HENDERSON  , a

city and the county-seat of Henderson county, Kentucky, U.S.A., on the S. bank of the Ohio river, about 142 M . W.S.W. of Louisville . Pop . (1890), 8835; (1900), 10,272, of whom 4029 were negroes; (1910 census) 11,452 . It is served by the Illinois Central, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Louisville, Henderson & St . Louis railways, and has direct communication by steamboat with Louisville, Evansville, Cairo, Memphis and New Orleans . Henderson is built on the high bank of the river, above the flood level; the river is spanned here by a fine steel bridge, designed by George W . G . Ferris (1859-1896), the designer of the Ferris Wheel . The city has a public park of 8o acres and a Carnegie library . It is situated in the midst of a region whose soil is said to be the best in the world for the raising of dark, heavy-fibred tobacco, and is well adapted also for the growing of fruit, wheat and Indian corn . Bituminous coal is obtained from the surrounding country .

Immense quantities of stemmed tobacco are shipped from here, and the city is an important

market for Indian corn . The manufactures of the city include cotton and woollen goods, hominy, meal, flour, tobacco and cigars, carriages, baskets, chairs and other furniture, bricks, ice, whisky and beer; the value of the city's factory products in 1905 was $1,365,120 . The municipality owns and operates its water works, gas plant and electric-lighting plant . Henderson, named in honour of Richard Henderson (1734-1785), was settled as early as 1784, was first known as Red Banks, was laid out as a town by Henderson's company in 1797, was incorperated as a town in 1810, andwas first chartered as a city in 1854 . The city boundary lines were extended in 1905 by the annexation of Audubon and Edgewood . Henderson was for some time the home of John James Audubon, the ornithologist .