Always an eager and skillful questioner, Mrs. McCormick undoubtedly brought out the highlights of Tusculum's history: how the Rev. Samuel Doak, a Presbyterian clergyman and a Princeton scholar, had penetrated into this lovely valley in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, built a log cabin to house the modest beginnings of Martin Academy, which by 1795 had become Washington College; how after preaching and teaching the classics there for twenty-three years, he had come fourteen miles farther along the valley to set up another academy, which in time became Tusculum College. Again the combination church and school was a log cabin.
The buildings stood on a hill commanding a beautiful mountain view and overlooking town, valley, two rivers — the Watauga and the Doe.
Whoever wrote to Mrs. McCormick of this fair region always mentioned the historic sycamore near the fords of the Watauga, where the Reverend Samuel Doak had prayed for the doughty mountaineers who were to turn the tide of the Revolution at King's Mountain. [Source]
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