Mansker's Station, also called Mansker's Fort was a station along Avery's Trace in Middle Tennessee. It was built by Kasper Mansker.
Kasper Mansker was a long hunter and explorer from the Virginia area. After his first expedition into the wilderness in 1769, Mansker explored and hunted widely in the area along the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky.
Mansker's station was a log fort that protected travelers along the road from Indian attacks. Mansker first built the fort along Mansker Creek in 1780, near Goodlettsville, after Fort Nashborough was built at the current site of Nashville.
Because of the danger from the Indian wars, Mansker and the people living there abandoned the station and moved to Fort Nashborough in 1781. Two men who returned for possessions the next day were killed, and the original fort was burned down. However, Mansker returned to the area in 1783 and built a bigger fort about one mile from the original site where he lived with his wife Elizabeth. [1] Because it was able to accommodate more men, the larger fort was easier to defend against attack.
A number of notable travelers boarded at the station from 1780 to the early 1790s. These included Captain William Bowen, General Daniel Smith, Isaac Bledsoe, Andrew Jackson, John Overton and French botanist André Michaux. [2]
Sumner County is a county located on the central northern border of Tennessee in the United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 196,281. Its county seat is Gallatin, and its most populous city is Hendersonville. The county is named after an American Revolutionary War hero, General Jethro Sumner.
Goodlettsville is a city in Davidson and Sumner counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It was incorporated as a city in 1958 with a population of just over 3,000 residents; in 2020, the population was 17,789. It is part of the Nashville metropolitan area.
James Robertson was an American explorer, soldier and Indian agent, and one of the founding fathers of what became the State of Tennessee. An early companion of explorer Daniel Boone, Robertson helped establish the Watauga Association in the early 1770s, and to defend Fort Watauga from an attack by Cherokee in 1776. In 1779, he co-founded what is now Nashville, and was instrumental in the settlement of Middle Tennessee. He served as a brigadier general in the Southwest Territory militia in the early 1790s, and as an Indian Commissioner in later life.
Lieutenant Colonel John Montgomery was an American soldier, settler and explorer. He is credited with founding the city of Clarksville, Tennessee. Montgomery County, Tennessee is named after him.
John Donelson (1718–1785) was an American frontiersman, ironmaster, politician, city planner, and explorer. After founding and operating what became Washington Iron Furnace in Franklin County, Virginia for several years, he moved with his family to Middle Tennessee which was on the developing frontier. There, together with James Robertson, Donelson co-founded the frontier settlement of Fort Nashborough. This later developed as the city of Nashville, Tennessee.
This article pertains to the history of Nashville, the state capital of Tennessee. What is now Nashville was the center of civilization for the Mississippian culture around 1300. In 1779, Fort Nashborough was built here in 1779 by pioneers from North Carolina. In 1784 it was incorporated as a town by the North Carolina legislature. The Southwest Territory became the state of Tennessee in 1796 and Nashville became an incorporated city in 1806. In 1843 it became the state capital of Tennessee. In the Civil War Nashville was seized by Federal troops in 1862 and became a major Union military base. Confederate General J. B. Hood was decisively defeated in the Battle of Nashville in 1864. The city became the political, transportation, business and cultural center of the Middle Tennessee region. Besides the state government, it is best known for its educational, musical and religious establishments. In 1963 Nashville and Davidson County were consolidated under a single charter and are administered by a mayor and a council.
Fort Nashborough, also known as Fort Bluff, Bluff Station, French Lick Fort, Cumberland River Fort and other names, was the stockade established in early 1779 in the French Lick area of the Cumberland River valley, as a forerunner to the settlement that would become the city of Nashville, Tennessee. The fort was not a military garrison. The log stockade was square in shape and covered 2 acres (8,100 m2). It contained 20 log cabins and was protection for the settlers against wild animals and Indians. James Robertson and John Donelson are considered the founders, and colloquially, the "founders of Tennessee". The fort was abandoned in 1794, but the settlement, now the town of Nashville, became the capital of the new state of Tennessee in 1796.
Kasper Mansker or Casper Mansker also, spelled Mäintzger and Minsker was a longhunter and one of Middle Tennessee's first European explorers and settlers.
A longhunter was an 18th-century explorer and hunter who made expeditions into the American frontier for as much as six months at a time.
The Cherokee–American wars, also known as the Chickamauga Wars, were a series of raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles in the Old Southwest from 1776 to 1794 between the Cherokee and American settlers on the frontier. Most of the events took place in the Upper South region. While the fighting stretched across the entire period, there were extended periods with little or no action.
Avery's Trace was the principal road used by settlers travelling from the Knoxville area in East Tennessee to the Nashville area from 1788 to the mid-1830s.
Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park is a state park located in Elizabethton, in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The park consists of 70 acres (28.3 ha) situated along the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, a National Historic Landmark where a series of events critical to the establishment of the states of Tennessee and Kentucky, and the settlement of the Trans-Appalachian frontier in general, took place. Along with the historic shoals, the park includes a visitor center and museum, the reconstructed Fort Watauga, the Carter House and Sabine Hill . For over a thousand years before the arrival of European explorers, Sycamore Shoals and adjacent lands had been inhabited by Native Americans. The first permanent European settlers arrived in 1770, and established the Watauga Association—one of the first written constitutional governments west of the Appalachian Mountains—in 1772. Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone negotiated the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals in 1775, which saw the sale of millions of acres of Cherokee lands in Kentucky and Tennessee and led to the building of the Wilderness Road. During the American Revolution, Sycamore Shoals was both the site of Fort Watauga, where part of a Cherokee invasion was thwarted in 1776, and the mustering ground for the Overmountain Men in 1780.
Bledsoe's Station, also known as Bledsoe's Fort, was an 18th-century fortified frontier settlement located in what is now Castalian Springs, Tennessee. The fort was built by longhunter and Sumner County pioneer Isaac Bledsoe in the early 1780s to protect Upper Cumberland settlers and migrants from hostile Native American attacks. While the fort is no longer standing, its location has been verified by archaeological excavations. The site is now part of Bledsoe's Fort Historical Park, a public park established in 1989 by Sumner County residents and Bledsoe's descendants.
Bledsoe Creek State Park is a state park in Sumner County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The park consists of 169 acres (0.68 km2) managed by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. The park spans much of the west shore of the Bledsoe Creek embayment of Old Hickory Lake, an impoundment of the Cumberland River created with the completion of Old Hickory Dam by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1954.
Turtle-at-Home, or Selukuki Wohelengh, was a Cherokee warrior and leader, brother and chief lieutenant of Dragging Canoe, a war-chief in the Cherokee–American wars.
Henry Skaggs was an American longhunter, explorer and pioneer, active primarily on the frontiers of Tennessee and Kentucky during the latter half of the 18th century. His career as an explorer began as early as 1761 as one of the so-called long hunters— men who undertook lengthy hunting expeditions into the Trans-Allegheny wilderness. In subsequent years, working as a land agent with Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone, he explored large parts of Middle Tennessee and Central Kentucky. Skaggs led a pursuit and failed attempt to apprehend America's first known serial killers, the Harpe Brothers in 1799.
Major John Buchanan was an American frontiersman and one of the founders of present-day Nashville, Tennessee. He is best known for defending his fort, Buchanan's Station, from an attack by a combined force of roughly 300 Chickamauga Cherokee, Muscogee Creek, and Shawnee warriors on September 30, 1792. The defenders of the stockade included fifteen gunmen and his wife, Sally Buchanan, who was heavily pregnant with their first child.
Tahlonteeskee of the Broken Arrow clan, was a Creek chief who, as a skiagusta in a time of war, led a contingent of his warriors united with the Chickamauga Cherokee and Shawnee fighters in an attack into the Cumberland settlements. He was killed fighting alongside his allies during the failed attack against Buchannan's Station, a private frontier fort near Nashville, Tennessee, on September 30, 1792.
Buchanan's Station was a fortified stockade established around 1784 in Tennessee. Founded by Major John Buchanan, the settlement was located in what is today the Donelson neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. On September 30, 1792, it was the site of the critical Battle of Buchanan's Station during the Cherokee–American wars of the late eighteenth century. The assault by a combined force of around 300 Chickamauga Cherokee, Muscogee Creek, and Shawnee, nominally led by Chief John Watts, was repelled by 15 gunmen under Major Buchanan defending the station. Although smaller raids continued in the region, it was the last major Native American attack on the American settlements in the Cumberland.
Haysborough, Tennessee, originally Fort Union, also spelled Haysboro, is an extinct settlement of the United States that was founded around 1780 and was abandoned within 100 years. Haysborough was located "about seven miles from Nashville, on the Gallatin pike...on the Cumberland. A two-story frame building called the Haysborough tavern, a blacksmith shop, a grocery and some cabins made the town."