Massacre at Cavett's Station: Frontier Tennessee during the Cherokee Wars

Chapter 4. The Lost Station

Chapter 4 The Lost Station Alexander Cavett died intestate. Since his entire family perished with him, his next closest kin, brothers Moses, Richard, and Michael, inherited his property, with the tract later descending to Moses who lived on the property (Cavett n.d.). Moses died in 1802 and appears to have been buried near his brother in the Mars Hill Cemetery. The Cavett tract was inherited by his wife Agnes (Nancy) Meetch Cavett who, according to Moses’s last will and testament, should hold the tract during her natural life and at her death the land be sold by his executor and the monies arising from the sale of the tract equally divided between his sons—Richard, John, Moses, and Thomas and his married daughters Rebecca Cavett Holloway, and Susanna Cavett Shoemaker (Cavett n.d.; Tennessee Superior Court 1807). The Knox County tax list for 1806 lists Agnes Cavett owning 640 acres in the county (Creekmore 1980:89). Sometime before the death of Moses Cavett, Thomas Hutchings, who sold the 640–acre tract to Alexander Cavett in 1790, and then living in Nashville , attempted to recover the tract in court, claiming that he had not legally conveyed it to Alexander. Since the original deed was apparently destroyed when the Cavett’s house was burned, witnesses for the Cavetts including James White, founder of Knoxville, testified that they saw and read the deed of conveyance, that it was for the 640 acre tract on which the Cavitt family was killed, and that Hutchings acknowledged receiving part of the purchase money for the tract. The court judgment was in favor of Moses Cavitt (Tennessee Superior Court 1807). Although it appears that Alexander Cavett had legal ownership to the property, did the swearing of an oath to his wife’s death have something to do with problems of the conveyance of the deed? In other words, was Alexander already aware before his death that there was a problem with the conveyance of his deed to his survivors? 90 The Lost Station After the death of Hutchings in 1804, fearing that his heirs might again attempt to seize the Cavett property at the demise of the witnesses to the existence of the deed of conveyance, Thomas Cavitt again went to court to verify and perpetuate the earlier testimony of James White and the other witnesses. By the time Agnes Cavett died in 1820, Thomas Cavett had bought up the other family members’ share in the property, purchasing John’s share in 1813 and Richard’s share in 1820 (Knox County Tennessee Deed Records). Agnes Cavett was probably laid to rest next to her husband in the Mars Hill Cemetery . A field stone marker seen earlier by the author probably marked their resting place. Thomas Cavett’s daughter, Nancy, who was born in 1807, married Joseph Lones in 1823. The next year, Thomas Cavett sold the 640-acre tract to Joseph Lones. According to family lore, Joseph and Nancy Lones lived on or near Kingston Pike, about 100 yards west of where the Red Lobster restaurant now stands. Since it is unlikely that Moses would have built his house on or near where his brother and family met such a horrible death, it is probable that Joseph and Nancy lived in the Moses Cavett house. Joseph Lones died on May 25, 1872 (his surname is spelled Lonas on his gravestone), and Nancy followed him in death on October 31, 1884. Their gravestones are in the Mars Hill Cemetery (figures 10 and 11). On May 26, Figure 10. Tombstone of Joseph Lonas. Photo by the author. Figure 11. Tombstone of Nancy Cavett Lonas. Photo by the author. The Lost Station 91 1873, the estate of Joseph Lones deeded as a gift 164 acres to his daughter, Mary Ann Lones Kidd, wife of Maccager Kidd. Mary Ann died on October 25, 1907, and is also buried in the Mars Hill Cemetery. At her death, this tract was deeded to her daughter Lula, who married Fred Broome. After Lula Kidd Broome’s death on October 15, 1939, the land passed on to her two daughters—Flossie Walker, who lived on the south side of the spring, and Mae Mynatt, who sold her portion of the inheritance on the north side of the spring to developer Dan Culp. He was still the owner of the property when this study first began in 1982 (Cavett n.d.). It...