Knott County Comes Into Being: Some Background and Details

Knott County Comes Into Being SOME BACKGROUND AND DETAILS The approximately 354 square miles now know as Knott County is a small irregular , artificial, boundary as seen on a map of the Cumberland Plateau, that deeply and intricately dissected land that comprises most of Eastern Kentucky. Knott County is a land of sharp, winding ridges and a network of intersecting creeks, branches, and hollows that trickle, drain, and flow through narrow valleys. It is an interesting land, often a very beautiful land, and always a very rough land. Geologists tell that unimaginable eons went into the shaping of its geo-physical features . It is a sedimentary land, which means that the layers of rock, shale, clay, etc., that lie over and under the coal beds were deposited by water. For periods of time the area was a marshy land suitable for tremendous plant growth; at other periods, an inland lake or sea. Eventually the land was thrust upward as a plateau. Then began the long process of erosion and weathering that chiseled down through the compressed strata, dissecting the plateau in the deep, intricate, patterns and indentations of hills, creeks, and "hollers" as they are seen today. Eventually, too, the surface was covered with a magnificent forest, a marvelous plant and animal life. This is how it was when the Indian found it, and how it was when the first white man found it. The first white men to know Eastern Kentucky well were probably the Long Hunters of Southwest Virginia. There are records of these men who hunted in Kentucky twenty years or more before the Indian War of 1776. Some of them consistently hunted north of Cumberland Gap and beyond the Black and Cumberland Mountains in an area they called "The Brush." These long hunters usually went out in October and returned in April with their furs, skins, and hides. They were men wise in woodcraft and the arts necessary to their occupation and survival. They named many of the streams and prominent landmarks and paved the way for the settlers . Knott County was generally settled later than the surrounding territory because of its location on the headwaters of creeks and smaller streams. The greater part of it is drained by upper Troublesome and Quicksand Creeks and Carr Fork, all flowing in to the North Fork of the Kentucky River. A lesser part is drained by Salt Lick, Jones Fork, Caney, and upper parts" of Beaver Creek which eventually flow into the Big Sandy River. Early settlers tended to establish homeseats on larger streams and rivers where there was more bottom land and open space. Just who die first permanent settlers (or settler) in Knott County were is not known with any certainty. Some families claim their ancestors came before 1800, but most accounts and records point to dates after 1800. They came from North Carolina and Virginia primarily with some from West Virginia and Tennessee. They were of Scotch, Scotch Irish, Irish, Dutch, French and English descent, with perhaps the preponderance heavily on the English 4 side (Anglo-Saxon!). Their folklore was largely English in origin. The first known settler near the Forks of Troublesome where Hindman is now located was Samuel Cornett, the son of William Cornett, a Revolutionary soldier. He built a large, two-story log house and water mill above The Forks on the left hand tributary of Troublesome. He was an old man when Knott County was formed in 1884. But this in no way proves that Samuel Cornett was among the early settlers of Knott County. Uncle Solomon Everidge (Everage) was described as being an old man (at least in his sixties) in 1884 and eighty in 1899 when he made his famous, barefoot, hatless, journey to Hazard to ask Katherine Pettit and May Stone to come to Hindman to establish a school. He grew up on Troublesome Creek and was known as the "gran-daddy of Troublesome ." Clabe Jones, the famous Knott County feudist, born in 1826 on Beaver Creek, related that his father was the first man to live on Jones Fork, for whom the creek was named. He told of using handmills for grinding corn and a sifter made...