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The Cavett (spelled Cavet in some places) Station is named for an early settlement located on Broome Road off Middlebrook Pike in Knoxville, TN. The fort was probably the site of one of the area’s worst battles between Cherokee and Creek Indians and white settlers.
Alexander Cavett’s fort or station, called so because travelers often stopped there for a rest, was really not much more than a log cabin and was located on the road leading from Kingston Pike toward Ball Camp, between Ten Mile Creek and Lyon’s Creek, adjacent to Middlebrook Road.
It was an accident of history that Cavett’s settlement became a target of the Indians. In 1791 for a sum of $5,000 to the Indians, the Treaty of the Holston gave the white settlers rights to settle virtually all of East Tennessee and use of the Tennessee River. However in 1792, the Cherokee near Chattanooga declared war on the United States.
In June 1793, a part of a militia made an unauthorized raid against friendly Cherokees. It was then that the Cherokee formed an alliance with the Creek Indians. Chief John Watts and Doublehead, chief of the Cherokees, joined forces in September 1793 with a plan to capture Knoxville. They were deterred by cannon fire from Knoxville announcing sunrise and that they had been discovered. The Indians turned to nearby Cavett Station for easier pickings.
Once the attack began, the three men inside Cavett’s Station killed two of the warriors and wounded three more. A truce was called and the offer of surrender was accepted by Cavett and the others. However, when the residents agreed and emerged, they were brutally murdered by enraged Doublehead and the station was burned down. The 12 victims included Alexander Cavett, his wife Susanna, their children and three male visitors to Cavett Station. (One of the visitors was an ancestor of Cavett Station DAR member, Rebecca Gettelfinger.) The Indians left and were soon being chased by General James White and 40 angry men from Knoxville. The bodies of the Cavetts and their visitors are buried in the old Mars Hill Cemetery in a common grave, about 400 feet from where their home stood. In 1921, the Tennessee Society of the Sons of the Revolution erected a monument at the site as a memorial.
There are different stories about the survivors of the massacre. One of the Cavett’s sons was on a business trip and became the only survivor, but that has been disproved when the land was inherited by Alexander Cavett’s brothers. Another story was the youngest son was taken prisoner and either killed later or taken to the Creek reservation.
Alexander Cavett’s 640-acre tract along what was then known as the Sinking Creek area was inherited by Moses, Richard, and Michael Cavett. Moses eventually acquired his brothers’ portions and lived on the land with his wife, Agnes, until his death in 1802. The fact that Alexander’s deed to the land burned when the attackers set fire to the station after the massacre caused problems many years later. The previous owner, Thomas Hutchings, tried to have the Cavett’s evicted from the property, but prominent men in Knoxville testified that Hutchings had in fact sold the land to Alexander Cavett. In the end, the land stayed in the hands of the Cavett family.
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