Nevertheless, all pressing danger from the Indians was over. The Holston
settlements throve lustily. Wagon roads were made, leading into both
Virginia and North Carolina. Settlers thronged into the country, the
roads were well travelled, and the clearings became very numerous. The
villages began to feel safe without stockades, save those on the extreme
border, which were still built in the usual frontier style. The
scattering log school-houses and meeting-houses increased steadily in
numbers, and in 1783, Methodism, destined to become the leading and
typical creed of the west, first gained a foothold along the Holston,
with a congregation of seventy-six members. [Footnote: "History of
Methodism in Tennessee," John B. M'Ferrin (Nashville, 1873), I., 26.]

These people of the upper Tennessee valleys long continued one in
interest as in blood. Whether they lived north or south of the Virginia
or North Carolina boundary, they were more closely united to one another
than they were to the seaboard governments of which they formed part.
Their history is not generally studied as a whole, because one portion
of their territory continued part of Virginia, while the remainder was
cut off from North Carolina as the nucleus of a separate State. But in
the time of their importance, in the first formative period of the young
west, all these Holston settlements must be treated together, or else
their real place in our history will be totally misunderstood.
[Footnote: Nothing gives a more fragmentary and twisted view of our
history than to treat it purely by States; this is the reason that a
State history is generally of so little importance when taken by itself.
On the other hand it is of course true that the fundamental features in
our history can only be shown by giving proper prominence to the
individual state life.]

Frontier Towns.