The Shoots Set On The Cumberland Bloomed

 

FLOWERING of the CUMBERLAND by Harriette Simpson Arnow:

Flowering of the Cumberland is concerned with the pioneer as a member of society engaged in those activities which, different from hunting or house building, could not be performed by a lone man or family. The first and most important of these was marriage, and the creation of another family with its consequent need of the offerings of any civilized society—language, education, agriculture, industry, and trade; activities that demanded intercourse with other people and often an exchange of goods and services.

Seldom did the transplant grow exactly as had the parent plant, or one might better say ancestors, for by the time the Cumberland was settled, language, education, along with many other aspects of life, had been conditioned by plantings and transplantings on older borders to the east. Still, seldom did the transplant grow exactly as had the parent plant, or one might better say ancestors, for by the time the Cumberland was settled, language, education, along with many other aspects of life, had been conditioned by plantings and transplantings on older borders to the east. Still, the shoots set on the Cumberland bloomed, and often well where, when one considers the hazards and hardships of the environment, the wonder is sometimes that they grew at all, and often well where, when one considers the hazards and hardships of the environment, the wonder is sometimes that they grew at all. 

Samuel Newell In The History of the Lost State of Franklin

Samuel Newell in the History of the Lost State of Franklin

See Newell's Station marker

 

North Carolina To Tennessee

FLOWERING of the CUMBERLAND by Harriette Simpson Arnow...:

North Carolina had used land (she had no cash) to pay her officers and soldiers for their services in the Revolution... .

Mansker's Station (North of Nashville, Tennessee)

Yet, none of the men out of the Revolution, no matter how great their sufferings during the rebellion or from Indians after settlement, had known the losses in blood, money, and time, or endured the hardships of the first settlers on the Cumberland. These had come away back in the winter of 1779-1780.... .

....[Mr. Buchanan, one of the founders of Nashville, Tennessee]...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.

Reverend Samuel Doak

 

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]

Davy Crockett - Written By Himself (1834)

Source

"...I know, that obscure as I am, my name is making a considerable deal of fuss in the world I can't tell why it is, nor in what it is to end."

Enroute To Illinois

The Life and Adventures of Capt. Robert W. Andrews, of Sumter, South ..., By Robert W. Andrews:

"...I met Mr Middleton Brooks, who kept the tavern in Statesburg, who offered me three hundred and fifty dollars and expenses to go to Vandalia, in the State of Illinois, for his father. I had then a 'trotting horse,' which I sold and bought one more fitted for the trip. I left my men in charge of my carpentering business, and, on June 5th, 1825, started for Illinois, passing through Camblin and

Salisbury On A North Carolina Map At LOC

Lancaster, South Carolina and Charlottetown and Salsbury, North Carolina, through Brunswick County, across the Blue Ridge mountains, by the Swannana Gap, into Tennesee; passed through that State and Kentucky, to the Ohio river, which I reached at Hudson's Ferry."

The Annals Of Tennessee

Source

"To avoid Indian resentment and to prevent hostilities on the part of the Cherokees, the Superintendent of Southern Indian Affairs took measures to establish a new boundary further West. The treaty of Lochaber was signed on the 18th of October 1770 by the council of the chiefs, warriors, and head men of the Cherokee nation. The new line commenced on the south branch of Holston river six miles east of Long Island, thence to the mouth of the Great Kenhawa.  This boundary the western limit of the frontier settlements of Virginia and North Carolina was a feeble barrier against the approaches of the emigrants who came in greatly increased numbers to the West"

 

See Lochaber Plantation

 

Safer After The Point Pleasant Campaign

FLOWERING of the CUMBERLAND:

The land that was to be Kentucky and Tennessee grew somewhat safer after the Point Pleasant Campaign of 1774...

...that marked the end of Dunmore’s War and the defeat of the Shawnee.

Harrodsburg, Kentucky, was founded in that year. Also came the surveyors, locating boundaries for the land warrants Virginia ...

Source

...had used to pay her soldiers in the French and Indian War. Some of these, including several hundred acres for George Rogers Clark,...

...were located on the Middle Cumberland in the neighborhood of French Lick, for at this time most thought all the Cumberland was due west of Virginia instead of North Carolina.

Early Tennessee Exploration By Dr. Walker

Source

THE UPPER CUMBERLAND OF PIONEER TIMES, By Alvin B. Wirt:

"In 1750 Dr. Thomas Walker heading an exploration party in the employ of the Loyal Land Company, came into the upper part of this valley over the old Indian trail and gave the English name 'Cumberland' to the Ouasioto Mountains, as well as to the gap in those mountains through which the path passed into Kentucky, and to the Shawnee River in the valley beyond."

"The Cumberland River, which flows through this section, was first known as the “Ouasioto,” but early French explorers gave it the name “Shavanon,” or Shawnee, because they found a few Indians of the Shawnee tribe living in the lower part of the valley."

Campaign Of Extermination

"In 1792 Chief John Watts (also known as “Young Tassel”) undertook a campaign of extermination against the Cumberland settlements."

"His plan was to cut off all lines of communication by posting bands of warriors on the two paths leading to the Cumberland, while he, with the main body of 281 warriors, undertook to destroy the fort at Nashville, along with all outlying stations, dwellings, and other improvements."

Fort Southwest Point (near present-day Kingston, Tennessee)

"On hearing of Watt’s plans, Governor Blount ordered Capt. Samuel Handley to take a company of 42 men from Southwest Point to Nashville, and reinforce the garrison there."

We followed the *Avery Trace....(Source)

*"it led from Fort Southwest Point at Kingston through the Cumberland Mountains...from there it worked through the hills and valleys...and finally to Fort Nashborough." (Wikipedia)

"They left Southwest Point over the Cherokee Path, and, upon entering Crab Orchard Gap, were ambushed... ." (From The Upper Cumberland Of Pioneer Times)

The Cumberland Settlements

FLOWERING of the CUMBERLAND, by Harriette Simpson Arnow:

Strange, but it was at this time [after the rise and fall of the State of Franklin and the more settled and peaceful time in the Holston Country]...

Source

 ...after having survived eleven years of forted life, Colonel Ridley took his family still further west into the most dangerous spot of all—the Cumberland settlements.

Tavern Between Abingdon And Knoxville

Source

"...my [Davy Crockett's] father again removed, and this time settled in Jefferson county, now in the state of Tennessee; where he opened a tavern on the road from Abbingdon to Knoxville. His tavern was on a small scale, as he was poor; and the principal accommodations which he kept, were for the waggoners who travelled the road. [Davy Crockett book].

Captain Cameron Of The Thirteenth Regiment In Tennessee

History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, U. S. A ...,  By Samuel W. Scott, Samuel P Angel:

See his Wikitree profile here.

Cross-posted at Cameron Collections 

We Met At Mrs. Acklen's

From Confederate Echoes: A Voice from the South in the Days of Secession and....., by Albert Theodore Goodloe:

Mrs. Acklen's Home (Belmont) In Nashville

The first night was spent at Mrs. Acklen's, the widow of Joseph H. Acklen*, not far out of Nashville. Uncle Calvin Goodloe had come to Nashville, on his way to Washington, on secret service for Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the Confederate army in Georgia, and we had arranged to spend the night together at Mrs. Acklen's, where, indeed, Uncle Calvin was stopping for a time. He and Mrs. Acklen were old friends and I had known her several years. He gave me the gratifying information that the Yankees were not then occupying Florence, and that I could likely cross the Tennessee River there if I could soon reach there in safety. *(My 1st cousin 5x removed)

Mrs. Acklen

Proposed Plan Of Action To Colonel Whitley

Source

"...visited Kentucky and laid the proposed plan of action before Colonel Whitley."

Whitley House In Kentucky

The Most Dangerous Spot Of All

"...the most dangerous spot of all—the Cumberland settlements. [Source]

1795 Map Of Tennessee (LOC)

As long as Monsieur Veiz conducted the trade, the Indians did not molest the Cumberland settlers, but in 1784 or 1785 the business fell into other hands, who encouraged the Indians to make war on the whites, and furnished them with means of doing so. [Source]

Ridley's Journey To The Cumberland

True, he [Daniel Ridley] had been born in Tidewater, Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1737...but the year 1755 when he was only eighteen had found him deep in the back parts.

Braddock's Secret Grave Location (With Marker)

A survivor of the Battle of the Wilderness, he had, after the death of General Braddock, been one of the weary marchers from the Monongahela near Fort Duquesne back to the comparative safety of Fort Cumberland.

Colonel Ridley had also fought in the Revolution, though as a borderer he had known many battles and skirmishes undignified by the title of any war. Then, in the midst of the Revolution and while Sally was still a small child, he had taken a push still further west, settling in 1779 in what was then called the Holston Country, or the ‘back parts’ of North Carolina, in time to be known as East Tennessee. 

Holston River In The Middle Of The Map

Strange, but it was at this time [after the rise and fall of the State of Franklin and the more settled and peaceful time in the Holston Country], after having survived eleven years of forted life, Colonel Ridley took his family still further west into the most dangerous spot of all—the Cumberland settlements. [Source -Text]

Cumberland Plateau Area Of Tennessee

Treaty-Making At Sycamore Shoals

From The Kentuckians by Janet Holt Giles:

"I got to thinking how, a year ago almost exactly, I'd been at the Sycamore Shoals for the treaty-making."

To Choté

#1 - Fort Loudoun; #4 - Chota and Tanasi Memorials

The Story of Old Fort Loudon (published 1899):

 For even previous to the present outbreak and despite the stipulations of their treaties with the English, the Cherokees were known to have hesitated long in taking sides in the struggle between France and Great Britain, still in progress now in 1758, for supremacy in this western country, and many were suspected of yet inclining to the French, who had made great efforts to detach them from the British interest.

"Where go?" demanded the chief, suspiciously.

"To Choté, old town," she averred at haphazard, naming the famous "beloved town, city of refuge," of the Cherokee nation.

Dr. Thomas Walker

Cumberland Gap

Source (A History Of Hickman County, Tennessee)