here as a schoolteacher.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, p. 294
The post office was briefly known as Bourbontown or Bourbonton in the early 19th century, but there is no evidence that this name was ever formally applied to the town itself.Rennick, Robert. ''Kentucky Place Names''
p. 226
University Press of Kentucky (Lexington), 1987. Accessed 1 August 2013.
It was incorporated as Paris in 1839 and again in 1890. African American students attended Paris Colored High School. Paris is the " sister city" of Lamotte-Beuvron in
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
.


Geography

According to the
United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...
, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.52%, is water.


Demographics

As of the
census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...
of 2000, there were 9,183 people, 3,857 households, and 2,487 families residing in the city. The
population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...
was . There were 4,222 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 84.23%
White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
, 12.71%
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
, 0.16% Native American, 0.16% Asian, 1.35% from other races, and 1.38% from two or more races.
Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...
or Latino of any race were 2.62% of the population. There were 3,857 households, out of which 31.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.8% were married couples living together, 16.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.5% were non-families. 31.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.90. In the city, the population was spread out, with 25.3% under the age of 18, 9.0% from 18 to 24, 28.5% from 25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 15.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 88.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.7 males. The median income for a household in the city was $30,872, and the median income for a family was $37,358. Males had a median income of $29,275 versus $21,285 for females. The
per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...
for the city was $16,645. About 17.5% of families and 17.8% of the population were below the
poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...
, including 24.2% of those under age 18 and 15.9% of those age 65 or over.


Arts and culture

Between 2006 and 2008, fifteen buildings were renovated in the downtown. Artistic and cultural sites and events include: *Downtown Paris ARTWALK, an artistic event. * Nannine Clay Wallis Arboretum, a arboretum where many trees were planted in the 1850s when the house was built. *The Hopewell Museum, a Beaux Arts structure built in 1909 which served as the area's first post office. *Duncan Tavern, a stone structure built in 1788, which houses a genealogical collection. *The Vardens Building, a Victorian architecture building which contained a surgeon and dental office, and a ballroom, and is now a retail space. *The Shinner Building, built in 1891, listed by Ripley's Believe It or Not! as the world's tallest three-story structure. Paris has a
public library A public library is a library, most often a lending library, that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also Civil servic ...
, the Paris-Bourbon County Library.


Education

Local schools in includes, Paris High School (in the Paris Independent Schools district), and Bourbon County High School (in the Bourbon County Schools district).


Notable people

* William Patterson Alexander (1805–1884), missionary in
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
* Bill Arnsparger (1926–2015), football coach, head coach of New York Giants * Pauline Redmond Coggs (1912 – 2005), social worker, civil rights activist * Blanton Collier (1906–1983), NFL coach of 1964 champion Cleveland Browns * Joseph Duncan (1794–1844), sixth Governor of Illinois * John Price Durbin (1800–1876), Chaplain of the Senate, President of Dickinson College * William Lee D. Ewing (1795–1846), fifth Governor of Illinois * Lemuel T. Fisher, newspaper publisher * John Fox, Jr. (1862–1919), author of '' The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come'' and '' The Trail of the Lonesome Pine'' * Silvana Gallardo, actress and acting coach, was living in Paris at the time of her death * James G. Jones (1814–1872), first mayor of Evansville, Indiana, Indiana Attorney General * Mary Rootes Thornton McAboy (1815–1892), poet * Garrett Morgan (1877–1963), invented tri-state traffic signal and emergency breathing device * Bernie Haynes Robynson (1900–2001), printmaker, illustrator born in Paris, Kentucky; and part of the Harlem Renaissance movement * George Snyder, silversmith, clockmaker, and inventor of modern bait-casting fishing reel * Robert Trimble,
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States An associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is a Justice (title), justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, other than the chief justice of the United States. The number of associate justices is eight, as set by the J ...
* Jim Tucker (1932–2020), basketball player, attended Paris Western High School * Francis Marion Wood (1878–1943), educator and school administrator, worked in Paris * John R. Baylor (1822–1894), Indian agent, publisher and editor, politician, senior officer of the CSA, and 1st Governor of Arizona Territory


References


External links

*
Paris-Bourbon County Chamber of Commerce
{{authority control * Cities in Bourbon County, Kentucky Cities in Kentucky County seats in Kentucky Lexington–Fayette metropolitan area Populated places established in 1789 1789 establishments in Virginia