History & local legend
Betty Knox’s legend belongs to the mountain country near Dunbar and Dunbar Creek in Fayette County. She lived alone on a farm and regularly drove an oxcart to Isaac Meason’s gristmill in Ferguson Hollow. Neighbors knew her routine well enough to notice when the cart stopped appearing.
Searchers followed her usual route up the mountain and examined the farm, but found neither Betty nor her ox. The following spring, someone returned to the watering place where she used to stop. The ox’s bones lay tethered to a tree beside the spring, in a spot that had already been searched. Betty was still missing.
The tale gives them a different kind of return: people report glimpsing a woman between the trees and hearing an ox call from the woods. A Legends & Lore marker preserves the disappearance and the wandering spirits near the spring associated with her daily journey.
