The First Four Euro-American Settlements in Tennessee

Permanent Euro-American settlement in what is now Tennessee began in the late 1760s, pushing west of the Proclamation Line of 1763 into Cherokee hunting grounds. The four earliest documented settlements were:

1. Fort Watauga (1769) – Built at Sycamore Shoals (near present-day Elizabethton) by the Watauga Association, a semi-autonomous government of settlers. It served as a defensive fortification and trade hub. Site of the 1775 Transylvania Purchase treaty signing.
2. Carter's Valley (1769) – Established by John Carter and his sons along the Holston River (near present-day Kingsport). The Carter Mansion (c. 1775–1780) is Tennessee's oldest surviving frame house.
3. Watauga Old Fields (1770) – The fertile river bottomlands adjacent to Fort Watauga, previously cleared by Native Americans (likely Cherokee). Settlers like James Robertson planted corn here, establishing the agricultural base for the Watauga settlement.
4. Boonesborough (1775) – Founded by Daniel Boone and the Transylvania Company on the Kentucky River (now in Kentucky, but the expedition originated from and was supplied through the Watauga settlements in Tennessee). Note: While Boonesborough is in modern Kentucky, it was the direct outgrowth of the Tennessee-based Watauga settlements and the Henderson Purchase. The first settlement within modern Tennessee borders after these three is often considered Bean Station (1776) or the Cumberland Settlements (French Lick/Nashville, 1779–1780).

Context

These settlements formed the Watauga Association (1772), the first majority-rule government by American-born settlers west of the Appalachians. They later became Washington District (NC), then the State of Franklin (1784–1788), Southwest Territory (1790), and finally the State of Tennessee (1796).