The influence of those of French ancestry on Louisville, Kentucky, USA and the surrounding area, especially New Albany, Indiana, is immense. Louisville was even named for a French king, Louis XVI. Before Louisville a French outpost existed called La Belle. [1]
Louisville was almost completely settled by French immigrants from the Rhine. [2] Early French immigrants came in three phases; the first group of about 15,000 settled mostly in the coastal states.[ citation needed ] The first French settlers of Louisville were second- and third-generation American-born Huguenots. The first generation arrived in North America in 1685 after the Edict of Nantes was repealed. These were represented by such people as Thomas Bullitt, a surveyor who started Bullitt's Lick, Kentucky's oldest industry. [3] The second significant immigration was mainly of cultural value during the American Revolution as most of the French that came from overseas during this time returned after the war.
The third migration during the French Revolution in 1793 provided a wide variety of people from nobles to clergy. [4] Most of the groups that traveled to Kentucky settled in Louisville at the Falls of the Ohio. During this time, the French descendants and immigrants utilized Shippingport and Portland for commerce. A settler named Aaron Fontaine ran a ferry system called Fontaine Ferry that later became the namesake for Fontaine Ferry Park. [5] In 1782, Jean A. Honoré and Bethelemi Tardiveau had a business at Shippingport in which they dealt in flour, furs and land, leading them to meet George Rogers Clark. [4] Their business became the first exploit of the New Orleans trade. [4]
Shippingport remained a large part of early French immigrants' lives until a flood in 1832. Portland then became the more prominent area for the French-based community after the flood. In the mid-19th century, the French commerce boomed. Frenchman James Berthoud established Kentucky's second insurance agency and chartered the first Bank of Kentucky. [4] Berthoud's son Nicholas went on to be a charter member of the Louisville and Portland Canal. [4]
Louisville experienced its largest impact from immigration in the period from 1830 to 1850. The majority of immigrants were of French, German, and Irish descent. [6] The two counties that saw the most impact in the Louisville Metropolitan Statistical Area were Jefferson County, Kentucky and Floyd County, Indiana. The populations for the two counties doubled within this time period. Floyd County saw French immigrants locating in the county as early as 1817. [7]
As a tribute to Louisville's connection to the French, Louisville's sister city in France, Montpellier, gave Louisville a statue of King Louis XVI of France, the namesake of Louisville, that it held in storage for years. The statue was officially presented in 1967, and still stands at the southeast street corner of Louisville Metro Hall.
French influence remains in the community via groups such as the Alliance Française of Louisville which hosts events and helps teach French. [8]
Bullitt County is a county located in the north central portion of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 82,217. Its county seat is Shepherdsville. The county was founded in 1796. Located just south of the city of Louisville, Bullitt County is included in the Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area, commonly known as Kentuckiana. The western fifth of the county is part of the United States Army post of Fort Knox and is reserved for military training.
Floyd County is a county located in the U.S. state of Indiana. Its county seat is New Albany. Floyd County has the second-smallest land area in the entire state. It was formed in the year 1819 from neighboring Clark, and Harrison counties.
Kentuckiana, a portmanteau of Kentucky and Indiana, is the area in the Upland South region of the United States containing metropolitan areas with counties in both Kentucky and Indiana. Kentuckiana is primarily the Louisville metropolitan area, including nine counties in Kentucky and five counties in Southern Indiana. This area "is regularly referred to as Kentuckiana".
Portland is a neighborhood and former independent town northwest of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It is situated along a bend of the Ohio River just below the Falls of the Ohio, where the river curves to the north and then to the south, thus placing Portland at the northern tip of urban Louisville. In its early days it was the largest of the six major settlements at the falls, the others being Shippingport and Louisville in Kentucky and New Albany, Clarksville, and Jeffersonville on the Indiana side. Its modern boundaries are the Ohio River along the northwest, north, and northeast, 10th Street at the far east, Market Street on the south, and the Shawnee Golf Course at the far west.
The geology of the Ohio River, with but a single series of rapids halfway in its length from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to its union with the Mississippi, made it inevitable that a town would grow on the site. Louisville, Kentucky was chartered in the late 18th century. From its early days on the frontier, it quickly grew to be a major trading and distribution center in the mid 19th century, important industrial city in the early 20th, declined in the mid 20th century, before revitalizing in the late 20th century as a culturally-focused mid-sized American city.
Alexander Scott Bullitt was an American pioneer, planter, slaveowner, and politician from Virginia who became an early settler in Kentucky and a leader during the early days of Kentucky statehood.
The Salt River is a 150-mile-long (240 km) river in the U.S. state of Kentucky that drains 2,920 square miles (7,600 km2). It begins near Parksville, Kentucky, rising from the north slope of Persimmon Knob south of KY 300 between Alum Springs and Wilsonville, and ends at the Ohio River near West Point. Taylorsville Lake is formed from the Salt River, and Guist Creek Lake is also in its drainage basin.
Shippingport, Kentucky is an industrial site and one of the six formerly independent settlements at the Falls of the Ohio in what is now Louisville, Kentucky. It was located on a peninsula on the south bank of the Ohio River, and incorporated without a name on October 10, 1785. It was later named Campbell Town after Revolutionary War soldier and settler John Campbell. He had been granted the land for his earlier service in the French & Indian War.
The Long Run massacre occurred on 13 September 1781 at the intersection of Floyd's Fork creek with Long Run Creek, along the Falls Trace, a trail in what is now eastern Jefferson County, Kentucky.
The table below includes sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in Jefferson County, Kentucky except those in the following neighborhoods/districts of Louisville: Anchorage, Downtown, The Highlands, Old Louisville, Portland and the West End. Links to tables of listings in these other areas are provided below.
Philip Tomppert was the sixteenth and eighteenth Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky in 1865 and 1867 to 1868.
The Louisville Metro Hall is the center of Louisville, Kentucky's government. It currently houses the Mayor's Office and the Jefferson County Clerk's Office for marriage licensing, delinquent tax filings, and the deeds room. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Construction began in 1837, and both the City of Louisville and Jefferson County governments starting using it in 1842.
Camp Joe Holt was a Union base during the American Civil War in Jeffersonville, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky, on land that is now part of Clarksville, Indiana, near the Big Eddy. It was a major staging area for troops in the Western Theatre of the War, in preparation for invading the Confederate States of America. Its establishment was the first major step performed by Kentucky Unionists to keep Kentucky from seceding to the Confederacy.
Bengal is an unincorporated community in Taylor County, Kentucky, United States. Located west of the city of Campbellsville, the county seat of Taylor County, it is served by Bengal Road from Campbellsville and by Route 323. Its elevation is 722 feet (220 m).
Bullitt's Lick is a historic salt lick 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Shepherdsville in Bullitt County, Kentucky. It was the first commercial supplier of salt in Kentucky, and the first industry in Kentucky as well, supplying jobs for many residents but also using slaves.
Davis Floyd was an Indiana Jeffersonian Republican politician who was convicted of aiding American Vice President Aaron Burr in the Burr conspiracy. Floyd was not convicted of treason however and returned to public life after several years working to redeem his reputation. He lost his wealth in the Panic of 1819 and died in obscurity in Florida 1834.
James John Floyd (1750–1783) was an early settler of St. Matthews, Kentucky, and helped lay out Louisville. In Kentucky he served as a Colonel of the Kentucky Militia in which he participated in raids with George Rogers Clark and later became one of the first judges of Kentucky.
The history of Germans in Louisville began in 1817. In that year, a man named August David Ehrich, a master shoe maker born in Königsberg, arrived in Louisville. Ehrich was the first native-born German in Louisville, but as early as 1787, Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) settlers arrived in Jefferson County from Pennsylvania. While they maintained German customs from their ancestors who came to Pennsylvania several generations before, they were not native Germans. The Blankenbaker, Bruner, and Funk families came to the Louisville region following the American Revolutionary War, and in 1797 they founded the town Brunerstown, which would later become Jeffersontown, Kentucky. Further early immigration of Germans took place as they slowly followed the Ohio River after arriving in the United States at New Orleans, and settled in the various river towns, which included not only Louisville, but Cincinnati, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri, as well.
Low Dutch Station was established in 1780 on the middle fork of Beargrass Creek in Kentucky. This station was settled by Dutch pioneers from Pennsylvania and was also known as New Holland Station. The station was one of a group of seven forts established on Beargrass Creek during this period in this area that is now a part of Louisville. The leader of the group was Hendrick Banta. The group of settlers were a part of the "Low Dutch Company" and had their own bylaws, a formal charter, and accounting procedures. The group had as its purpose the preservation of the language, culture and religion of the Dutch. The Dutch traveled from a settlement near Harrodsburg to Low Dutch Station.
