USA > North Carolina > Watauga County > A history of Watauga County, North Carolina. With sketches of prominent families > Part 5
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2 This is called Star Gap by some from particles of mica seen in the bottom of a spring at the base of the mountain, which shine "like stars." But others claim it is really the Stair gap, because a series of stair-like ledges of rock lead down from the gap on the western side. Bishop Asbury confirms this latter view. (Asbury's Journal, Vol. II, p. 189).
3 The tree, a large leaning beech, was there in June, 1909, and is probably still flourishing, as is many another false witness.
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much less undertake an offensive campaign. Abandoning their farms, they hastened for shelter to the strong stockade of Fort Dobbs, or to hurriedly constructed "houses of refuge," or else, if they could possibly find the means to do so, fled with all their belongings to the settlements in the tidewater country. This was the course followed by the Boones, or, at least, by Squire Boone, his son Daniel and their respective families. Squire, it is said, went to Maryland. Daniel took Rebecca and their infant chil- dren to eastern Virginia, where he found employment at his old occupation of wagoner.
Boone's First Trip Across the Mountains .- Although Bruce, following the phantom of the Boone Tree legend, states that "as early as 1760 (at the very time when he says elsewhere, page 41, that Boone was with Waddell at Fort Prince George or in Virginia) he (Boone) was threading his way through the Watauga wilds where the first settlement in Tennessee was afterwards established," he cites no supporting facts and is clearly contradicted by every known fact and circumstance of this period. But there is evidence that "in 1761, at the head of a hunting party which crossed the Alleghanies that year, came Daniel Boone from the Yadkin, in North Carolina, and traveled with them as low as the place where Abingdon now stands, and there left them." (Pp. 46, 47.) This visit to the site of the present Abingdon, Va., is still preserved there in a tradition which claims that wolves attacked Boone's party while in that vicinity, which fact gave rise to the first name of that locality, "The Wolf Hills." This trip of 1761 was probably Boone's first visit beyond the Blue Ridge. Bruce says (p. 47) that Boone was again in the Tennessee country three years later, or in 1764, and that in 1765 he went as far south as Florida, and would have settled there but for the influence of his wife, Rebecca Bryan, of the Yadkin Valley. If he had remained in Florida, Bruce adds "assuredly he would never have won fame as the great pilot of the early West." So that, after all, the world owes as much to Rebecca Bryan as to Boone himself !
At Fort Prince George in 1760 .- Instead of being on Boone's Creek, carving his name and hunting experiences on trees in
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1760, Daniel Boone was with Colonel Montgomery in June of that year, driving the Cherokees from the vicinity of Fort Prince George at the head of the Savannah; while, between then and 1759, he had been in eastern Virginia or about Fort Dobbs, for Bruce tells us (p. 40) that "so soon as he had satisfied himself that his little family would not be exposed to want [in eastern Virginia] he returned to the border, where he found thrilling events in progress. The Cherokees had laid desperate siege to Fort Dobbs, but had been gallantly beaten off by its garrison under command of Colonel Hugh Waddell, one of the foremost Indian fighters of his day. They had then renewed their depreda- tions in small war-parties, ultimately gathering in force to attack Fort Prince George . ." After driving the Cherokees away from that fort, Montgomery marched his force of 1,200 men, among whom was Daniel Boone, still under command of Wad- dell, across the mountains to the Little Tennessee, where they were ambushed and forced to retreat to Fort Prince George. From this place Montgomery marched his regulars back to Charleston, S. C., where he embarked with them for New York. "Once more the frontier of Georgia and the Carolinas lay at the mercy of the copper-colored foe (p. 42)." The garrison at Fort Loudon on the Little Tennessee having surrendered, they were allowed to start back for Fort Prince George, but were attacked and many killed, the others being taken prisoners. This forced the three States of Virginia, North and South Carolina to agree on a joint invasion of the Cherokee country, and by June, 1761, two armies were on the march to that country, in the second of which Boone found a place still under Hugh Waddell. This provides for all of Boone's time from 1759 till late in 1761, which shows that he could not have "cilled a bar" on that or any other tree near there in 1760. It is, however, very discouraging to note the persistence of falsehoods, if only they bear a flavor of romance about them.
Richard Henderson .- In a series of brilliant articles entitled, "Life and Times of Richard Henderson," which appeared in the Charlotte Observer in the spring of 1913, Dr. Archibald Hender- son, then the president of the North Carolina Historical Com-
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mission, makes the following claims for his ancestor: "Richard Henderson was recognized everywhere throughout the colony as a fair and just judge," but, notwithstanding that, the Regulators, who fought the battle of Alamance, unjustifiably prevented him from holding court at Hillsboro, visited their "cowardly incen- diary vengeance upon" him, and maliciously burnt his home and barn. Also, that but for his illness, Richard Henderson, who was a colonel as well as a judge, would have fought against these Regulators at the battle of Alamance.4 That the reason Judge Henderson would not comply with the demands of the Regula- tors at Hillsborough in 1770 was because he would not "yield to the dictates of lawless and incensed anarchists." Also, that "the sentiment which animated the mob at Hillsboro was not one of animosity against Judge Henderson personally," their objection to him having been, seemingly, to the system and that he had been appointed by Governor Tryon and not by the king himself. This, however, was not the case with Judge Maurice Moore, who, according to Dr. Henderson, "was roundly denounced by the Regulators as 'rascal, rogue, villain, scoundrel' and other un- printable terms . We are also told that "the demands made upon Judge Henderson by the treasonable mob at Hills- borough, had he attempted to accede to them, which is incon- ceivable, would have resulted in a travesty of justice." But, even before this, and notwithstanding the proclamation of King George in 1763, forbidding the purchase or lease of lands by individuals from the Indians, Judge Henderson was contemplating the pur- chase of the very lands the six nations of northern Indians had, by treaty at Fort Stanwix, in 1768, sold to Great Britain. Wash- ington himself was engaged in a like scheme in Virginia, we are told, but Dr. Henderson says : "It is no reflection upon the famne of George Washington to point out that, of the two, the service to the nation of Richard Henderson in promoting western colon- ization was vastly more generous in its nature and far-reaching in its results than the more selfish and personal aims of Wash-
4 The real leaders of the western expansion were James Robertson and the fourteen families from the present county of Wake, who, in 1770 or 1771, had been driven to seek new homes beyond the reach of the exactions of the British tax collectors.
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ington." In order to carry out this plan, Judge Henderson in 1769 employed Daniel Boone at Salisbury, while Henderson was actually presiding over the court, to explore these western lands, Boone being "very poor and his desire to pay off his indebtedness to Henderson made him all the more willing to undertake the exhaustive tour of exploration in company with Finley and others."
The Patrick Henry of North Carolina .- Dr. Henderson con- tinues : "From this time forward [the expiration of his term as judge] Richard Henderson, described as the 'Patrick Henry of North Carolina,' sheds the glamor of local fame and enters into national history as one of the most remarkable figures of his day, and indubitably the most remarkable constructive pioneer in the early history of the American people." Elsewhere Dr. Hender- son speaks of his ancestor as the "Cecil Rhodes of America." Meantime, however, having returned from his two years' stay in Kentucky, we are told that Boone, grown impatient over the delay caused by Henderson's inability, for whatever reason, to further prosecute his plans at that time, recruited a body of set- tlers, and, on the 25th day of September, 1773, set out from Holman's Ford with eighteen men and some women and children, his own among the number, but his party was attacked by Indians and were forced to return. From which facts Dr. Henderson draws the following conclusions: "Boone lacked constructive leadership and executive genius." He was a perfect instrument for executing the designs of others. It was not until the creative and executive brain of Richard Henderson was applied to the vast and daring project of western colonization that it was car- ried through to a successful termination."
The English Spy .- From Judge Clark's article (N. C. Book- let, January, 1904) it appears that Richard Henderson's mother was a Miss Williams, and that he studied law under his cousin, John Williams, who, according to Wheeler (Vol. I, p. 58), was whipped by the Regulators, and was, presumably, the son of his mother's brother, and afterwards married his step-daughter,
5 Richard Henderson's "constructive" genius seems to have resulted in the destruction both of himself and all who put their trust in him, especially Daniel Boone, whom Henderson left penniless in the wilderness of Kentucky.
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Elizabeth Keeling. Also, that "the British spy, Captain J. F. D. Smyth, in his 'Tour of America' (Vol. I, p. 124), [states that he] visited John Williams at his home in Granville about December, 1774, where he met Judge Henderson, whom he lauds as a genius, and says he did not know how to read and write till after he was grown. As Henderson became judge at the age of thirty-three, and as, besides, Smyth styles him Nathaniel Henderson and adds that Williams was said to be a mulatto and looked like one, no faith is to be given to any of his statements. He, however, says, probably with truth (p. 126), that Judge Henderson had made a secret purchase of territory from the Indians before his public treaty later on." This Captain Smyth might, therefore, be dis- missed without notice if we did not find in Roosevelt (Vol. II, p. 46) that, while Henderson was at Boonesborough in 1775, "a British friend of his" (whom a foot-note shows to have been Smyth) visited him there, indicating his knowledge of Hender- son's enterprise, and the further fact that Dr. Henderson himself, in his Observer articles of 1913, says: "It is interesting to note that just prior to the public announcement throughout the colony of this vast scheme of promotion [selling the Transylvania lands to unsuspecting frontiersmen], Dr. J. F. D. Smyth, the British emissary, met Richard Henderson at the home of Col. John Williams." But for the facts stated in Dr. Henderson's next succeeding article in the Observer on Richard Henderson, one might be tempted to connect this visit with the secret purchase of these lands above referred to, and to guess that it may have been a part of the policy of Great Britain at that time to get Americans interested in these Transylvania lands by low prices, etc., to such an extent that they would, rather than lose their holdings in them, adhere to the mother country in the impending struggle for independence, and thus form a rear-rank which should co-operate with the front rank of soldiers and loyalists in the Atlantic States. It would have been a most powerful and, possibly, successful bar to the achievement of our inde- pendence; for, then, Sevier and his Watauga men would have fought against and not for us. But this, probably, was not the scheme that British emissary or scout, as Dr. Henderson also
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terms him, had in mind, for Dr. Henderson continues : "Though not the first settlement in point of time, for Henderson found several temporarily occupied camps nearby on his arrival, Boones- borough was the first settlement of permanent vitality in the heart of the Kentucky country. No Henderson and there would have been no Boonesborough. No Boonesborough and the American colonies, now convulsed in a titanic struggle, might well have lost to Great Britain, at the close of the Revolution, the vast and fertile possessions of the transmontane wilderness."
Was Even the Treaty a Sham ?- Assuming that Dr. Smyth, Richard Henderson's friend and guest, spoke ex cathedra when he declared that a secret treaty had been already effected before the 25th of March, 1775, which is the one that was published to the world as the real thing, what shall be thought of the follow- ing from Judge Clark's "Colony of Transylvania," before quoted ?
"The treaty was debated, sentence by sentence, the Indians choosing their own interpreter. It was only signed after four days' minute discussion and after fierce opposition from a chief known as Dragging Canoe. The goods must have been put at a high valuation, for one brave, who received as his share only a shirt, contemptuously said he could secure more with his rifle in one day's hunting. On the other hand, the Indians received full value, for they had in truth no title to convey, and they plainly told Henderson he would have great trouble to obtain or hold possession on account of other tribes. The territory was not occupied and owned by the Cherokees, nor, indeed, by any tribe, but was a battle-field, where hostile bands met to fight out their quarrels." No wonder then that Dr. Henderson says that these fifty thousand dollars worth of goods were transported across the mountains of North Carolina in six wagons two years before, as other historians agree, any road was opened across them !
The Romantic Side of Boone .- Most of us love to think of him in the light of Kipling's "Explorer," animated by the "some- thing-hidden-go-and-find-it" spirit, rather than as the servant of any man or set of men on his 1769 trip to Kentucky ; and while it
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is no reflection on his character if he was actually employed to spy out the western lands, is it not a reflection upon Richard Henderson to say at this late day that he was actually scheming while a judge on the bench to violate the law?" As well as can be gathered from the Charlotte Observer's articles (Life and Times of Richard Henderson), it appears that when in 1773 Henderson's term as judge expired by limitation of the judiciary act of 1767, he learned "through the highest English legal au- thorities . according to the most recent legal decision rendered in England on the subject, purchases by individuals from Indian owners were legally valid. Without royal grant, Patrick Henry in Virginia, in 1774, was negotiating for the pur- chase of part of the very territory Henderson desired. Two years earlier the Watauga settlers leased from the Cherokees the lands upon which they resided-a preliminary to subsequent purchase . . The opinion handed down by the Lord Chancellor and the attorney general cleared away the legal diffi- culties."" This, apparently, was Henderson's justification for proceeding to violate the Royal Proclamation against purchasing lands from the Indians. His plea that the Cherokees really owned the land seems to be based on the sole claim that "their title to the territory had been acknowledged by Great Britain through her Southern agent of Indian affairs, John Stuart, at the Treaty of Lochaben in 1770." Dr. Henderson told H. Add- ington Bruce that Judge Henderson, "in developing his Transyl- vania project and purchasing Kentucky from the Cherokees, acted under the advice of an eminent English jurist, 'in the closest confidence of the King,' and that he, therefore, regarded the enterprise as having the royal sanction," which view of the case Mr. Bruce understood Professor Henderson would soon set forth in a biography of Richard Henderson. That promise was
6 There can be no doubt that Doctor Henderson claims that it was Judge Henderson's purpose to carry out this plan at the time he is said to have employed Boone in 1769; for he says Judge Henderson saw the significance of the Fort Stanwix treaty, and realized that the lands could be acquired only from the Indians, and that his plan was temporarily "frustrated by the exciting Issues of the Regulation."
7 How Richard Henderson, then a private citizen, could have had knowledge of these facts when the Governors of Virginia and North Carolina, the accredited representatives of Great Britain, were ignorant of them, is not explained. They were ignorant, for both denounced Henderson and his associates as land pirates, engaged in an unlawful undertaking.
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evidently made during or prior to 1910, when Bruce's "Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road" was first published. The proof is still not forthcoming because Dr. Henderson's book is not yet printed. When it is published to the world it will undoubtedly surprise many historians and others who consider themselves well informed about the history of these times and events. It is a great pity that it could not have been presented to the world a hundred years ago, before such erroneous ideas of Richard Henderson became prevalent. It is also hoped that it will then be shown that Richard Henderson and his associates devoted the 400,000 acres of land which they obtained from Virginia and North Carolina to the making whole of all those who bought land from them, including the 2,000 acres which Boone received as compensation for his services, but to which he got no valid title. What Virginia did for Boone is not pertinent. What did Richard Henderson do? When these matters shall have been cleared up, North Carolina, no doubt, will be proud to erect a monument to his memory.
Forehanded "for Once."-It seems that it was Boone's busi- ness to recruit a party of roadmakers before he started from Sycamore Shoals, with the understanding that they were to meet at Long Island, in the upper Holston, just south of the Virginia line. "Thirty guns" or riflemen were secured, who, according to Felix Walker, afterwards congressman from this State, ex- plicitly agreed to put themselves "under the management and control of Colonel Boone, who was to be their pilot through the wilderness." Then, March 10, 1775, began the making of the Wilderness Road, by way of Clinch and Powell's Rivers and Cumberland Gap and Rock Castle River to the mouth of Beaver Creek where it empties into the Kentucky River.8 This spot had been selected years before by Boone as an ideal place for the settlement, and there he began the choice of locations for him- self and his companions. When Henderson and his larger party
8 As the Sycamore Shoals Treaty was not ratified till the 25th of March, Boone's departure on the 10th for the purpose of cutting the Wilderness Road, shows a degree of cock-sureness on the part of Henderson & Co., which gives additional force to the suggestion of the spy, Smyth, that a secret treaty had been already concluded; which, if true, merely makes the public treaty a farce and fraud, and lends a still more sinister aspect to this affair.
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arrived three weeks later he made the "distinctly embarrassing discovery that Boone and his companions had preempted the choicest locations for themselves. Rather than have trouble, the tactful proprietor decided to leave them in undisturbed posses- sion and appease the rest by locating the site of the capital of Transylvania, not in the sheltered level chosen by Boone, but some little distance from it, on a commanding elevation overlook- ing the Kentucky." (Bruce, p. 117.)
Henderson's and Washington's "Continental Vision."-Dr. Henderson does not hesitate to give Richard Henderson what he considers his true place in the westward movement: "Washing- ton expressed the secret belief of the period when he hazarded the judgment that the royal proclamation of 1763 [forbidding individuals to buy or lease lands from the Indians] was a mere temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians, and was not intended as a permanent bar to the Western civilization. Some years earlier, Richard Henderson, with the continental vision of Washington, had come to the conclusion that the un- chartered West offered unlimited possibilities in the shape of reward to pioneering spirits, with a genuine constructive policy, willing to venture their all in vindication of their faith. George Washington, acquiring vast tracts of Western land by secret purchase, indirectly stimulated the powerful army that was carrying the broad-axe westward; Richard Henderson, with a large-visioned constructive policy of public promotion, coloniza- tion and settlement for the virgin West, conferred untold bene- fits upon the nation at large by his resolution, aggressiveness and daring. Washington and Henderson were factors of crucial im- portance in the settlement of the West and the advance of the pioneer army into the wilderness of Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio." Elsewhere (Neale's Monthly, p. 211) Dr. Henderson says: "George Washington and Richard Henderson, as land- lords, were vital factors in the development of the West."
Dr. Henderson's Original Discoveries .- Dr. Henderson promises to furnish not only documentary evidence to support all these statements, but photographic fac-similes in proof of the claim that Boone was indebted to Richard Henderson for legal
4
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services ' for a number of years prior to 1769, which had not been paid off prior to that date. Also, that the merchandise which was to be paid for the title of the Cherokees to the Tran- sylvania lands was transported by Richard Henderson, not accompanied by Boone, "in six wagon loads of goods from Hills- boro, N. C. (really from Fayetteville-then Cross Creek), to Sycamore Shoals, by wagon over the North Carolina mountains" by a route "discovered through researches made for me among old maps, showing wagon roads of North Carolina, dating as far back as 1770. The stages of the route I hope to give in my published book when it appears. Henderson also carried the goods from Sycamore Shoals to Martin's Station in Powell's Valley by wagon also; from there to the future site of Boones- boro the goods were transported by pack-horses." " Dr. Hender- son very properly "scrupulously omitted citation in my 'Life and Times of Richard Henderson' to authorities other than known or accessible books, such as the North Carolina Colonial Records, etc.," as upon these new authorities rests his "claim to original research and discovery."
Misconceptions About Colonel Henderson .- Assuming that Dr. Henderson shall be able to establish these facts, which is not questioned, there is no one who has suffered more at the hands of historians than his ancestor, Richard Henderson. For the general impression of him is that he and his father had been part and parcel of the office-holding oligarchy or "ring" that dominated county government under Governor Tryon, Henderson's father having been sheriff and himself under-sheriff; also, that, as a judge, Richard Henderson was personally obnoxious to the Regulators because he at least had not prevented "the legal tyrannies and alleged injustices of county officials," and was "so terrorized that during the night he mounted a fast horse and galloped out of town,""1
9 This must have been a large fee that required Boone to go in debt to get supplies for his journey (Bruce, p. 62) and to spend two years of his life in the wilderness.
10 From Doctor Henderson's letter to J. P. A., June 11, 1913. The new material, discovered by Doctor Henderson, after laborious investigation extending over years, "was not accessible to or even known to R. G. Thwaites, biographer of Daniel Boone, or to H. Addington Bruce, author of "Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road."
11 Bruce, p. 97.
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when in the fall of 1770, while hearing cases at Hillsborough, his court room was invaded by a mob and minor officials were beaten. People generally believe that the grievances of the Regulators were genuine wrongs from which they, at great risk, were seek- ing to escape; that these Regulators were not anarchists,12 but American patriots making the first stand for American liberty, bravely and openly and against great odds. They do not believe that Judge Henderson refused the demands of these oppressed people out of any high regard for the law, but because he wished to carry out the mandates of Tryon, by whom he had been ap- pointed to the bench. Nevertheless, they were willing to believe that he was incapable of deliberately planning to violate the proclamation of 1763 against the purchase of lands from the In- dians by individuals while he himself was presiding over a court of justice and drawing the pay of the colony or of the Crown of England for discharging the duties of a judge of the Superior Court of the colony of North Carolina. They supposed that Daniel Boone went to Kentucky in May, 1769, not because he had been paid to aid Henderson to violate the law he was sworn to uphold, but because John Finley had spent the winter before at Holman's Ford and had persuaded Boone that he could guide him to Kentucky by crossing the mountains to the westward. It was the general belief, also, that it was not in consequence of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768, but of the victory over the northwestern Indians at the Great Kanawha, September IO, 1774, which prompted Henderson and Hart to visit the Otari towns the following October for the purpose of getting from the Cherokees what was a worthless paper title to the Transylvania lands, and that Henderson especially, who was a lawyer, knew that "neither the British government nor the authorities of Vir- ginia or North Carolina would recognize the authority" of the Cherokees to convey title thereto, and that instead of being a worthy scheme of national expansion, it was really a "bold, audacious dash for fortune." (Walter Clark in North Carolina Booklet, January, 1904, p. 7.) And, unfortunately, it is also the
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