Tennessee the Volunteer State 1769—1923: Volume 1 CHARACTER AND ORIGIN OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE “This vanguard of the army of westward advance, independent Americans in spirit with a negligible sprinkling of Loyalists, now swept in a great tide into the northeastern section of Tennessee.”4 Tennessee the Volunteer State 1769—1923: Volume 1 CHARACTER AND ORIGIN OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE While it would be stultification to affect blindness to the manifest and, indeed, manifold shortcomings of the early pioneers, explorers and settlers in Tennessee, yet their strong and good qualities were transcendent and predominant. They were a virile and prepotent people, the progenitors of men who, but a little later were among the rulers of the nation. These frontier folk, moreover, became, and are now, the most peculiarly and characteristically American people on this continent. Tennessee the Volunteer State 1769—1923: Volume 1 CHARACTER AND ORIGIN OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE For the most part they were Scotch-Irish and pure Anglo-Saxon. Roosevelt, in his “Winning of the West,” p. 134, says of them: Tennessee the Volunteer State 1769—1923: Volume 1 CHARACTER AND ORIGIN OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE “The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and parentage, and of mixed race; but the dominant strain in their blood was that of the Presbyterian Irish—the Scotch-Irish, as they were often called. Full credit has been awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier for their leadership in our history; nor have we been altogether blind to the deeds of the Hollander and the Huguenot; but it is doubtful if we have wholly realized the importance of the part played by that stern and virile people, the Irish, whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin. These Irish representatives of the Covenanters were in the west almost what the Puritans were in the northeast, and more than the Cavaliers were in the south. Mingled with the descendants of many other races, they nevertheless formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers, who with axe and rifle won their way from the Alleghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific.” Tennessee the Volunteer State 1769—1923: Volume 1 CHARACTER AND ORIGIN OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE In a foot note on the same page, he says: Footnote General Andrew Lewis, who built Fort Loudon in 1756. The reference is to the battle of Point Pleasant on the Ohio River, fought on Oct. 10, 1774, between the northwest Indians, largely Shawnees, and the Virginia troops ordered out by Governor Dunmore. In that battle Capt. Evan Shelby, father of Isaac Shelby, commanded a company of men from what is now Sullivan and Carter counties, Tennessse. Among them were James Robertson and Valentine Sevier. Footnote Col. William Campbell of Virginia, commander in the battle of King's Mountain. Tennessee the Volunteer State 1769—1923: Volume 1 CHARACTER AND ORIGIN OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE page 65 “Among the dozen or so most prominent backwoods pioneers of the west and southwest, the men who were the leaders in exploring and settling the lands, and in fighting the Indians, British and Mexicans, the Presbyterian Irish stock furnished Andrew Jackson, Samuel Houston, David Crockett, James Robertson; Lewis,5 the leader of the backwoods hosts in their first great victory over the northwestern Indians; and Campbell, their commander in their first great victory over the British.6 The other pioneers who stand beside the above were such men as Sevier, a Shenandoah Huguenot; Shelby, of Welsh blood; and Boone and Clark, both English stock, the former from Pennsylvania, the latter from Virginia.” [p.65] ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com