The Tennessee country

 The Tennessee Country where Duncan Stewart moved



Several Indian tribes claimed parts of the Tennessee country or used it as a hunting ground.  The Chickasaws lived in Alabama and Mississippi but also claimed western Tennessee.  Some Shawnees lived for a time in central Tennessee but moved away to the north.  The Creek and Yuchi also lived for a time in Tennessee, but only the Cherokees took up permanent residence in the Tennessee country.  The Cherokee claimed all of central and eastern Tennessee but lived in a small area in southeastern Tennessee.



The first white men were probably the De Soto expedition in 1539.  They landed in May at Tampa Bay in Florida and traveled northward through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and into the southeastern corner of Tennessee reaching the Tennessee River near Chattanooga.  They traveled west across Alabama and Mississippi.  On May 8, 1541 they stood on a bluff near the present Memphis and looked on the Mississippi River.  They crossed into Arkansas where De Soto died.  The remainder floated down the river and made their way to Mexico.



As early as 1673 a group of explorers led by James Needham and Gabriel Arthur crossed the mountains from Virginia and looked down the valleys of eastern Tennessee.  By 1690 traders had reached the Cherokees in eastern Tennessee. In 1673 Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet floated down the Mississippi from Canada and stopped at the Chickasaw bluffs within the Tennessee country.  In 1682 another Frenchman named La Salle came down the Mississippi and even constructed a fort at the mouth of the Hatchie River[1] in western Tennessee called Fort Prud’homme.  Other Frenchmen pushed up the Ohio to the mouths of the Tennessee and the Cumberland Rivers.  The first recorded white man on the Cumberland was Martin Chartier, a Frenchman and a deserter from La Salle’s forces, who settled about 1692 at French Lick, now Nashville, where he married a Shawnee.  In 1714 a French trader named Jean du Charleville came up the Cumbereland and established a store for trade with the Indians near the present Nashville.  He was killed by the Chickasaws who had by this time expelled the Shawnee.  The site was called French Lick because it was near a salt spring where deer came to lick.  In June 1766 James Smith explored the country south of Kentucky along the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers to the Ohio and he found no vestige of the white man there.

In 1760 Daniel Boone explored the Tennessee country.  In 1763 England ordered all settlers to stay out of the Indian country.  This order was not obeyed.  The first permanent settler in Tennessee may have been Andrew Greer and Julius Dugger in 1766. William Bean built a cabin on the Watauga River in northeastern Tennessee in 1769. One group containing the French Huguenots Valentine Sevier and his son John settled along the Watauga along with James Robertson, a North Carolinian.  A second group settled near the Holston River. There Evan Shelby and his son Isaac built a cabin near present Bristol.  A third group settled west of the Holston near present Rogersville in Carter’s Valley, John Carter of Virginia having built a trading post there in 1770.  A fourth settlement was on the Nolichucky River, south of the Holston where Jacob Brown built his trading post in 1771.



Since these settlements were in Indian territory outside the jurisdiction of North Carolina or Virginia the settlers entered into an agreement called the Watauga Association with a group of five men to govern as a sheriff and a clerk. Troubles continued with the Indians until a treaty in 1777.  The Wataugans organized themselves into the Washington District in 1775 and during the Indian wars petitioned North Carolina to make them a part of that state.  North Carolina did so in 1777 and all of the Tennessee country became Washington County.  Jonesboro was the seat of government.



With the opening of the Kentucky country to settlement, the concurrent growth of emigration into what is now upper East Tennessee, and the contemplation of a colony in the middle Cumberland country, both Virginia and North Carolina recognized the need to extend their mutual boundary westward by survey toward the Mississippi.  In 1778 a bill was passed in the Virginia General Assembly and both states designated commissioners for the undertaking.  These commissioners were Dr. Thomas Walker and Daniel Smith for Virginia and Colonel Richard Henderson, John Williams, and William Bailey Smith for North Carolina.  The determined location for the beginning of the extension of the line was Steep Rock Creek.  Smith recorded his travels from August 1779 to July 1780. They worked their way westward crossing the Cumberland Mountains.  It was felt the best way to proceed through the wilderness was to follow the Kentucky Road which went northwestwardly into Kentucky. Smith was reluctant to turn away from the actual line.  In November the party crossed the Cumberland River below the mouth of the Clear Fork which is north in Kentucky and they turned into the Kentucky Road.  In the cold they went downriver which flows in a mostly westward direction for 117 miles to the place where the south flowing Cumberland crosses into Tennessee near the Obey River and present day Celina.  There they resumed running the line due west across the barrens, a grassy rolling landscape nearly devoid of trees until they reached the Cumberland Road which led due south to the French Lick.  Smith went to the French Lick and then resumed with the rest of the party running the line to the Tennessee River, the eastern bank of which was the western terminus of the state line.[2] This would be in present day Stewart County which was named for Duncan Stewart in 1803. The present western terminus of the state line is further west at the Mississippi.

 

In 1780 Patrick Ferguson, a British commander pushed out from Charleston to the west.  He heard of the settlements across the mountains.  He ordered them to surrender or he would lay their country waste. Colonel Isaac Shelby and Colonel John Sevier called for all fighting men to meet at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga on September 25, 1780. A thousand came and went to attack Ferguson who had taken a position on King’s Mountain near a line between North and South Carolina.  Ferguson was killed and the British decisively defeated.



Settlement in Middle Tennessee followed the hunters and traders who had earlier been in the region.  The first settler seems to have been either Thomas Sharp Spencer or a Frenchman named Timothy de Monbreum.  Spencer was around Bledsoe’s Lick in 1776 living in a hollow tree near the location of the present day Castalian Springs.  On the bluffs overlooking the Cumberland, De Monbreum built a cabin and trading post about 1775 and spent most of the winters there although his permanent home remained Kaskaskia in the Illinois country.



In 1770 Kasper Mansker, Uriah Stone, John Baker, Thomas Gordon, Cash Brooks, and Humphrey Hogan were known to have floated down the Cumberland and on to Natchez on the Mississippi. Mansker was known to have returned the next year and explored along the Lower Cumberland.  He also made trips in 1772 and 1775.  The Renfroes (who were traveling with the group led by John Donelson to the French Lick[3]) settled on the Red River in what is now Montgomery County in 1780 but were massacred that summer.



A group of men led by Richard Henderson purchased land from the Indians in central Kentucky and that part of Tennessee “watered by the Cumberland River.”  Henderson secured the services of James Robertson of the Watauga settlement, and eight companions set out for central Tennessee in 1779.  They cleared land, planted corn and built cabins near the present site of Nashville.  Other groups joined them from Kentucky, Casper Mansker and John Rains. These settlers from eastern Tennessee had come overland through Kentucky.  In late 1779 a group led by John Donelson[4] left east Tennessee floating down the Holston to the Tennessee, thence to the Ohio and up the Ohio to the Cumberland and up the Cumberland arriving at French Lick on April 24, 1780.  They spent a harrowing journey in bitter cold, attacked by Indians and troubled by the river currents and lack of food. When they arrived they organized their own government with 250 persons signing the Cumberland Compact.  Much time was spent in fighting Indians who attacked and killed and stole horses and drove off livestock.



In 1783 General Robertson signed a peace treaty with several Indian tribes.  From this date the Chickasaws were no longer a menace to the Cumberland settlements but Indian depredations continued.



In April 1783 North Carolina made them a part of Davidson County including the northern half of middle Tennessee.  Nashborough became Nashville the seat of government. As settlement progressed a petition was sent to North Carolina asking to have a new county created from the eastern section of Davidson.  Sumner County was created in 1786.  This was the fifth county in Tennessee joining Davidson in middle Tennessee and Washington, Sullivan and Green in eastern Tennessee.



The American Revolution ended in 1783.  North Carolina did not recognize Indians claims to Tennessee and offered for sale Tennessee land as well as giving land to veterans of the Revolution.  North Carolina appointed three commissioners to lay off certain lands in the Cumberland valley as a military land grant reservation.  Land warrants issued to North Carolina soldiers for service in the American Revolution would be exchanged for tracts within the boundaries of the reservation.[5] The United States did recognize Indian claims.  Congress for some time had been trying to get states to cede western lands to the US.  North Carolina had so far not done so.  Congress planned to create states out of western lands as soon as they were settled.  Many Tennessee settlers thought North Carolina did little for them. In 1784 representatives of Washington, Sullivan, and Greene counties held meetings at Jonesboro and declared themselves independent of North Carolina and named their new state Franklin after Benjamin Franklin.  John Sevier was elected governor.  North Carolina did not recognize this independent state nor did the Congress do anything about making Franklin a state in the union.  The state of Franklin collapsed.



In 1787 North Carolina ordered a road cut from east Tennessee to the Cumberland settlements.  Peter Avery, a hunter in the area, was chosen to blaze the trail with the help of 300 soldiers.  It began at the south end of Clinch Mountain and followed buffalo and Cherokee trails.  From Fort Southwest Point at Kingston, it went over the Cumberland Mountains to Fort Blount in present day Jackson County, then to Bledsoe’s Fort at Castalian Springs in present day Sumner County, then to Mansker’s Fort and on to Fort Nashborough.  This 300 miles of trail was mostly blazed by marking trees and was useful only for riding horseback and pack horses.  Early on, Cherokees killed 102 people on the trail and afterward militia of 50 men would escort travelers when a sufficient number had assembled at the starting area.  Avery’s Trace or the Wilderness Road was authorized to become a wagon road in the late 1790’s but so steep in places or so muddy as to be quite difficult.  Wolves, mountain lions, cayotes, deer and buffalo were noted to be numerous.[6]

The Stewarts probably used this road in their trips from North Carolina to the Cumberland in the 1790’s.



Besides continued harassment from the southern Indians, the Cumberland settlers faced the possible loss of their rights of navigation on the Mississippi, the road which their agricultural products were shipped to market at New Orleans.  Spain had threatened to close the river to colonial shipping in 1784 and in treaty negotiations with Spain, it appeared that the United States representative John Jay might trade free navigation of the Mississippi for economic benefits for the northeastern states.  On a trip to the Ohio country in 1784 to collect rents from his holdings, George Washington noted how fickle were the loyalties of the western settlers and how easily they might be lured someday by a designing foreign power like Spain which controlled the Mississippi.[7]  A meeting was called June 2, 1786 in Nashville with Daniel Smith as chairman to draw up a remonstrance to Congress against relinquishing their rights of navigation to the Court of Spain.  In Congress, western representatives did block Jay’s treaty but Spain had closed the river. Thus frustrated the settlers began to reconsider their relations with the Court of Spain at New Orleans.  In 1788 the North Carolina General Assembly passed a statute creating the Mero District for the holding of Superior Courts of Law and Equity. The naming supplied by Colonel James Robertson was a misspelled attempt to flatter Colonel Don Estevan Miro, Spanish Governor of New Orleans.  The Mero district comprised the three counties of the Cumberland country—Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee.[8]  Tennessee County with Clarksville as the county seat was formed in 1788. These three counties occupied the northern section of the middle of the present state, with Tennessee County to the west, Davidson in the center and Sumner in the east.  In the eastern part of the Tennessee territory was Sullivan and Washington Counties in the far northeast, and  Green County a long section below Washington going to the southern border of the territory.  Hawkins County was a swath west of the three other east Tennessee counties and east of Sumner.  The remainder of the Territory, western and south central, was Indian lands.  In 1796 when Tennessee became a state, Tennessee County was divided into Robertson County north of Davidson County with Springfield as the county seat and Montgomery County to the west with Clarksville as the county seat.



The North Carolina Convention in July-August 1788 did not vote to ratify the constitution of the United States.  With North Carolina outside the Union the western settlers feared renewal of Indian attacks.  In November 1788 the General Assembly authorized a Brigadier General for the Mero District electing Daniel Smith to fill the office.  Smith communicated with Governor Miro assuring him that they would petition North Carolina for cession in the autumn of 1789 and they would look with favor upon sending representatives to Miro to discuss putting themselves under the King of Spain.  This would they hoped give them Spanish protection from the Indians and open the Mississippi River to their commerce. Smith remained in communication with Governor Miro and with Governor Samuel Johnson of North Carolina.  Spain did open the Mississippi but imposed a fifteen percent duty.  The United States Congress did send a delegation to treat with the southern Indians.  By the time Smith left for Fayetteville, North Carolina in October he expected North Carolina to agree to the Federal Constitution and enter the Union and also he expected passage of the Cession Act which would open territorial status to the Southwest and that would help with the Indian threat. The convention did ratify the constitution in late 1789 (Duncan Stewart, a delegate from Bladen County voted no.) and the General Assembly meeting afterward passed the cession act on February 25, 1790.[9]  Duncan Stewart was a representative of Bladen County in the General Assembly. 



When North Carolina gave her western lands to the United States in 1790 Congress on May 26 passed the act creating the Territory of the United States Southwest of the River Ohio.  President George Washington signed it and appointed William Blount Governor and Daniel Smith to be secretary.[10] Blount made his headquarters at William Cobb’s near Jonesborough in Washington County until Knoxville founded by James White was created in 1792. Knoxville was designated territorial capital in 1794.  The territory contained Washington, Sullivan, Green and Hawkins Counties in the east called the Washington District and Tennessee, Davidson and Sumner Counties of the Mero District in the Cumberland. James Robertson was selected to command the militia in the Mero District and John Sevier in the east.



The life of the Southwest Territory was filled with Indian troubles.  Whites continued to settle on Indian lands and hostility was further increased by the activities of the Spanish.  Spain controlled New Orleans and a strip of land east along the Gulf of Mexico to the Florida peninsula.  They hoped to also get Alabama and Tennessee.  Encouraging Indian attacks on the English settlers could help.



By 1793 the territory had enough settlers to entitle it to a legislature.  In December the counties elected delegates who assembled at Knoxville on February 27, 1794.  The Indian question was foremost in their minds.  They sent a petition to congress begging for a declaration of war on the Cherokee and Creek.  The petition stated that in the last two and one half years the Indians had murdered more than two hundred whites and carried others off into slavery.  They had also robbed the citizens of their slaves, and stolen at least two thousand horses.  Congress took no action and while the legislature in Knoxville was petitioning, the settlers of Middle Tennessee decided to take action.  Five hundred fifty mounted men left Nashville on September 7, 1794 under Major James Ore and crossed the mountains into the Tennessee Valley and surprised the Chickamaugan town of Nickajack.  The slaughter was great.  The town of Running Water was also destroyed.

The Pinckney Treaty of 1795 between Spain and the United States stopped the Spaniards from stirring up the Indians.



The Tennessee country continued to grow in the 1790’s.  The towns of Greenville, Blountville and Sevierville made their appearance in eastern Tennessee and Clarksville was begun to the west of Nashville.  The territorial legislature ordered a census be taken in 1795.  The figures showed that 77,262 (65,338 in the east and 11,924 in the west) people lived in the southwest territory and almost 11,000 Negro slaves. (There were 973 free Negroes in the territory.) The census also asked the people whether they wished to become a state.  A majority said yes and the Governor called for the election of delegates to a constitutional convention.  They met in Knoxville on January 11, 1796 and drew up a constitution.  The new state would be called Tennessee and the county by that name in middle Tennessee was divided into two new counties—Montgomery and Robertson, north and west of Nashville and Davidson County.  On June 1, 1796 President Washington signed the bill to make Tennessee the sixteenth state in the Union.  John Sevier was elected Governor, William Blount and William Cocke were elected Senators and Andrew Jackson was elected to the House of Representatives.



The young state was made up of only two settled areas.  In east Tennessee cabins were scattered up and down the valleys along the Holston River southwestardly to the junction of the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers.  To the west lay the Cumberland settlements along the Cumberland River from present Carthage to Clarksville. From the Cumberland settlements to the Mississippi there were no white settlers.  Well located towns like Knoxville and Nashville grew rapidly.  East Tennessee towns received goods overland from Richmond, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Goods bound for the Cumberland settlements came from Baltimore or Philadelphia by way of Pittsburgh, then down the Ohio and up the Cumberland.  Some goods came overland from Lexington, Kentucky.  In 1802 Nashville consisted of about 130 homes.

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[1] Entering the Mississsippi R. north of present day Memphis.

[2] Daniel Smith Frontier Statesman by Walter T. Durham. 1976.

[3] History of Stewart County, Tennessee, a thesis, Univ. of Tennessee, Helen Gould Brandon, Aug 1944.

[4] He was the father of Rachel Donelson who later married Andrew Jackson.

[5] Daniel Smith Frontier Statesman by Walter T. Durham. 1976. p. 87.

[6] Wikipedia

[7] Washington, a Life, by Ron Chernow, 2010, p. 479-481.

[8] Daniel Smith…. p. 102-03.

[9] Ibid. p. 103-119.

[10] Ibid. p. 120.