Buffalo
Buffalo is an unincorporated community in eastern Scott County, named for Buffalo Creek, which carves through the valley settlement on its way to New River. Buffalo is located east of Huntsville and southeast of Oneida, and the heart of the settlement was located where Smith Creek empties into Buffalo Creek.
See Also: Communities of Scott County
Geography
The Buffalo community can be generally defined as the Buffalo Creek valley from Pine Hill on the east end to Annadell on the west end. Major tributaries of Buffalo Creek include Stanley Creek, Smith Creek, and Rockhouse Fork. Just east of Smith Creek, Buffalo Creek turns away from Buffalo Road and follows Sugar Grove Road to Jeffers Road (Old Highway 63). After crossing under S.R. 63, Buffalo Creek is largely unsettled until it reaches the Winona community, where it empties into New River. A major tributary of Buffalo Creek east of S.R. 63 is Straight Fork Creek.
Most of the Buffalo community falls into the 37841 (Oneida) zip code, though areas east and south of Smith Creek and Marcum Creek, including the Sugar Grove and Rock House neighborhoods, fall into the 37847 (Pioneer) zip code.
Areas in the Buffalo Creek valley are little more than 1,000 feet in elevation. However, the highest peaks of the Cumberland Mountains that surround the streams are about 2,800 feet in elevation.
View Tree Knob, with an elevation of 2,750 feet and a rise of 980 feet, is the only peak in Scott County to qualify as a summit. It is located on Buffalo Mountain, southeast of and overlooking where Marcum Creek empties into Smith Creek. The Scott-Campbell county line runs along View Tree Knob.
Business & Commerce
There are no major businesses located in the Buffalo community. It has traditionally been a residential and farming community.
Schools
Traditionally, there were schools at Smith Creek, Black Gum, and Sugar Grove, as well as Buffalo School, which was located where Smith Creek empties into Buffalo Creek — the traditional heart of the Buffalo community. Further north were Arches Creek School and Posey.
Today, students in the Buffalo community are served by either Huntsville Elementary and Huntsville Middle, or Fairview School, as well as Scott High School.
Churches
There are a number of churches dotting the Buffalo community. Where Stanley Creek empties into Buffalo Creek is the Mt. Zion United Baptist Church. Further north, towards Pine Hill, is Salem Baptist Church. Although it isn’t traditionally considered part of the Buffalo community, Pine Hill United Baptist Church is located along Buffalo Road near the Pine Hill crossroads. At Smith Creek is the New Salem United Baptist Church. In the Sugar Grove neighborhood is the Sugar Grove Missionary Baptist Church. On the hill above it is Five Black Gums United Baptist Church. Finally, where Sugar Grove Road meets Old 63 is the Buffalo Bridge Missionary Baptist Church.
Origins
Buffalo was one of the first communities settled in Scott County in the 1800s. Settlers moving south out of Kentucky and east out of North Carolina were attracted to the fertile bottomlands along Buffalo Creek. At the time, the area was part of Anderson County. When Campbell County was established in 1806, Buffalo was part of it. Scott County was not established until 1849.
When Scott County was established by act of the Tennessee General Assembly, a committee was appointed to decide where to locate the county seat. Before the county chose Huntsville due to its location on the Monticello-to-Jacksboro Road, its central location, and the town spring, it considered making Buffalo the county seat.
Buffalo in the Civil War
Buffalo has a rich Civil War history. It had a relatively high population, compared to the rest of Scott County, during the war, which made it the target of frequent raids by Confederate regiments.
One of the first incidents to happen at Buffalo during the war was a Confederate raid at the farm of Hiram Marcum. Marcum, a staunch Union loyalist, was serving as a pilot for East Tennesseans who were slipping north into Kentucky to join the federal army. This made him a marked man in the eyes of the Confederacy. In September 1861, a Confederate regiment arrived at his farm intent on hanging him. Marcum, having received word that they were coming, was hiding in the woods when they arrived. The soldiers forced their way into the house and attacked Marcum’s wife and daughters. His 16-year-old daughter, Julia Marcum, was seriously wounded, losing an eye and a finger but killing a rebel soldier in the process. She would later be the first woman awarded a combatant’s pension for her role in the Civil War.
Confederate soldiers returned to the Marcum farm in January 1862, shooting and killing George Marcum, Hiram’s nephew who was on leave from the Union army. The second incident prompted the Marcum family to leave Buffalo. Marcum himself joined the Union army, while his wife and daughters moved north to Kentucky. Marcum would not return home from the army. He died of illness in Nashville later in the war. His son-in-law, Dr. Lafayette Sproule, lived in Scott County for a short period of time and served as one of Scott County’s first school superintendents.
The Marcum farm was located about where Marcum Creek empties into Smith Creek.
Read More: Scott County’s Civil War heroine
Later in the war, a Confederate regiment raided several homes throughout the Buffalo community, and shot and hanged two men — Larkin Cross and Ranson Vanover. A number of Scott Countians who were part of the Scott County Rangers were indicted in connection with those murders after the war, but fled the county to avoid prosecution.
Several other incidents occurred in the community during the Civil War, including the murder of a Confederate soldier who was returning home to Campbell County along Sugar Grove Road after the war ended.
After the war
Several years after the war, outlaws Jesse and Frank James lived in Huntsville for a period of time under assumed names, and were said to have kept their horses at the home of George Marcum — Hiram Marcum’s brother — on Marcum Creek. Locals call a hollow along Marcum Creek “Horse Lot Hollow,” and legend has it that the James brothers’ horses were kept there.
After the death of George Marcum’s wife, historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote, grave robbers dug up her grave, believing gold given to her by the James brothers had been buried with her.
Read More: The legend of the James gang in Scott County
Still later, a Union soldier from Pennsylvania who had marched through Scott County as part of Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Ohio in 1863 — John Fetterman — returned to the county and settled down on Smith Creek, near where New Salem United Baptist Church is located. He established a bowl factory called Fetterman Bowl Company and started a post office. The community was known as Bowl for a period of time, as that was the name of the post office. The post office opened in June 1891 and closed in 1907. The last postmaster there was William R. Posey.
First Families
In her book, County Scott and Its Mountain Folk, historian Esther Sharp Sanderson wrote that the first two settlers to arrive at Buffalo were Isham Sharp and Thomas Chambers. The men “left their wagons at LaFollette and came through with their families and cattle and with horses carrying their belongings,” she wrote. “They made several trips back and forth before they finally got their meager possessions over the mountain trails to the present site of Buffalo.”
Thomas Laxton was another early settler of Buffalo. Sanderson wrote: “Thomas Laxton, with all his worldly possessions on his back, trudged on foot carrying two hound pups and some fruit trees to Smoky, from North Carolina. He later moved to Buffalo, where he married and reared a large family.”
The Chambers
The patriarch of the Chambers clan that settled at Buffalo was actually Thomas Chambers’ father, William Chambers (1750-1840). He was originally from Virginia, and a Revolutionary War veteran. Family legend has it that he was captured by Indians during the war and taken to Arkansas, where he learned the customs of the natives and was accepted as one of them, and given the nickname “Walkingstick” (Da-Sti-Sti). The legend says that he married an Indian woman named Tar-Chee-See.
Thomas Chambers was one of five children of William Chambers. He married the daughter of another Revolutionary War veteran who moved to Scott County, Catherine Lakey “Katie” Lawson. Her father was Randolph Lawson, one of four Lawson brothers who fought in the war and later moved to present-day Scott County. None of them settled at Buffalo.
Thomas and Katie had at least 13 children. One of them, James Riley Chambers, served on the committee that was tasked with locating the county seat after Scott County was formed in 1849.
William, Thomas, Katie, and many other members of the Chambers family are buried at the Chambers Cemetery, which is located near the old Buffalo School.
The Sharps
Isham Sharp may have indeed accompanied the Chambers family to present-day Scott County, but the records are complicated.
Some online genealogy sources place an Isham Sharp who married Mary Holt in Rockingham, N.C., in Scott County at some point after that marriage in 1813. However, this Isham Sharp appears to be a different Isham Sharp. According to Genevieve E. Peters’ history book, the Isham Sharp from Rockingham, N.C., who married Mary Holt died in Russell County, Ky., in 1844. Indeed, there is an Isham Sharp listed in Adair County, Ky., in 1820, and in neighboring Russell County, Ky., after that. He is listed in 1840 as a Revolutionary War pensioner living in Russell County.
Separately, an Isham Sharp appears in Campbell County (which Buffalo was then a part of) when the 1840 census was taken. An Isham Sharp born about 1779 appeared in the 1860 census in Scott County. He was married to Sarah Sharp, and was born in North Carolina. This appears to be Isham McKinley Sharp, who died in 1870 and is buried at Newcomb Cemetery in Campbell County. He also appeared in Scott County when the 1850 census was taken, with his wife and children William Sharp (age 25) and Emilia Sharp (21).
This Isham Sharp appeared on a tax list in Campbell County in 1838, the earliest record of his presence in Tennessee.
Sorting through the broken records trail, it appears that Isham Sharp was born in North Carolina in 1780, and married Sarah Martha Joyce in 1805. They had at least eight children.
Making the move to Tennessee with Isham Sharp was likely his brother, James Sharp (1782-1843), and perhaps another brother, Richard Nicholas Sharp Jr. (~1775-1823). It has also been suggested that their parents, Richard Nicholas Sharp Sr. and Elizabeth Sharp, made the move to Buffalo with them.
James Sharp’s son, James L. Sharp (1816-1893), settled in Winfield and became Scott County’s third sheriff. James L.’s parents did not settle at Buffalo, but instead lived in the Buckeye area of Campbell County, near present-day Pioneer. His son, Nicholas Sharp, built the two-story motel in Winfield that became known as the Hines Motel.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing to conclusively place the Sharp family at Buffalo, though Isham Sharp certainly lived in Scott County. However, read on…
The Laxtons
Besides the Chambers family, one of the most prominent families at Buffalo through the years has been the Laxton family.
Thomas Laxton (1795-1862), mentioned by Sanderson in her book, was the first to make the move, and was likely on the scene by 1814, when he enlisted in the East Tennessee Militia at Knoxville as a substitute for James Isom.
Laxton married Elizabeth Goad (1800-1881) and they had several children, including Alfred (1821-1892), John “Jackie” (1830-1918), Thomas Jr. (1840-1923), Levi (1843-1864), and likely others.
Esau Laxton (1884-1956) was a Scott County sheriff in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a great-grandson of Thomas Laxton, the son of Isham “Sharp” Laxton (1865-1941). His son, Jack O. Laxton (1923-2002), also served as sheriff of Scott County. Jack Laxton’s son, Darryl Laxton, is a long-time chief of police in Oneida. He is a third-great-grandson of Thomas Laxton.
Esau Laxton’s father, Isham Laxton, was called Sharp because that was his mother’s maiden name. John Jackson Laxton married Amanda “Millie” Sharp (1822-1914). She was the daughter of Isham Sharp and Sarah Joyce — providing the clearest evidence that Isham Sharp did, indeed, settle at Buffalo.
The Laxton Cemetery at Buffalo contains more than 200 graves.
The Marcums
No examination of Buffalo’s first families would be complete without a study of the Marcum family, for whom Marcum Creek is named. Marcum Creek empties into Smith Creek.
Hiram Marcum, the Buffalo farmer whose home was attacked by Confederate soldiers in 1861, was the son of Arthur Markham III (1757-1832) and Anna Bransgrove (1851). His parents had apparently already settled at Marcum Creek when Hiram was born in 1812.
There are two branches of Marcums in Scott County, and both are descended from Arthur Markham III and Anna Bransgrove. John Arthur Marcum, Hiram’s brother, settled the Pine Creek area near Oneida. John Arthur’s son was George Marcum, Hiram’s nephew who was murdered by Confederate soldiers at the Marcum Creek farm in 1862.
Hiram and John Arthur also had another brother, also named George Marcum, who lived at Marcum Creek near Hiram. It was he and his wife, Mary Ann Hanks, who are said to have kept the horses of outlaws Jesse and Frank James when the James brothers were staying in Scott County under assumed names shortly after the Civil War.
It isn’t clear where Arthur Markham and his wife, Anna, are buried, but it may be in unmarked graves at the Marcum Cemetery on Marcum Creek.
While descendants of the Chambers and Laxtons can still be found at Marcum Creek today, the Marcums left long ago.
The Smiths
Smith Creek, which empties into Buffalo Creek, takes its name from Drewry (or Drewery) Smith. Born 1794, he was the son of William Smith and Suzan Lampkin, and was a veteran of the War of 1812.
Smith had several children, including: Drewery (or Drury) Smith Jr., Kisiah Smith, Jane Smith, Jackson G. Smith, William F. Smith, Henry C. Smith, and John Smith.
According to historian H. Clay Smith, a descendant, in his book, Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, Drewery Smith and another Scott Countian, Sam Walker, participated in the movement of the Cherokee to Oklahoma, known as the “Trail of Tears.” At some point along the route, according to Smith, Drewery Smith and Walker became disgusted with the treatment of the Indians and began helping some of them escape.
Drury Smith Jr. lived at Smith Creek, along with other members of his family, during the Civil War. While Drury Smith was neutral, his nephew, Ewell Smith, was staunchly pro-Confederacy. He was a deputy sheriff in Scott County, and had served as postmaster at Straight Fork. His father, Drury Smith’s brother, John Lampkin Smith, had served as Scott County’s first circuit court clerk. John Smith’s wife was Keziah Gibson, and the Gibson family were strong Confederate sympathizers. Ewell Smith helped found the Scott County Rangers, a pro-Confederacy group, and was among the 17 men indicted by a grand jury for murdering Ranson Vanover and Larkin Cross at Buffalo in 1862.
The historian H. Clay Smith wrote that Ewell Smith’s brother, Callie Smith, was home on leave from the rebel army and was ambushed by the Scott County Home Guard, the pro-Union counterpart to the Scott County Rangers. As Smith attempted to reach Drury Smith’s home at Smith Creek, the historian wrote, he and others in his company encountered Vanover and Cross, and hanged them.
The Duncans
The Duncan family settled on Stanley Creek, which empties into Buffalo Creek just north of Smith Creek. The first to settle there was Civil War veteran Joshua J. Duncan (1833-1909). He was the son of Champion C. Duncan (1806-1904), and married Mary Sintha Cross (1831-1888). Later, following Mary’s death, he married Harriet Cross, the daughter of Larkin Cross, who was murdered during the Civil War.
Another of the Duncan clan was Oliver Duncan, who was present with Larkin Cross and Ranson Vanover when they were killed, but managed to escape. Duncan married Joshua J. Duncan’s sister, Rutha, who was his cousin. Larkin Cross married Oliver Duncan’s sister, Henrietta Clara Duncan.
The Crosses
Larkin Cross was the son of Louis Micajah Cross (1780-1846) and Lovis Duncan (1799-1887). Micajah and Lovis had at least six children. The oldest was Caswell Cross (1822-1893), whose farm was raided by Confederate soldiers the same day Larkin was killed.
Micajah Cross was born in Maryland before the Cross family moved to Tennessee. His father, William Cross (1762-1833), made the move to Tennessee with his family. He settled in the Oak Ridge area of Anderson County. Exactly when the family moved to Tennessee isn’t certain, but it was probably between 1823 and 1825.