The Advanced Guard of Civilization

The next time you are visiting Centennial Park, while standing on the eastern portico of the temple, look out onto Lake Watauga and you will find a fifty-foot granite shaft towering over the scenery. This monument, raised 122 years ago, was erected in honor of the man I would like to introduce you to today. He was a farmer born in Virginia who put it all on the line to move his family to the frontier.

A companion of Daniel Boone, an honoree of Washington, a man who lost two sons to Indian slaughter on the frontier. “He had winning ways and made no fuss,” was the language Cherokee Warrior Oconnostota used to describe him. His life and deeds are forever carved into the history of our great state. He was a great soldier and diplomat, the founder of Nashville, and his name was General James Robertson.

Gen. Robertson was born in Brunswick County, Virginia in 1742. When he was around seven years of age, his father relocated the family to Wake County, North Carolina where young James worked on the family farm. In 1767, he married Charlotte Reeves, the daughter of a minister, and they started farming in North Carolina. They would have 13 children together, two of which died in infancy

In 1769, famed explorer Daniel Boone led a third expedition beyond the Alleghany Mountains of West Virginia. Robertson, who had become frustrated with the colonial government of North Carolina, accompanied Boone on that expedition in search of a new place to move his family. That party discovered the “Old Fields”, land cultivated by the Native Indians for generations, along the Watauga River Valley where Elizabethton, TN now stands. Robertson stopped here to plant corn and build a cabin while Boone continued on to Kentucky.

Robertson began his return trip to North Carolina to bring others back with him to his new settlement. On the way he became lost, wandering for two weeks before several hunters helped him find his way over the Alleghany Mountains.

Back in North Carolina, Robertson became involved in the “Regulator Movement”, a group of disgruntled Americans taking up arms against colonial officials they viewed as corrupt. Several of his neighbors decided to accompany him back across the Alleghany Mountains and build homes on the new frontier where they established an independent government known as the “Watauga Association” and built Fort Watauga near modern day Elizabethton, TN. Theodore Roosevelt would later describe the men of the Watauga Association as “the first men of American birth to establish a free and independent community on the continent.”

In 1772, surveyors placed the Watauga Association’s land officially within the domain of the Cherokee tribe, requiring the Wataugans to negotiate a lease with the tribe for continued use of the land. In the middle of these negotiations, a Cherokee warrior was killed by a white settler. Robertson’s tactful diplomacy became useful. He made peace with the furious Cherokee and saw that the lease agreement stayed afloat.

In July of 1776 – while Thomas Jefferson was drafting the most liberating legal document the human mind had ever conceived in Philadelphia – 456 miles away, Chief Old Abraham was leading a Cherokee attack on Fort Watauga. A 40 man army commanded by John Carter, with James Robertson and John Sevier as lieutenants, fought off the Indian siege for two weeks. After this conflict, the North Carolina government appointed Robertson as the Indian Agent, tasked with preventing them from forming an alliance with the British during the ongoing American Revolution.

In 1777 Richard Henderson, owner of the Transylvania Company, purchased large tracts of Cherokee land from the tribe that would later become Southwest Kentucky and Northern Tennessee. In the Spring of 1779, Robertson and some of his men, acting on behalf of Henderson’s claim, traveled overland through Kentucky and down the Cumberland River to a site known as the French Lick where they selected a site for a new settlement. Prior to the Wataugan’s arrival at the French Lick the only other white man in this region was French Fur Trapper Jacques-Timothée Boucher Sieur de Montbrun.

The Wataugans traveled back East that year to gather others, and on Christmas Day 1779, arrived back with a larger group of men. That day they drove their cattle across the frozen Cumberland River and began to prepare shelters for the families and friends who planned to join them in the coming months. Fort Nashborough was built on the bluff overlooking the river. It was named after Francis Nash, who had fought alongside Robertson at the Battle of Alamance in 1771, a deadly conflict between members of the Regulator Movement and the North Carolina colonial government. 

A faction of Cherokee dissenters known as the Chickamaugas attacked the Cumberland Settlement for years. That conflict reached a peak between 1789 and 1794. Robertson’s brothers, John and Mark, were killed. He also lost two sons, James Jr. and Peyton, beheaded by Indians during the conflict. Another one of his sons, Jonathan, was scalped. Such is life.

In 1790, Congress created the Territory South of the River Ohio, and Robertson was appointed the Lieutenant Colonel Commandant of the Mero District. The next year, President George Washington appointed him Brigadier General of the U.S. Army for the same district. As the Cherokee attacks diminished the settlement entered a period of prosperity and Robertson built his family a nice brick home.

General Robertson acted on behalf of the U.S. Government with various Indian tribes. In 1804 he was appointed the U.S. Indian Agent to the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. His final appointment took him to Chickasaw Bluff for diplomatic business. Robertson was in his seventies when he undertook the 140 mile journey. Heavy rain forced him to swim across multiple swollen creeks, resulting in him acquiring an illness and dying on September 1, 1814.

He was buried there near Memphis, and in 1825, his remains were re-interred in the Nashville City Cemetery. At Nashville’s Centennial Park sits the fifty-foot tall granite obelisk honoring General Robertson. It displays an epitaph to Robertson that is a call to manly virtue for generations to come.

“A worthy citizen of both Virginia and North Carolina, pioneer and patriarch in Tennessee, diplomat, Indian fighter, maker of memorable history. Director of the movement of the settlers requiring that hazardous and heroic journey so successfully achieved from Wautauga to the Cumberland. Founder of Nashville. Brigadier-General of the United States Army. Agent of the government to the Chickasaw Nation. He was earnest, taciturn, self-contained, and had that quiet consciousness of power usually seen in born leaders of men. “He had winning ways and made no fuss” (Oconnostota) He had what was of value beyond price - a love of virtue an intrepid soul, an emulous desire for honest fame. He possessed to an eminent degree the confidence, esteem and veneration of all his contemporaries. His worth and services in peace and war are gratefully remembered. Amiable in private life, wise in council, vigilant in camp, courageous in battle, strong in adversity, generous in victory, revered in death.”

May we hold the memory of General Robertson, a great man, close to our hearts and strive to live our lives as courageously as he and our forefathers once did.