The stories of the Big South Fork's earliest arrivals
Families like Slaven, Blevins, Hatfield, Smith, Burke and others were the first to arrive in Big South Fork Country
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The first settlers of Station Camp and No Business
Group by group, they came. First the Slavens. Then the Smiths, the Blevinses, the Hatfields, the Burkes and others — though not necessarily in that order. Some on horseback, some in wagons. They settled the fertile stream bottoms along Station Camp Creek and No Business Creek. They cleared land for their crops, ranged their livestock further up the hillsides, away from the fertile stream bottoms but beneath the towering cliff lines, and used the native timber for humble cabins and barns. Still later, they built grist mills, established schools and churches, and set up general stores.
These were the Big South Fork’s first people, subsistence farmers who lived off the land, carving out a meager yet substantial livelihood in the craggy bottomlands of this river landscape.
In last week’s Echoes in Time, we profiled Richard Harve Slaven, who is believed to have been the first permanent settler of the Big South Fork area. He was first given a land grant to produce salt, and later built a cabin on No Business Creek. His descendants thrived in Big South Fork Country for three generations, until his great-grandson, Dewey Slaven, was the last to leave No Business Creek. This is a continuation of that tale — the story of those who came after Richard Slaven.
They came by Indian trails
The first white arrivals in Big South Fork Country were long hunters. The first mention of them is in 1772, when a group of long hunters named Phillips, Bledsoe and Russell established a camp at the present-day site of Charit Creek Lodge in the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area, leading to the area being called Station Camp. In general, it is believed that long hunters visited the Cumberland Plateau region until the Revolutionary War began, at which point they returned to the colonies to take up the fight against the British. After the war ended, they began to return to the frontier lands west of the Appalachian Divide to settle down permanently. Many of Scott County’s earliest settlers were Revolutionary War veterans.
When permanent settlers began to arrive in the Big South Fork, they followed Indian trails. While Native Americans did not have permanent settlements in this region, the territory was claimed as hunting land by the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw and the Shawnee.
The primary Indian trail through this area was the Tennessee River, Ohio and Great Lakes Trail, which roughly followed the route that is now U.S. Highway 27 from Chattanooga to Burnside.
“The first land patents were along this trail — never any distance from it for the first 25 to 50 years, pioneers often building their homes along the trail itself. It was the only predictable route. The settlers moved their droves of stock along this road; later it became a wagon road and finally along its side came the railroad. It was dry and open even in wet weather. It followed the ridges and also gave a more level route.” — L.E. Bryant, Roberta, Tenn.
There were other trails, as well: The East and West Trail through present-day Rugby from Anderson County to Jamestown, and the Chickasaw Path from Jamestown to Glenmary by way of White Oak Creek. Still another was along the route of the Huntsville-to-Monticello Road that would come later.
The Blevins family
It is often written that Jonathan Blevins settled Station Camp Creek at about the same time Richard Harve Slaven settled No Business. It is sometimes suggested that he was the original permanent settler of the farmstead known today as Charit Creek Lodge.
Jonathan Blevins did live on Station Camp Creek, but some descendants dispute the narrative that he spent most of his adult life in the Big South Fork, citing historical evidence that he actually lived on Rock Creek in present-day McCreary County, Ky. for most of his life before moving to Station Camp Creek as an older man.
In fact, the first member of the Blevins family to live in the Big South Fork may have actually been Jonathan Blevins’ son, Armstead Blevins. There’s an old map showing early land patents in the Big South Fork that included Armstead Blevins from the mouth of Parch Corn Creek to the mouth of Station Camp Creek, Anderson Smith from the mouth of Station Camp Creek upstream to Laurel Fork Creek, David Miller further up Station Camp Creek, and Burdine Young at the confluence of Station Camp Creek and Charit Creek, where Charit Creek Lodge is now located. The map is not dated.
Jonathan Blevins (1779-1863) was from a family of renowned trappers, the son of Jonathan Blevins Sr. (abt. 1763-1830) and Charlotte Muse (abt. 1769-1808) from Virginia. There is some speculation that his parents may have moved to the Big South Fork and be buried on Station Camp Creek, but this is far from certain.
Blevins’ great-grandfather was William “Old Bill” Blevins, who migrated from Lancashire, England and settled in Virginia colony. It was written in 1751 that Old Bill Blevins and his sons “would bring in to the local trading post more pelts than there was cash to pay for, but that they would gladly accept goods in lieu of cash.”
Blevins married Catherine “Katy” Troxell (1783-1814) in 1804. She is purported to have been the daughter of Princess Cornblossom of the Cherokee Indian tribe. However, the existence of Princess Cornblossom is very much disputed.
Jonathan and Katy Blevins had several children. Following her death, Jonathan Blevins married Sarah Minton (1795-1838) on Dec. 21, 1814. They had several more children, including Armstead (sometimes spelled Armpstead).
While the location of the Tennessee-Kentucky border was a source of confusion in the late 1700s and early 1800s, leading the settlements of No Business and Station Camp to sometimes be classified as being in Wayne County, Ky., that confusion largely began to clear up in the 1820s. When the 1850 census was taken, Jonathan Blevins was still living in Wayne County. When the 1860 census was taken, he was listed as living in Scott County.
Armstead Blevins (1820-1897) was Jonathan Blevins’ first child with Sarah Minton. He married Margaret “Margie” Carson (1819-1862) in 1839. They had at least eight children. After Margie died in 1862, Armstead remarried to Hellen Emily Terry (1832-1913). They had several more children.
Like his father, it isn’t clear when Armstead moved to the Big South Fork, though he appears in Scott County in the 1860 census. It seems likely that he didn’t move to Parch Corn Creek until after he married Hellen Terry in 1862. His wife’s father, Elijah Terry, was the original owner of the Parch Corn Creek tract.
Blevins and his family were certainly living at Parch Corn Creek in 1863. It was in May 1863 that Confederate guerrillas raided the river settlements, and Armstead Blevins’ farm was one of those raided.
The Burke family
Jonathan Burke (1797-1875) was born in Russell County, Va., the son of Benjamin Burke and Elizabeth Troxell. His great-grandfather, James Edward Burk, migrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania colony in the early 18th century, where he married Mary Bane, whose grandfather had migrated from Scotland to the colonies in the 17th century.
Elizabeth Troxell was a sister to Jacob Troxell, who is believed by some family genealogists to be “Big Jake Troxell,” a character in Thomas H. Troxell’s 1958 book, “Legion of the Lost Mine.” Big Jake supposedly married a Cherokee Indian woman named “Princess Cornblossom” (said to be the mother of Jonathan Blevins’ first wife, Katy Troxell). However, the book has been largely discredited by historians.
If the speculation were to be correct, Jonathan Burke would have been a first cousin to Katy Troxell Blevins, wife of Jonathan Blevins.
Jonathan Burke was among a group of settlers who moved from the Rock Creek and Little South Fork areas of Kentucky to the Big South Fork in the early 19th century. He built a cabin on the Big South Fork River in the area of Duck Shoals between Parch Corn Creek and No Business Creek, about 1.5 miles downstream from Station Camp Creek. It is not clear when this move took place, but he was living there when Scott County was formed in 1849.
It was at Burke’s home that the Battle of No Business was fought in May 1863. A group of Confederate soldiers who had spent the day raiding settlements in the Big South Fork were attacked by residents of the community that night, and several were killed. The battle created such a stir that it was written about in the New York Times.
In her book, “Mountain Memories,” historian Marie Hickey Davis wrote that the Burke family moved out of their home after the fight: “Too much blood had been spilled on its floors for it to ever seem like home again.” The Burkes moved to what is now Charit Creek Lodge. Jonathan Burke died on August. 28, 1875, two weeks after his 78th birthday. His son, Peter Burke, sold the cabin at Duck Shoals to George Pennington, who later sold it to France Miller. Burke’s widow, Nancy Cooper Burke, and several of their children left the Big South Fork for Oklahoma. Nancy Burke fell ill along the journey and died. She was buried in Texas.
The Hatfield family
William Riley Hatfield (1824-1892) was the son of James Hatfield and Margaret Jones. Like most of the other early Big South Fork settlers, he was originally from Virginia. His grandfather, Ale Hatfield, moved to Tennessee and settled in Campbell County before later moving to Indiana.
Either Ale Hatfield or one of his children, Ale C. Hatfield, was an early owner of Charit Creek Lodge, which is where William Hatfield would originally settle down. There is some uncertainty over which Hatfield owned the property.
William Hatfield married Elizabeth Burke, the daughter of Jonathan Burke, in 1849. They were married in Wayne County, Ky. If birth records are any indication, Hatfield may have moved to the Big South Fork region between 1853 and 1857.
Hatfield was appointed postmaster of the Good Water post office in Scott County in 1859. It was only open for a few months.
Hatfield was killed during an argument along the Big South Fork River in 1892. According to Joe Simpson, who later owned the Charit Creek property: “He got into an argument down by the river one day with somebody he was mad at. He swung his horse around to knock the man down and trample him. The man stumbled, and shot Hatfield with his 45-70 rifle into his stomach, and the bullet destroyed part of his face, killing him soon afterwards.”
Following Hatfield’s death, his widow, Elizabeth, moved to Oklahoma to join the rest of her family who had made the trip west. Only one of her children, Nancy Ellen, remained in Scott County. Nancy Ellen married Kirby Sherman King and they had 12 children. One of them, Isaac Marion King, was a well-known schoolteacher, justice of the peace, and postmaster in the Station Camp community during the early 20th century.
Another of the Hatfield children, William Claburn “Dick” Hatfield, returned to the Big South Fork following the death of his wife, Elvira “Vicey” Thompson. He remarried Poppie Litton and was shot and killed by her brother, Newt Blevins, in 1924.
The Smith family
Anderson Smith (1800-1890) was an early settler of the Station Creek area. He was the son of Joseph Smith and Anna Osbourne. He married Sarah “Sally” Slaven (1796-1888), the daughter of Richard Harve Slaven and Susannah Mounts. They settled at the fork of Laurel Fork Creek and Station Camp Creek in the 1820s. They were the grandparents of noted Big South Fork settler John “Hawk” Smith.
Smith purchased the farm that is now Charit Creek Lodge in 1853. In May 1863, his farm was raided by Confederate guerrillas as part of the precursor to the Battle of No Business.
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