Bengal, Kentucky

Bengal
Unincorporated community
Bengal Bengal Location within the state of Kentucky
Coordinates: 37°21′33″N 85°27′26″W / 37.35917°N 85.45722°WCoordinates: 37°21′33″N 85°27′26″W / 37.35917°N 85.45722°W
Country	United States
State	Kentucky
County	Taylor
Elevation	722 ft (220 m)
Time zone	Eastern (EST) (UTC-5)
• Summer (DST)	EDT (UTC-4)
GNIS feature ID	507494

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.^[1] Its elevation is 722 feet (220 m).^[2]

It may have been named after an early street in Shippingport, Kentucky, now an area included within the city of Louisville. Another possibility is that it was associated with a French settler from Calcutta via Bengal, who first settled in Paris, Kentucky.^[3]

Campbellsville and this part of the county were settled by European Americans in the years after the American Revolutionary War. Many migrants used the Cumberland Gap to travel through the Appalachians. About 1802 Elias Barbee and Revolutionary War veterans James and Jonathan Cowherd established a school in the Bengal area, as churches were also being founded. Barbee served as a general during the War of 1812. He and numerous other migrants to what became Taylor County were from Pennsylvania; while others were from Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland.^[4]

In 1911 the community was provided service by the Bengal Telephone Company.^[5]

References

1. Rand McNally. The Road Atlas '06. Chicago: Rand McNally, 2006, p. 42.
2. U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Bengal, Kentucky, Geographic Names Information System, 1979-09-20. Accessed 2007-12-31.
3. 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, pp. 287, 294
4. "Taylor County", The Encyclopedia of Kentucky, ed. John E. Kleber, University Press of Kentucky, 2015, p. 871
5. [https://books.google.com/books?id=dQYXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA472&dq=Bengal,+KY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTvZrOooDOAhUMQyYKHUsGCYgQ6AEIMTAE#v=onepage&q=Bengal%2C%20KY&f=false Biennial Report/ Kentucky'', Frankfort, Kentucky: Auditor of Public Accounts, The State, 1911, p. 472