Russellville: from Big Boiling Spring to a county seat

A local historian put Butcher there around 1780, but others have questioned it, and historian W. R. Jillson found no written record of anyone living on the site before 1790, when William Cook and his wife built Cook’s Cabin (Cook’s Station) about a mile east of today’s town, joined by 18-year-old William Stewart. The settlement became Logan Court House when it was picked as the seat of the new Logan County in 1792.

Gen. William Russell, who held a 2,000-acre grant there for Revolutionary War service, donated land for the platted county seat in 1795; the town took his name in 1798, and the legislature formally established it on Jan. 15, 1810. The same county saw the Rev. James McGready’s June 1800 camp meeting at the Red River Meeting House, often counted as the start of the Revival of 1800, and Andrew Jackson’s fatal 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson at Harrison’s Mill. The map pin marks downtown Russellville at the courthouse square.