glowing stories, told by Boone, and disseminated in the back
country by Henderson, Williams, and the Harts, seemed to give
promise to men of this stamp that the West afforded relief from
oppressions suffered in North Carolina. During the winter of
1768-9 there was also a great rush of settlers from Virginia into
the valley of the Holston. A party from Augusta County, led by
men who had been delighted with the country viewed seven years
before when they were serving under Colonel William Byrd against
the Cherokees, found that this region, a wilderness on their
outward passage in 1768, was dotted with cabins on every spot
where the grazing was good, upon their return the following year.
Writing to Hillsborough on October 18, 1770, concerning the "many
hundred families" in the region from Green River to the branches
of the Holston, who refused to comply with the royal proclamation
of 1763, Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia reports that "very
little if any Quit Rents have been received for His Majesty's use
from that Quarter for some time past"--the people claiming that
"His Majesty hath been pleased to withdraw his protection from
them since 1763."

In the spring of 1770, with the express intention of discovering
suitable locations for homes for himself and a number of others,
who wished to escape the accumulating evils of the times, James
Robertson of Orange County, North Carolina, made an arduous
journey to the pleasing valley of the Watauga. Robertson, who was
born in Brunswick County, Virginia, June 28, 1742, of excellent
Scotch-Irish ancestry, was a noteworthy figure of a certain type-
-quiet, reflective, conservative, wise, a firm believer in the
basic principles of civil Liberty and the right of local
self-government. Robertson spent some time with a man named