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Paducah, the seat of McCracken county, is located just below the
confluence of the Ohio and
Tennessee Rivers. The site was chosen by George Rogers Clark during the
Revolution and
the first settlers probably arrived around 1821. In 1827 the town was
laid
out by Merriwether
Lewis. The original settlement was known as Pekin, but Lewis called his
town Paducah. It is said to be named after a legendary Chickasaw leader, Chief Paduke, but
it may have been named for a group of Comanche Indians known as the Padoucas. Paducah
became
the county seat in 1832 when it was moved from Wilmington. The first post office
here
opened in 1828. It
was incorporated as a town on January 11, 1830, and as a city on March
10, 1856
In a
letter to his son, Merriwether Lewis Clark, William Clark, of Lewis and
Clark fame wrote in 1827 that he was
going
to the mouth of the
Tennessee
to found a town that would be named to honor the Padouca tribe that
once
had been most numerous, but had been destroyed
by contact with European
culture. He wished to honor their memory but changed the spelling to a
more English rather than French---
PADOUCA
to PA DU
CAH.)
Submitted by: John
Robertson
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