Pigeon Creek History

Pigeon Creek flows south along the western line of West Marion Township to join Crab Orchard Creek where Cash pond once stretched its waters. When the first of the Chamness family came to this neighborhood, they heard from hunters about the great flocks of passenger pigeons that once roosted along this little creek. These beautiful birds with opalescent plumage are now extinct, but their numbers once obscured the sun as they passed in their annual migration. A man shot into a flock to test a gun for which he was bargaining, and brought down forty-five birds, enough to fill a bushel basket. Where the flocks roosted, they broke down the limbs of trees with their weight. Hunters flailed them off these roosts into sacks for the city markets.

Pigeon Creek Missionary Baptist church and Chamnesstown school are landmarks in the area watered by Pigeon creek.

(Extracted from Pioneer Folks and Places, Barbara Barr Hubbs, 1939 which is on sale at the Williamson County Museum)