Early settlements Archaeological research shows that people were living in what is now Kentucky by at least 9,500 BCE, although they may have arrived much earlier. The settlers of the area after the start of the 1st millennium CE were of the
Mississippian culture, a
Native American civilization that flourished throughout what is now the
Midwestern,
Eastern, and
Southeastern United States, from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE. The population of most settlements of this culture had dispersed or were experiencing severe social and environmental stress by 1500. The area that is now Henderson County was later inhabited by the
Yuchi,
Shawnee and the
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Significant artifacts from these tribes and earlier peoples, including from
mounds, have been found by white settlers and their descendants since the 1700s.
18th century Henderson has its roots in a small, block-wide strip of land high above the
Ohio River, the site of the present-day Audubon Mill Park directly south of the city's riverfront boat dock. A village on this site was called "Red Banks" because of the reddish clay soil of the
bluffs overlooking the Ohio River. The future 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. On March 17, 1775,
North Carolina judge
Richard Henderson and his
Transylvania Company had met with 1,200 Cherokee in a council at
Sycamore Shoals (present-day
Elizabethton, Tennessee) to purchase over of land between the
Ohio,
Cumberland, and
Kentucky rivers in present-day
Kentucky and
Tennessee to resell it to white settlers. Known as the
Transylvania Purchase, the sale was voided by the
Virginia General Assembly, since the territory (and the sole right to purchase land from Indians within its bounds) was part of Virginia's
royal charter. However, the commonwealth granted Henderson and his company an area of to develop. It was located at the confluence of the
Green and Ohio rivers. Henderson hired
Daniel Boone to survey the country and select favorable sites, but Henderson died before the town was developed. By the early 1790s, Red Banks had a tavern and several European-American families co-existing with the local 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. Later, in 1797, Captain Young of
Mercer County, Kentucky and the "Exterminators", a group of
regulators under his leadership swiftly and violently drove out the remaining outlaw element in Red Banks.
Samuel Hopkins and the surveyor
Thomas Allin visited Red Banks in 1797 and laid out plans for the future town of Henderson. It was formally established by the
Kentucky legislature the same year. A distinguishing characteristic of the new town plan was unusually wide streets, reportedly to prevent a fire in one block from easily spreading to another. Even with diagonal parking spaces outlined on downtown streets today, the streets are wide enough to include two-way traffic and space left over for delivery trucks to park in the center of the streets without interfering. By October 29, 1799, a census for the city of Henderson showed a population of 183. The county had 423 residents, 207 slaves, and 412 horses. at
Sycamore Shoals in
Elizabethton, Tennessee, and the
Wilderness Road into
Kentucky 19th century A post office was established in the town in 1801; the city was formally incorporated on January 21, 1840. The shooting is the worst in the history of
Henderson County in terms of casualties, surpassing triple homicides occurring in 1799 and 1955. ==Geography==