Frontier pioneer: James Robertson

by Fred Brown

A rather famous painting by Tennessee artist David Wright shows an early pioneer in furs standing atop a blue-cold bluff, looking off into the frozen beyond. Tiny specks, a small caravan of people, are shown crossing the Cumberland River, locked in ice from top to bottom. The year is 1779, and the place is French Lick, now the Tennessee capital, Nashville.

                                   The man who led that party from Tennessee on the Watauga River, across Kentucky and into Middle Tennessee was James Robertson. He was tall, rangy, fearless, honest, trusted and loyal. Those are a few of the adjectives often used to describe the man who is said to be the "Father of Tennessee and co-founder of Nashville, Tennessee".

 Robertson is the patriarch of the Watauga and what came to be known as the Cumberland settlements. It took someone of uncommon ability to lead a group of equally intrepid people from their relatively safe fort and homes on the Watauga to the deep frontier.

 It would be like traveling to the very outer reaches of the galaxy today. The trip was filled with danger and death. Not only did the adventurers have to battle one of the worst winters of that time or any time, they had to contend with Cherokee, Chickasaw and Chickamauga Indians, who were not in the least happy to see them arrive.

 Robertson was born in 1742 in Brunswick County, Virginia. He was a second generation Presbyterian Ulsterman (Kennedy), whose family had moved from Virginia to North Carolina in the mid-18th century. They had travelled down the forested Shenandoah Valley and in 1770, James Robertson helped to found the Watauga Association.

 That association formed by first emigrants flooding into what is now Tennessee from  Virginia and North Carolina became the articles and by-laws by which they governed themselves. Their notion was that the articles were a "divine right" of self-determination. The Watauga Association's articles were the first such document written by a collection of people to determine civil government west of the Alleghenies.

 Only recently has the great oak tree that witnessed those articles succumbed to nature and the wills of time. The Pemberton Oak, which played a prominent role in the meeting place of those first emigrants died a couple of years ago, sadly ending a direct connection to Tennessee's past.

 James Robertson was one of 13 commissioners provided in the Watauga document who would set laws and keep the peace of those gathered on the Watauga River. In one stroke, the Ulster-Scot from Virginia became one of the most trusted individuals on the frontier. He remained so for the rest of his life (he died in 1814 in Pontotoc, Mississippi.

 James was tall and broad shouldered and "firm of character," writes Dr. J.G.M. Ramsey in his"ÒAnnals of Tennessee," one of the early historical accounts of the people, state and region. The demands of the era required not only the brave, but the trustworthy, as well as men who possessed a fine shooting eye.

 Watauga was born in what is now Elizabethton, Tennessee, a town that became a gathering ground for those eager to beat back the frontier and push on to new goals.

 Robertson was of a different mind and passion than many who arrived, seeking fortune and new lands.  He was about helping a nation build itself with a strong and worthy foundation. He was a fierce competitor, quick to stand against a foe, and just as quick to forgive and help a stricken enemy.

 There are countless stories in the historical record about Robertson's abilities to not only lead a fight against Indian groups, being wounded on numerous occasions, staying in the field until the battle was over. But there is also a wonderful account of this same Indian fighter who in 1772 sought out the Cherokee, at great risk to himself, to make sure they understood that a wrong would be righted.

 The incident is in the earliest days of the Watauga Association. After a friendly contest between the settlers and the Indians (a running game, popular with the Cherokee), a group of bandits who preyed on settler and Indian alike, killed one of the  Indian contestants and fled.

 The incident aroused what were already inflamed passions on the frontier. Robertson travelled, it is written, more than 150 miles inland, by himself, to meet with the gathering storm of Cherokee chieftains. 

 Robertson assured the chiefs the man and others responsible for the murder would be apprehended and brought to frontier justice. As a measure of his character and reputation on that frontier, the chiefs agreed to allow the settlers to handle the matter, and put the responsibility in Robertson's able hands.

 The account of the great overland trip by Robertson and settlers while another famous Ulster-Scot Presbyterian,  John Donelson,  and another group came down river is also the stuff of legend.

 Author Billy Kennedy's chronicle of that trip in his Heroes of the Scots-Irish in America (Causeway Press, Ambassador Productions Ltd., 2000), is a rich history of not only Robertson and Donelson, but also of the state of Tennessee in its earliest beginnings.

 Robertson took an exploratory trip to the Chickasaw Indian lands down around French Lick and the Cumberland River territory in 1778-79, and returned with reports that the land was magnificent and ready to be settled.

 Robertson, Donelson and Richard Henderson, a North Carolina attorney and land agent, worked out a deal on 3,000 acres. The land grant was to be the first insertion of white settler families into the far distant wilderness, a trip equal in danger and awe to a visit to the moon today.

 While Donelson set out by flatboat, Robertson travelled overland. Both routes-river and land-were fraught with their own set of dangers, and both involved fighting off angry Indians. That double-edged trip has become almost an historical parable in Tennessee, as well as in the annals of American history.

 Artist David Wright, from Nashville and Gray Stone Press, has wonderfully caught the Robertson-Donelson entry into what was then also known as Nashborough Settlement. It is one of those uncommon moments in the stateÕs history when men of imagination and determination set their own course, and the course of the nation they were building.

 Both Robertson and Donelson went on to military as well as political heights. Robertson was elected to the Tennessee Senate and was a member of the state's first Constitutional Convention, which, as earlier in Watauga, set down the rules of governance for Tennessee.

 "The memory of no one is held in greater esteem and veneration that that of James Robertson," wrote Dr. Ramsey, more than 150 years ago, based on his first-hand interviews with descendants of the first pioneers.

 Even today, Robertson, the Ulsterman, continues to be referred to as the "Father of Tennessee" because of his help and fortitude in founding of the Watauga Settlements and the Cumberland Settlements.

 He was, as were many of those determined Scots-Irish souls, a man of action and of destiny. In the history of the frontier, it was, after all, the families, fearless and trusting in their leaders, who opened the way for the future, for what is known as the Volunteer State today.

 James Robertson may not be as well known by today's generations as some of Tennessee's other early leaders: John Sevier, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, James K. Polk, but he is just as worthy of study and admiration.

 Without his fortitude and stalwart character, the state and nation might have taken longer to settle and to make a troubled peace with the Indian tribes inhabiting the forests, rivers and streams of the vast region.

 But with Robertson and his kinsmen, history had its leaders. Men such as James Robertson somehow saw into that future. They possessed a different vision that allowed them the ability to deal with friend and foe alike: honest and straightforward.

 That stubborn independence so necessary for survival on the frontier was also locked in Robertson's genes.

 A fearless foe or faithful friend, James Robertson was the right man at the right time in the right place, a convergence in history that is met on rare occasions.

- Fred Brown is a senior writer with the Knoxville News / Sentinel, Tennessee.

Tennessee pioneer James Robertson.

The scene at Sycamore Shoals in East Tennessee in September 1780 as the Scots-Irish Watauga Overmountainmen prepare to head to the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina.Picture by Lloyd Branson.