Robertson's entire family, and Donelson's daughter Rachel, the future
wife of Andrew Jackson, who missed by so narrow a margin being mistress
of the White House. Robertson, meanwhile, was to lead the rest of the
men by land, so that they should get there first and make ready for the
coming of their families.

Robertson's party started in the fall, being both preceded and followed
by other companies of settlers, some of whom were accompanied by their
wives and children. Cold weather of extraordinary severity set in during
November; for this was the famous "hard winter" of '79-80, during which
the Kentucky settlers suffered so much. They were not molested by
Indians, and reached the Bluff about Christmas. The river was frozen
solid, and they all crossed the ice in a body; when in mid-stream the
ice jarred, and--judging from the report--the jar or crack must have
gone miles up and down the stream; but the ice only settled a little and
did not break. By January first there were over two hundred people
scattered on both sides of the river. In Robertson's company was a man
named John Rains, who brought with him twenty-one horned cattle and
seventeen horses; the only cattle and horses which any of the immigrants
succeeded in bringing to the Cumberland. But he was not the only man who
had made the attempt. One of the immigrants who went in Donelson's
flotilla, Daniel Dunham by name, offered his brother John, who went by
land, £100 to drive along his horses and cattle. John accepted, and
tried his best to fulfil his share of the bargain; but he was seemingly
neither a very expert woodsman nor yet a good stock hand. There is no
form of labor more arduous and dispiriting than driving unruly and
unbroken stock along a faint forest or mountain trail, especially in bad
weather; and this the would-be drover speedily found out. The animals
would not follow the trail; they incessantly broke away from it, got
lost, scattered in the brush, and stampeded at night. Finally the