Scott County Courthouse – (Farris’s Station)
Truly the gateway into the interior of the Alleghenies and to the Transalleghenay country, this site was a trail hub in Indian and in pioneer days. The Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail went west along the road you are using and to the head of Little Moccasin Creek. A less significant trail ran to the northwest to Carter’s Fort at Rye Cove and on to the head of Powell Valley, and the Cherokee to Shawnee Trail ran towards Fort Blackmore from a point about a half a mile to your east. Due east one gained access to the reaches of Big Moccasin Creek where Fort Houston was situated, and on further to Copper Creek.
Elijah Ferris (various spellings) built a station just across the road to the north of the present high school to guard this intersection of trails. August 26, 1791 Chief Bob Benge of the Chickamauga Cherokee attacked Ferris’s Station and killed everyone in the family except for Nancy, who was a child, and who was carried into captivity.
Benge returned in 1793 and attacked the Paul Livingston family that lived toward the head of Little Moccasin Creek. Livingston’s wife was probably the daughter of Elijah Ferris, and had been killed in the attack on her parent’s home two years earlier.