Scottsville, Texas

William Thomas Scott arrived in Harrison County in June of eighteen forty with his family and a large group of enslaved people, and quickly set about building a cotton empire. He acquired several large tracts of land and eventually established five plantations. The main residence his enslaved workers constructed was said to be identical to Jefferson Davis's Mississippi mansion. Scott became one of the county's wealthiest planters and a prominent Methodist, helping found the community's first church.

The formal town of Scottsville grew up around his holdings and received a post office in eighteen sixty-nine. Today Scottsville is a quiet community of a few hundred people in the Piney Woods, the plantation world that shaped it long gone, though a cemetery still marks the land.