Knox County Mystery: The elusive catamount of Hunt’s Station

MILLER TOWNSHIP — There never was a lot to Hunt’s Station, and today there’s next to nothing at all.

At its height around 1875, the Knox County hamlet on the border of Pleasant and Miller townships had at least a little bit of a presence, though even then it was largely overlooked.

An unknown writer of a letter to the editor of the Mount Vernon Republican on April 6, 1875 decried this:

“I notice letters from Martinsburg and Brandon, containing items of interest. But apropos some person has slighted our quiet little village, located on the B&O R. R., six miles from your place viz., Hunt’s Station.

“I don’t want you to think this a place of little importance, but far from it. I have understood there was more stock shipped from here than at any other point on the road.

“And then we have a freight, and express, and post office, first class boarding house, dry goods and grocery store just across the street. And last but not least, a first-class blacksmith, who does his work in good style.”

The discursive writer then goes on to note that recently, however, a number of people had been selling their homes around Hunt’s Station and moving to town, by which he presumably means Mount Vernon.

The ostensible reason for this seems the letter writer’s real subject, which he only gets to in the final paragraph of his letter.

“Quite an excitement prevails at present in regard to buying and selling land, giving up their good old country homes, and going to town or elsewhere.

“I don’t know why this is, only there had been a ‘catamount’ infesting the country every Fall for some years causing great excitement at times so that the people shoulder arms and take their dogs for a general hunt.

“Some of the men were so frightened at the report that they would not leave their houses after four o’clock. And if they had to go to the Station or a neighboring house, they would go armed and on horseback and I guess the said animal is at large yet.”

The letter writer rambles into a closing statement about packing ice to save for the summer heat to come before he signs off “Trius Amicus,” a Latin phrase which translates something along the lines of “Friend of the Trinity.”

That name, plus the wayward rambling of someone with a fair amount of time on his hands, and the educated, somewhat fancy tone of the letter makes me suspect it was the pastor of some country church in the vicinity of Hunt’s Station who wrote the letter.

Sure enough, consultation of the 1871 atlas shows that there was a church on the west side of the village, just over the border into Miller Township. But this letter is the only reference I’ve been able to find to this incident. “Catamount” is an old-fashioned term for a mountain lion (short for “cat of the mountain”).

Since the letter writer puts it in quotes, it sounds like he’s acknowledging it’s a phrase that even then only old-timers would use.

But could there actually have been a cougar in Knox County in 1875?

One animal that has always remained in these parts despite the modern shrinking of its habitat is the bobcat, but one would hope that between the considerable size difference, and the distinctive way the bobcat’s tail is stubby as opposed to the long, swishing tail of a cougar, most residents of Knox County in 1875 should have been able to distinguish the difference.

Mountain lions were once plentiful here. The so-called “Alligator Mound” in Granville may very well actually depict a cougar, for the early natives of this region had folk tales about a mythological creature known as the underwater panther, for they believed that cougars were an earthly manifestation of that evil otherworldly creature.

It has been conjectured that “underwater panther” got lost in translation to early settlers, resulting in the identification of the mound as an alligator (evil creature attacking from beneath the water, right?), despite that reptile never having been native to Ohio.

Big cats (or, more properly speaking in terms of scientific taxonomy, the largest of the small cats, unlike lions and tigers) were still widespread in the eastern U.S. in the frontier period, but their numbers only slowly declined over the next centuries.

While they are for most practical considerations extinct from Ohio today, it is certainly possible that in 1875, Knox County could have had the occasional real mountain lion, which certainly would have offered tremendous problems for livestock that might fall prey to such a predator.

While cougars don’t often attack humans, they certainly can, and under the right conditions, they can kill a human.

Unfortunately, I’ve found no further reference to this sighting, so we can only suppose that the big cat eventually moved its way elsewhere.

Meanwhile, I have been dealing with an infestation at my own home, namely a parlor puma (also known as a lounge lion, teacup tiger, or couch cougar) named Lady Jane, who has been known to render cat toys to a mass of thread and stuffing, and pounce on cat snacks with alacrity.

If the infestation gets worse, I’ll be sure to pen an erudite and wayward letter to the editor.