The Transylvania Colony, also referred to as the Transylvania Purchase or the Henderson Purchase, was a short-lived, extra-legal colony founded in early 1775 by North Carolina land speculator Richard Henderson, who formed and controlled the Transylvania Company. Henderson and his investors had reached an agreement to purchase a vast tract of Cherokee lands west of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains through the acceptance of the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals with most leading Cherokee chieftains then controlling these lands. In exchange for the land the tribes received goods worth, according to the estimates of some scholars, about 10,000 British pounds ($1.5 million U.S. in 2016). To further complicate matters, this frontier land was also claimed by the Virginia Colony (particularly following Lord Dunmore's War) and a southern portion by Province of North Carolina.
The Transylvania Colony was located in what is now the central and western parts of Kentucky, and a chunk of north central Tennessee. The American pioneer and frontier explorer Daniel Boone was hired by Henderson to establish the Wilderness Road going through the Cumberland Gap and into southeastern Kentucky to facilitate settlement. A governmental compact was concluded by the settlers in May 1775. Most settlement was forestalled by the Revolutionary War, except around established towns. Henderson's Transylvania claim in Kentucky was invalidated by the Virginia General Assembly in 1778, and the remaining Tennessee portion was invalidated by North Carolina in 1783. Henderson was compensated with a land grant along the Ohio River in western Kentucky and the current town of Henderson was founded there.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 that ended the French and Indian War declared lands west of the Appalachians as "Indian Territory" forbidden to colonial settlement. Continued provocations by colonial explorers, traders and trappers necessitated some concessions by the Indians to concede lands for settlement in exchange for peace. In the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Iroquois ceded their claims on lands south of the Ohio River to the British Empire. Although they claimed sovereignty over much of what is now Kentucky, the Iroquois did not actually reside there, as did their nominal vassal, the Shawnee. In addition, the Cherokee to the south and southeast used much of the area as their historical hunting grounds. Neither of these peoples had been consulted regarding the Stanwix treaty, although a series of borders was worked out with the Cherokee at the Treaty of Hard Labour (1768), the Treaty of Lochaber (1770), and once more in 1771 when they agreed to extend the Lochaber cession into present-day northeast Kentucky. The Shawnee, however, had not conducted a boundary agreement with the colonies since 1758 at the Treaty of Easton, giving them a claim to everything west of the Alleghenies. Consequently, they began to attack frontier settlers moving into the region. This led to Lord Dunmore's War, fought in 1774, primarily between the Shawnee and Virginia Colony. The Shawnee lost this brief war and their chief Cornstalk ceded all their claims south of the Ohio River, including Kentucky.
Also, through much of the second half of the 17th century, a state of war had existed between the "northern tribes" (particularly the Iroquois, and the Lenape and Shawnee who were then tributary to them) and the "southern tribes" of the Cherokee and Catawba, the shared hunting grounds of Kentucky remained a contentious neutral zone.
On 27 August 1774, Richard Henderson, a judge from North Carolina, [1] organized a land speculation company with a number of other prominent North Carolinians. Originally called Richard Henderson and Company, the company name was first changed to the Louisa Company, and finally to the Transylvania Company on January 6, 1775. The Transylvania Company investors hoped to establish a British proprietary colony by purchasing the Kentucky lands from the Cherokee who had earlier settled much of the south and southeastern Kentucky areas and still claimed hunting rights in the abandoned Shawnee lands.
In March 1775, Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone met with more than 1,200 Cherokee at Sycamore Shoals (present day Elizabethton in northeastern Tennessee). Present were Cherokee leaders such as Attakullakulla and Oconostota. With five grant deeds that constituted the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, Henderson purchased all the land lying between the Cumberland River, the Cumberland Mountains, and the Kentucky River, and situated south of the Ohio River on March 14, 1775. Some adjacent land to the southeast, in Virginia and North Carolina, was also purchased. [2] The land thus delineated, 20 million acres (81,000 km2), encompassed an area half the size of present-day Kentucky.
Henderson and his partners probably believed that a recent British legal opinion, the Pratt–Yorke opinion, had made such purchases legal. In fact, the Transylvania Company's purchase was in violation of both Virginia and North Carolina law, as well as the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited private purchase of American Indian land and the establishment of any non-Crown sanctioned colony.
The Treaty was disavowed by some of the chiefs. A dissident Cherokee chief, Dragging Canoe, refused to sign, endorse, or obey the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, declaring that "it is bloody ground, and will be dark and difficult to settle". It would prove to be prophetic, and subsequently Kentucky came to be referred to by the sardonic phrase, dark and bloody ground. Dragging Canoe left the Sycamore Shoals treaty grounds and took those who were loyal to him and his way of thinking into southeastern Tennessee, near present-day Chattanooga. This group came to be called the "Chickamauga" after the nearby creek of the same name. Dragging Canoe and this group went on to become the chief protagonists of the Cherokee-American wars.
Prior to the signing of the Sycamore Shoals Treaty, Henderson had hired Daniel Boone, [1] an experienced hunter, to travel to the Cherokee towns and to inform them of the upcoming negotiations. Boone had been in southeast Kentucky long before the founding of any Kentucky settlements. [3] Afterward, Boone was hired to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went from southwestern Virginia north through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. During this trail-blazing expedition, Boone and his party suffered several Indian attacks. Along with a party of about thirty workers, Boone cleared a path from the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River, where he established Boone's Station (today Boonesborough) which was intended[ by whom? ] to be the capital of Transylvania. Unknown to Boone, Henderson led another expedition following in Boone's tracks, widening the path so travellers could bring through wagons. In addition to Boone's Station, other settlements, including Harrod's Town, Logan's Fort (formerly St. Asaph), Lexington and Kenton's Station (also called Limestone) were established at this time. Many of these settlers had come to Kentucky on their own initiative, and some of them refused to recognize Transylvania's authority.
When Henderson arrived at Boonesborough fewer than a hundred people resided there. This population and a few other settlements in the area constituted the sparse concentration of white settlers in the isolated western wilderness. The settlers recognized their precarious situation. They not only faced significant Indian hostilities, but lacked adequate supplies and shelter. Notwithstanding these circumstances, Henderson urged settlers in the area to hold a constitutional convention.
Henderson's plan involved the various settlements scattered across Transylvania sending delegates to Boonesborough, acting in the name of the people they represented and whose consent would justify the convention. Representatives from Harrod's Town, Boiling Spring (adjacent to Harrod's Town), Logan's Fort and Boone's Station attended. In May 1775, under the shade of a huge elm tree, a three-day convention met. In addition to passing nine bills dealing with immediate matters of governance, delegates drafted a compact that organized a frame of government, known as the Transylvania Compact. This plan included executive, legislative, and judicial branches. [4]
After concluding the compact, Henderson returned to North Carolina. On behalf of his fellow investors in the land scheme he petitioned the Continental Congress, seeking to make Transylvania a legally recognized colony. Despite those efforts, the Congress declined to act without the consent of Virginia and North Carolina, both of whom claimed jurisdiction over the region in question. In June 1776 the Virginia General Assembly prohibited the Transylvania Land Company from making any demands on settlers in the region. In December 1778, Virginia's Assembly finally declared the Transylvania claim void. In compensation, Henderson and his partners received a grant of 200,000 acres (312 square miles) on the Ohio River below the mouth of Green River. An early settlement there was named Red Banks, and became the city of Henderson in 1797.
Henderson pressed on with his remaining modest claim in Tennessee, and it was finally invalidated by North Carolina in 1783. Henderson was similarly compensated there with a land grant of 200,000 acres in Powell Valley.
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies. In 1775, Boone founded the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky, despite resistance from Native Americans. He founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. By the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people had entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone.
Elizabethton is a city in, and the county seat of Carter County, Tennessee, United States. Elizabethton is the historical site of the first independent American government located west of both the Eastern Continental Divide and the original Thirteen Colonies.
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.
The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other is sometimes called the "Cumberland Road" because it started in Fort Cumberland in Maryland. Despite Kentucky Senator Henry Clay's advocacy of this route, early in the 19th century, the northern route was selected for the National Road, connecting near Washington, Pennsylvania into the Ohio Valley of northern Kentucky and Ohio.
Kentucky County, later the District of Kentucky, was formed by the Commonwealth of Virginia from the western portion of Fincastle County effective 1777. The name of the county was taken from a Native American place name that came to be associated with a river in east central Kentucky, and gave the Kentucky River its name and eventually the U.S. state of Kentucky. During the almost four years of Kentucky County's existence, its seat of government was Harrodstown.
The Overmountain Men were American frontiersmen from west of the Blue Ridge Mountains which are the leading edge of the Appalachian Mountains, who took part in the American Revolutionary War. While they were present at multiple engagements in the war's southern campaign, they are best known for their role in the American victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. The term "overmountain" arose because their settlements were west of, or "over", the Blue Ridge, which was the primary geographical boundary dividing several of the 13 American states from the Native American lands to the west. The Overmountain Men hailed from parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and what is now Tennessee and Kentucky.
The Watauga Association was a semi-autonomous government created in 1772 by frontier settlers living along the Watauga River in what is now Elizabethton, Tennessee. Although it lasted only a few years, the Watauga Association provided a basis for what later developed into the state of Tennessee and likely influenced other western frontier governments in the trans-Appalachian region. North Carolina annexed the Watauga settlement area, by then known as the Washington District, in November 1776. Within a year, the area was placed under a county government, becoming Washington County, North Carolina, in November 1777. This area covers the present day Washington County, Carter County, and other areas now located in the northeast part of the state of Tennessee.
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 city of Nashville, became the capital of the new state of Tennessee in 1843.
Richard Henderson was an American jurist, land speculator and politician who was best known for attempting to create the Transylvania Colony in frontier Kentucky. Henderson County and its seat Henderson, Kentucky are named for him. He also sold land to an early settlement that went on to become Nashville, Tennessee.
The siege of Boonesborough was a military engagement which took place in September 1778 during the American Revolutionary War. On September 7, Shawnee chief Blackfish, who was allied to the British, led an attack on the Kentucky settlement of Boonesborough. Months before the battle, Blackfish had captured and adopted Daniel Boone, the founder of Boonesborough. Boone escaped the Shawnees in time to lead the defense of the settlement. Blackfish's siege was unsuccessful and was lifted after eleven days. Boone was then court-martialed by fellow officers who suspected him of harboring Loyalist sympathies. He was acquitted, but soon left the settlement.
The prehistory and history of Kentucky span thousands of years, and have been influenced by the state's diverse geography and central location. Archaeological evidence of human occupation in Kentucky begins approximately 9,500 BCE. A gradual transition began from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculture c. 1800 BCE. Around 900 CE, the Mississippian culture took root in western and central Kentucky; the Fort Ancient culture appeared in eastern Kentucky. Although they had many similarities, the Fort Ancient culture lacked the Mississippian's distinctive, ceremonial earthen mounds.
The Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, usually shortened to Sycamore Shoals, is a rocky stretch of river rapids along the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Archeological excavations have found Native Americans lived near the shoals since prehistoric times, and Cherokees gathered there. As Europeans began settling the Trans-Appalachian frontier, the shoals proved strategic militarily, as well as shaped the economies of Tennessee and Kentucky. Today, the shoals are protected as a National Historic Landmark and are maintained as part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.
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.
"Indian Reserve" is a historical term for the largely uncolonized land in North America that was claimed by France, ceded to Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris (1763) at the end of the Seven Years' War—also known as the French and Indian War—and set aside for the First Nations in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The British government had contemplated establishing an Indian barrier state in a portion of the reserve west of the Appalachian Mountains, bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes. British officials aspired to establish such a state even after the region was assigned to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the American Revolutionary War, but abandoned their efforts in 1814 after losing military control of the region during the War of 1812.
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.
The Cherokee have participated in over forty treaties in the past three hundred years.
The Path Grant Deed is a document regarded as a first step toward the American westward migration across the Appalachian Mountains, resulting from negotiations at Sycamore Shoals in March 1775. The land acquired within the boundaries of the Path Grant allowed Daniel Boone to develop the Wilderness Road free from attack or claims by the Cherokee. The Path Grant was recorded on November 15, 1794, by the Hawkins County, Tennessee registrar in Deed Book #1, pages 147-151
The Great Grant Deed, also known as The Great Grant, was a transaction for the sale of property by the Cherokee Nation to Richard Henderson and Company. The grant is also known as the Louisa purchase or the Transylvania purchase. The transaction occurred at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River on March 17, 1775. The Great Grant was for lands forming Henderson's new Transylvania Colony comprising much of what is now the state of Kentucky.
The Jacob Brown Grant Deeds, also known more simply as the Nolichucky Grants, were transactions for the sale of land by the Cherokee Nation to Jacob Brown. The transaction occurred at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River on March 25, 1775. The Jacob Brown grants were for two large tracts along the Nolichucky River some of which had been previously leased from the Cherokee.
The Charles Robertson Grant, also known more simply as the Watauga Grant, was a transaction for the sale of land by the Cherokee Nation to Charles Robertson. The transaction occurred at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River on March 19, 1775. The Charles Robertson Grant was for a large tract in what is now East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, some of which had been previously leased from the Cherokee.