Hopkinsville

Hopkinsville, a city and the county-seat of Christian county, Kentucky, U.S.A., about 150 m. S.W. of Louisville. Pop. (1890) 5833; (1900) 7280 (3243 negroes); (1910) 9419. The city is served by the Illinois Central and the Louisville & Nashville railways. It is the seat of Bethel Female College (Baptist, founded 1854), of South Kentucky College (Christian; co-educational; chartered 1849) and of the Western Kentucky Asylum for the Insane. The city’s chief interest is in the tobacco industry; it has also considerable trade in other agricultural products and in coal; and its manufactures include carriages and wagons, bricks, lime, flour and dressed lumber. When Christian county was formed from Logan county in 1797, Hopkinsville, formerly called Elizabethtown, became the county-seat, and was renamed in honour of Samuel Hopkins (c. 1750-1819), an officer of the Continental Army in the War of Independence, a pioneer settler in Kentucky, and a representative in Congress from Kentucky in 1813-1815. In 1798 Hopkinsville was incorporated.