Near Nashville

FLOWERING of the CUMBERLAND by Harriette Simpson Arnow:

"....[Mr. Buchanan]...had been born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but his father, John, Sr., like so many Pennsylvania borderers, had migrated to North Carolina, settling in the neighborhood of Guilford Courthouse, now surrounded by the town of Greensboro."

Guilford Courthouse Battlefield

"In any case, late 1779 found the younger Buchanans building a station on the southern side of the Cumberland River, above the French Lick, on the high ground ‘in the upper part’ of what is now Nashville. On the other side of the Lick Branch, another station was soon being built, that of George Freeland, while north of the river about twelve miles away, near present day Goodlettsville, there was a finished station. This belonged to Kaspar Mansker who had by 1779 been hunting over the region for more than a dozen years."

Mansker's Station Plaque

"Early summer of 1780 found several hundred people and more than a dozen stations in what was to be Middle Tennessee. The future looked bright; most, though not the Buchanans, had agreed to buy land from Richard Henderson’s company, and so had signed the Cumberland Compact which also provided for government."

"Then the Indians—Chickasaw, Cherokee, Chickamauga, and Creek—struck. The Cumberland settlements had by the winter of 1781 dwindled to three small stations—French Lick where the Buchanans had built, Freelands, and that of Amos Eaton on the northern side of the Cumberland, opposite the mouth of the Lick Branch or the Old French Landing. Many families such as the Donelsons and their in-laws fled to the comparative safety of Kentucky; others returned to North Carolina, and of the 131 first settlers who stayed, 63 were by the spring of 1784 dead."