The Holston Settlements in Western Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee

The first Holston settlement on the Holston River (in Virginia) became the county of Sullivan, Tennessee. A southern settlement was on the Watauga River in Washington County, North Carolina. These settlements were the culmination of the treaty of Hard Labor in 1768 with the Cherokee Indians as well as the experimental survey which was had of the Virginia-North Carolina line in 1771. The settlers were from Pennsylvania. All of the unsettled countries were believed to be part of Virginia. The reason is the topography itself, where the Blue Ridge mountains separate Virginia from Tennessee. The highest peak east of the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Mitchell, was almost impassable. When the explorer, James Robertson, crossed that range in 1770, he was lost in mountains which could not be tracked and wandered for fourteen days without food. When the watershed (a basin-like landform defined by highpoints and ridgelines that descend into lower elevations and stream valleys) changed from the Alleghany Mountains to the Blue Ridge, however, it left an open valley into which to send a population from Virginia into the undefined northern border of North Carolina. After the settlement of the valleys from Harrisburg to Hagertown were settled, backwoodsmen from Pennsylvania poured into tidewater Virginia, pushing their settlements up the Shenandoah River. Thus, a new settlement was established near the Giles and Montgomery Countinies lines called New Castle. There was a fort there, but the settlers were sometimes inside the fort and…