Scuffletown, Henderson County, Kentucky

Last updated
Scuffletown
USA Kentucky location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Scuffletown
Location within the state of Kentucky
Coordinates: 37°55′22″N87°22′20″W / 37.92278°N 87.37222°W / 37.92278; -87.37222 Coordinates: 37°55′22″N87°22′20″W / 37.92278°N 87.37222°W / 37.92278; -87.37222
Country United States
State Kentucky
County Henderson
Elevation
374 ft (114 m)
Time zone UTC-6 (Central (CST))
  Summer (DST) UTC-5 (CST)
GNIS feature ID509024 [1]

Scuffletown is a ghost town in Henderson County in the western part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. Located on the Ohio River just above the mouth of Green River, it was a city for barely 100 years but is legendary in the area because of the activities there during the American Civil War and its rough reputation.

Contents

Geography

Scuffletown Bottoms, as it is called now, is on the Kentucky-Indiana border almost directly across the Ohio River from Newburgh. It is situated in the northeastern portion of Henderson County, Kentucky.

History

Scuffletown got its start in 1800 when Jonathan Thomas Scott, aka Scott Fox, supposedly the third son of the Shawnee leader Cornstalk, married Mary Polly Cooper, a Cherokee.[ citation needed ] They had two sons Jonathan Scott and Thomas Scott. Around the time of the Cherokee removal, their father was shot to death in Shawneetown, Illinois in 1838. He ran a tavern in the area that passing river traffic could easily access.[ citation needed ] His great great grandson, Michael "Manfox" Buley still lives in Henderson County.[ citation needed ]

Scuffletown got its name from the flatboat people coming down the Ohio River.[ citation needed ] The Cherokee played stick ball and had wrestling matches right outside the tavern/trading post. The white people saw this as scuffling. According to the Annals and Scandals of Henderson County by Maralea Arnett, since he[ who? ] kept a good supply of liquor, it became a rendezvous for flatboatmen and others on the river. Often a general fight developed after several hours of drinking and the place received the name of Scuffletown.[ citation needed ]

A school was built there sometime around 1817.[ citation needed ] The first church was built in 1830 at the Vanada farm.[ citation needed ] A tobacco stemmery was built in 1860 and shipped 400 to 450 hogsheads per year to Europe. A steam gristmill and blacksmith shop soon followed. In addition to crops of tobacco and corn, Scuffletown was noted for its large number of pecan trees.[ citation needed ]

The Old Southern Cherokee of Scuffletown & Henderson, KY The Old Southern Cherokee of Scuffletown & Henderson, KY, circa 1890-1910.jpg
The Old Southern Cherokee of Scuffletown & Henderson, KY

The site witnessed numerous Civil War-era activities.[ citation needed ] The Silver Lake No. 2, a sternwheel packet (steamboat) weighing some 129 tons and outfitted with six cannons capable of firing 24 pound shot, stopped at Scuffletown during its patrols of the Ohio. In 1863, eight Union companies of infantry and one company of artillery were stationed at Scuffletown to protect the area of Confederate raiders. Scuffletown is mentioned in the Civil War account "Operations of the Mississippi Squadron during Morgan's Raid". [2]

Sometime in the late 1800s, James Martin led a group of Cherokee refugees to the area from Fort Smith, Arkansas to join kinsman living in the Scuffletown area.[ citation needed ] On December 26, 1893 the group was officially welcomed as an Indian tribe by Governor John Y. Brown.[ citation needed ] Through the years since, the descendants of these Cherokee have maintained ties to the culture and traditions of their people. At least twice each year, Tribal Members meet in various locations around the area to perform their sacred ceremonies.[ citation needed ]

According to an atlas originally printed and copy written in 1895 by the Rand McNally Corporation, downtown Scuffletown had a population of 71. By 1868, Scuffletown had grown enough to get a post office. However, a 1913 flood greatly devastated the city, causing a mass exodus that it never recovered from.[ citation needed ] Its post office closed permanently in January 1914. Then an even larger flood in 1937 decimated what little remained, and it has sat mostly deserted ever since. The area is now simply referred to Scuffletown Bottoms, though it often goes unnamed.

On January 18, 2001, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed the establishment of a national wildlife refuge in the Scuffletown Bottoms. The purpose of the proposed refuge is to protect, restore and manage a valuable complex of wetland habitats for the benefit of migrating and wintering waterfowl, non-game land birds, and other native fish and wildlife.

The Kentucky Oral History Sound Recordings project, produced in conjunction with the Kentucky Historical Society and the Downtown Henderson Project, has recorded conversations with former residents of Scuffletown. These recordings [3] are housed at the Henderson County Public Library. [4]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Kentucky U.S. state

Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered by Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to the east; Tennessee to the south; and Missouri to the west. The Commonwealth's northern border is defined by the Ohio River. Its capital is Frankfort, and its two largest cities are Louisville and Lexington. The state's population in 2020 was approximately 4.5 million.

Union County, Kentucky County in Kentucky, United States

Union County is a county in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 15,007. Its county seat is Morganfield. The county was created effective 15 January 1811.

Henderson County, Kentucky County in Kentucky, United States

Henderson County is a county in the U.S. state of Kentucky. The county is located in western Kentucky on the Ohio River across from Evansville, Indiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 46,250. The county seat is Henderson.

Hopkinsville, Kentucky City in Kentucky, United States

Hopkinsville is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Christian County, Kentucky, United States. The population at the 2010 census was 31,577.

Henderson, Kentucky City in Kentucky, United States

Henderson is a home rule-class city along the Ohio River and is the county seat of Henderson County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 28,757 at the 2010 U.S. census. It is part of the Evansville Metropolitan Area, locally known as the "Tri-State Area". It is considered the southernmost suburb of Evansville, Indiana.

Clarksville, Tennessee City in Tennessee, United States

Clarksville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States. It is the fifth-largest city in the state behind Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. The city had a population of 166,722 as of the 2020 United States census.

Transylvania Colony Short-lived extra-legal colony in frontier Kentucky

The Transylvania Colony, also referred to as the Transylvania Purchase, was a short-lived, extra-legal colony founded in early 1775 by North Carolina land speculator Richard Henderson, who formed and controlled the Transylvania Company. Henderson and his investors had reached an agreement to purchase a vast tract of Cherokee lands west of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains through the acceptance of the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals with most leading Cherokee chieftains then controlling these lands. In exchange for the land the tribes received goods worth, according to the estimates of some scholars, about 10,000 British pounds. To further complicate matters, this early American frontier land was also claimed by both the Virginia Colony and Province of North Carolina.

Southern Illinois Region of Illinois in the United States

Southern Illinois, also known as Little Egypt, is the southern third of Illinois, principally along and south of Interstate 64. Although part of a Midwestern state, this region is aligned in culture more with that of the Upland South than the Midwest. Part of downstate Illinois, it is bordered by the two most voluminous rivers in the United States: the Mississippi below its connecting Missouri River to the west and the Ohio River to the east and south with the Wabash as tributary.

Wilderness Road Historic highway in Kentucky

The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other is sometimes called the "Cumberland Road" because it started in Fort Cumberland in Maryland. Despite Kentucky Senator Henry Clay's advocacy of this route, early in the 19th century, the northern route was selected for the National Road, connecting near Washington, Pennsylvania into the Ohio Valley of northern Kentucky and Ohio.

Green Country

Green Country, sometimes referred to as Northeast Oklahoma, is the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Oklahoma, which lies west of the northern half of Arkansas, the southwestern corner the way of Missouri, and south of Kansas.

The Audubon Parkway is a four-lane controlled-access freeway connecting the cities of Henderson and Owensboro, Kentucky. Named for John James Audubon, an early American naturalist, the Audubon's western terminus is at Interstate 69 (I-69)/U.S. Route 41 (US 41); the eastern terminus is the US 60 bypass. The road opened on December 18, 1970, at a cost of $23.5 million and, at 23.4 miles (37.7 km), is the shortest of the seven roads in the state's parkway system. It is also the only road in the parkway system that has not had the name of a Kentucky politician attached to it. The road carries the unsigned designation of Kentucky Route 9005 (KY 9005). A white and gold shield was used along the Audubon Parkway until 2006, when a new, standardized blue-on-white marker was introduced for all of Kentucky's parkways.

Fort Nashborough United States historic place

Fort Nashborough, also known as Fort Bluff, Bluff Station, French Lick Fort, Cumberland River Fort and other names, was the stockade established in early 1779 in the French Lick area of the Cumberland River valley, as a forerunner to the settlement that would become the city of Nashville, Tennessee. The fort was not a military garrison. The log stockade was square in shape and covered 2 acres (8,100 m2). It contained 20 log cabins and was protection for the settlers against wild animals and Indians. James Robertson and John Donelson are considered the founders, and colloquially, the "founders of Tennessee". The fort was abandoned in 1794, but the settlement, now the town of Nashville, became the capital of the new state of Tennessee in 1796.

Richard Henderson (jurist) American pioneer

Richard Henderson was an American jurist, land speculator and politician who was best known for attempting to create the Transylvania Colony in frontier Kentucky. Henderson County and its seat Henderson, Kentucky are named for him. He also sold land to an early settlement that went on to become Nashville, Tennessee.

History of Kentucky History of a state in the U.S.

The prehistory and history of Kentucky span thousands of years, and have been influenced by the state's diverse geography and central location. Based on evidence in other regions, it is likely that the human history of Kentucky began sometime before 10,000 BCE. A gradual transition began from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculture c. 1800 BCE. Around 900 CE, the Mississippian culture took root in western and central Kentucky; the Fort Ancient culture appeared in eastern Kentucky. Although they had many similarities, the Fort Ancient culture lacked the Mississippian's distinctive, ceremonial earthen mounds.

Longhunter

A longhunter was an 18th-century explorer and hunter who made expeditions into the American frontier for as much as six months at a time. Historian Emory Hamilton says that "The Long Hunter was peculiar to Southwest Virginia only, and nowhere else on any frontier did such hunts ever originate."

U.S. Route 62 (US 62) in Kentucky runs for a total of 391.207 miles (629.587 km) across 20 counties in western, north-central, and northeastern Kentucky. It enters the state by crossing the Ohio River near Wickliffe, then begins heading eastward at Bardwell, and traversing several cities and towns across the state up to Maysville, where it crosses the Ohio River a second time to enter the state of Ohio.

The Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky (SCNK) is an unrecognized tribe based in Kentucky. Members of the SCNK claim descent from the Cherokee forcibly removed to Indian Territory in 1838, and to have first emerged as a distinct political faction known as the Treaty Party before the Trail of Tears, c. 1835. They report having fled Indian territory, after the American Civil War, c. 1871 for Kentucky to escape Reconstruction era violence. The City of Henderson, Kentucky published a proclamation stating they have been headquartered there since the late 19th century, and according to the State-Journal of Frankfort, Kentucky, they are assumed to be the oldest Native American presence in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The SCNK states it had an estimated one thousand members as of 2009, living in several US states, and that it is "not affiliated with any other group calling themselves Southern Cherokee".

Great Grant Deed Transaction for the sale of property by the Cherokee Nation

The Great Grant Deed, also known as The Great Grant, was a transaction for the sale of property by the Cherokee Nation to Richard Henderson and Company. The grant is also known as the Louisa purchase or the Transylvania purchase. The transaction occurred at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River on March 17, 1775. The Great Grant was for lands forming Henderson's new Transylvania Colony comprising much of what is now the state of Kentucky.

The original alignment of Kentucky Route 67 (KY 67) was a north–south primary state highway that traversed Edmonson and Warren counties in south central Kentucky. It was one of the original state routes of the state highway system maintained by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. It was established in 1929 and was officially decommissioned in 1969. At the time of its removal from the state route system, it was estimated to be 21.491 miles (34.586 km) long as determined by the KYTC's state route logs and county road logs.

Green River National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge located in Kentucky across the Ohio River from Evansville, Indiana.

References

  1. U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Scuffletown, Henderson County, Kentucky
  2. "Gunboats at Buffington Island". Wideopenwest.com. Retrieved 2012-07-14.
  3. "Henderson County Public Library - Genealogy and Local History - Oral History Audios". Hcpl.org. Retrieved 2012-07-14.
  4. "hcpl.org". hcpl.org. Retrieved 2012-07-14.