![Wilderness road en](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Wilderness_road_en.png)
The Transylvania Colony, also referred to as the Transylvania Purchase, was a short-lived, extra-legal colony founded in early 1775 by North Carolina land speculator
Richard Henderson, who formed and controlled the Transylvania Company. Henderson and his investors had reached an agreement to purchase a vast tract of
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...
lands west of the southern and central
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...
through the acceptance of the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals with most leading Cherokee chieftains then controlling these lands. In exchange for the land the tribes received goods worth, according to the estimates of some scholars, about 10,000 British pounds ($1.5 million U.S. in 2016). To further complicate matters, this early American frontier land was also claimed by both the
Virginia Colony (particularly following
Lord Dunmore's War) and
Province of North Carolina.
The Transylvania Colony was located in what is now the central and western parts of
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...
, and a chunk of north central Tennessee. The American pioneer and frontier explorer
Daniel Boone was hired by Henderson to establish the
Wilderness Road
The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other (mo ...
going through the
Cumberland Gap and into southeastern Kentucky to facilitate settlement. A governmental compact was concluded by the settlers in May, 1775. Most settlement was forestalled by the Revolutionary War, except around established towns. Henderson's Transylvania claim in Kentucky was invalidated by the Virginia General Assembly in 1778, and the remaining Tennessee portion was invalidated by North Carolina in 1783. Henderson was compensated with a land grant along the Ohio River in western Kentucky and the current town of
Henderson Henderson may refer to:
People
*Henderson (surname), description of the surname, and a list of people with the surname
*Clan Henderson, a Scottish clan
Places Argentina
*Henderson, Buenos Aires
Australia
*Henderson, Western Australia
Canada
*He ...
was founded there.
Background
Image:The Lord Dunmore.png, The Earl of Dunmore
Earl of Dunmore is a title in the Peerage of Scotland.
History
The title was created in 1686 for Lord Charles Murray, second son of John Murray, 1st Marquess of Atholl. He was made Lord Murray of Blair, Moulin and Tillimet (or Tullimet) and V ...
via Dunmore's War
Lord Dunmore's War—or Dunmore's War—was a 1774 conflict between the Colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo American Indian nations.
The Governor of Virginia during the conflict was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore—Lord Dunmore. He a ...
cleared the way for settlement of Kentucky
Image:Dunmore Saga.png, Dunmore War Saga
The
Royal Proclamation of 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III on 7 October 1763. It followed the Treaty of Paris (1763), which formally ended the Seven Years' War and transferred French territory in North America to Great Britain. The Procla ...
that ended the
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the ...
declared lands west of the Appalachians as "Indian Territory" forbidden to colonial settlement.
Continued provocations by colonial explorers, traders and trappers necessitated some concessions by the Indians to concede lands for settlement in exchange for peace.
In the 1768
Treaty of Fort Stanwix
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty signed between representatives from the Iroquois and Great Britain (accompanied by negotiators from New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania) in 1768 at Fort Stanwix. It was negotiated between Sir William J ...
, the
Iroquois
The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...
ceded their claims on lands south of the
Ohio River
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...
to the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
. Although they claimed sovereignty over much of what is now Kentucky, the Iroquois did not actually reside there, as did their nominal vassal, the
Shawnee
The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...
. In addition, the Cherokee to the south and southeast used much of the area as their historical hunting grounds. Neither of these peoples had been consulted regarding the Stanwix treaty, although a series of borders was worked out with the Cherokee at the
Treaty of Hard Labour
In an effort to resolve concerns of settlers and land speculators following the western boundary established by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 by King George III, it was desired to move the boundary farther west to encompass more settlers who were ...
(1768), the
Treaty of Lochaber (1770), and once more in 1771 when they agreed to extend the Lochaber cession into present-day northeast Kentucky. The Shawnee, however, had not conducted a boundary agreement with the colonies since 1758 at the
Treaty of Easton, giving them a claim to everything west of the Alleghenies. Consequently, they began to attack frontier settlers moving into the region. This led to Lord Dunmore's War, fought in 1774, primarily between the Shawnee and Virginia Colony. The Shawnee lost this brief war and their chief
Cornstalk ceded all their claims south of the Ohio River, including Kentucky.
Also, through much of the second half of the 17th century, a state of war had existed between the "northern tribes" (particularly the Iroquois, and the Lenape and Shawnee who were then tributary to them) and the "southern tribes" of the Cherokee and Catawba, the shared hunting grounds of Kentucky remained a contentious neutral zone.
The Transylvania Company
![Sycamore-shoals-tn1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Sycamore-shoals-tn1.jpg)
On 27 August 1774, Richard Henderson, a judge from North Carolina,
organized a
land speculation
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.)
Many s ...
company with a number of other prominent North Carolinians. Originally called Richard Henderson and Company, the company name was first changed to the Louisa Company, and finally to the Transylvania Company on January 6, 1775. The Transylvania Company investors hoped to establish a British
proprietary colony by purchasing the Kentucky lands from the Cherokee who had earlier settled much of the south and southeastern Kentucky areas and still claimed hunting rights in the abandoned Shawnee lands.
Treaty of Sycamore Shoals (a.k.a. Treaty of Watauga)
In March 1775, Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone met with more than 1,200 Cherokee at
Sycamore Shoals (present day
Elizabethton
Elizabethton is a city in, and the county seat of Carter County, Tennessee, United States. Elizabethton is the historical site of the first independent American government (known as the Watauga Association, created in 1772) located west of both th ...
in northeastern Tennessee). Present were Cherokee leaders such as
Attakullakulla and
Oconostota. With the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, Henderson purchased all the land lying between the
Cumberland River
The Cumberland River is a major waterway of the Southern United States. The U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 8, 2011 river drains almost of southern Kentucky and ...
, the
Cumberland Mountains, and the
Kentucky River
The Kentucky River is a tributary of the Ohio River, long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed June 13, 2011 in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. Commonwealth of Kentuc ...
, and situated south of the
Ohio River
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...
on March 14, 1775. The land thus delineated, 20 million acres (81,000 km
2), encompassed an area half the size of present-day Kentucky.
Henderson and his partners probably believed that a recent British legal opinion, the
Pratt–Yorke opinion
The Pratt-York opinion also known as the Camden-Yorke opinion was a 1757 official legal opinion issued jointly by Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, the Attorney General for England and Wales, and Charles Yorke, the Solicitor General for England and ...
, had made such purchases legal. In fact, the Transylvania Company's purchase was in violation of both Virginia and North Carolina law, as well as the
Royal Proclamation of 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III on 7 October 1763. It followed the Treaty of Paris (1763), which formally ended the Seven Years' War and transferred French territory in North America to Great Britain. The Procla ...
, which prohibited private purchase of American Indian land and the establishment of any non-
Crown sanctioned colony.
Indian treaties were disavowed by some of the chiefs. A minor Cherokee chief,
Dragging Canoe, refused to sign, endorse, or obey the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals although his father, Attakullakulla, apparently signed. Dragging Canoe left the Sycamore Shoals treaty grounds and took those who were loyal to him and his way of thinking into southeastern Tennessee, near present day Chattanooga. This group came to be called the "
Chickamauga Chickamauga may refer to:
Entertainment
* "Chickamauga", an 1889 short story by American author Ambrose Bierce
* "Chickamauga", a 1937 short story by Thomas Wolfe
* "Chickamauga", a song by Uncle Tupelo from their 1993 album ''Anodyne (album), Ano ...
" after the nearby creek of the same name. Dragging Canoe and this group went on to become the chief protagonists of the Cherokee-American wars.
Settlement
![Boonesborough, Kentucky 30 grey](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Boonesborough%2C_Kentucky_30_grey.jpg)
Prior to the signing of the Sycamore Shoals Treaty, Henderson had hired
Daniel Boone,
an experienced hunter, to travel to the Cherokee towns and to inform them of the upcoming negotiations. Boone had been in southeast Kentucky long before the founding of any Kentucky settlements.
Afterward, Boone was hired to blaze what became known as the
Wilderness Road
The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other (mo ...
, which went from southwestern Virginia north through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. During this trail-blazing expedition, Boone and his party suffered several Indian attacks. Along with a party of about thirty workers, Boone marked a path to the
Kentucky River
The Kentucky River is a tributary of the Ohio River, long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed June 13, 2011 in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. Commonwealth of Kentuc ...
, where he established Boonesborough (near present-day
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by popul ...
), which was intended to be the capital of Transylvania. Unknown to Boone, Henderson led another expedition following in Boone's tracks, widening the path so travellers could bring through wagons. In addition to Boonesborough, other settlements, notably
Harrodsburg, were established at this time. Many of these settlers had come to Kentucky on their own initiative, and some of them refused to recognize Transylvania's authority.
When Henderson arrived at Boonesborough fewer than a hundred people resided there. This population and a few other settlements in the area constituted the sparse concentration of white settlers in the isolated western wilderness. The settlers recognized their precarious situation. They not only faced significant Indian hostilities, but lacked adequate supplies and shelter. Notwithstanding these circumstances, Henderson urged settlers in the area to hold a
constitutional convention Constitutional convention may refer to:
* Constitutional convention (political custom), an informal and uncodified procedural agreement
*Constitutional convention (political meeting), a meeting of delegates to adopt a new constitution or revise an e ...
.
Henderson's plan involved the various settlements scattered across Transylvania sending delegates to Boonesborough, acting in the name of the people they represented and whose consent would justify the convention. In May 1775, under the shade of a huge elm tree, a three-day convention met. In addition to passing nine bills dealing with immediate matters of governance, delegates drafted a compact that organized a frame of government, known as the Transylvania Compact. This plan included executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
[Christian G. Fritz]
''American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War''
(Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 55–60
Demise
After concluding the compact, Henderson returned to North Carolina. On behalf of his fellow investors in the land scheme he petitioned the
Continental Congress
The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, for thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America, and the newly declared United States just before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War. ...
, seeking to make Transylvania a legally recognized colony. Despite those efforts, the Congress declined to act without the consent of Virginia and North Carolina, both of whom claimed jurisdiction over the region in question. In June 1776 the Virginia General Assembly prohibited the Transylvania Land Company from making any demands on settlers in the region. In December 1778, Virginia's Assembly finally declared the Transylvania claim void. In compensation, Henderson and his partners received a grant of 200,000 acres (312 square miles) on the Ohio River below the mouth of
Green River Green River may refer to:
Rivers
Canada
*Green River (British Columbia), a tributary of the Lillooet River
*Green River, a tributary of the Saint John River, also known by its French name of Rivière Verte
*Green River (Ontario), a tributary of ...
. An early settlement there was named Red Banks, and became the city of
Henderson Henderson may refer to:
People
*Henderson (surname), description of the surname, and a list of people with the surname
*Clan Henderson, a Scottish clan
Places Argentina
*Henderson, Buenos Aires
Australia
*Henderson, Western Australia
Canada
*He ...
in 1797.
Henderson pressed on with his remaining modest claim in Tennessee, and it was finally invalidated by North Carolina in 1783.
See also
*
Isaac Shelby, surveyor for the Transylvania Company and future KY governor
*
Transylvania University
Transylvania University is a private university in Lexington, Kentucky. It was founded in 1780 and was the first university in Kentucky. It offers 46 major programs, as well as dual-degree engineering programs, and is accredited by the Southern ...
namesake, but unrelated to the Transylvania Purchase
*
Henderson County, Kentucky, the namesake county whose seat was Henderson
References
Further reading
*Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. ''Western Lands and the American Revolution''. New York: Russell & Russell, 1959.
External links
"Transylvania Purchase" entry from the ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Transylvania (Colony)
Early American land companies
Colonial settlements in North America
Former regions and territories of the United States
Pre-statehood history of Tennessee
Pre-statehood history of Kentucky
1776 disestablishments
States and territories established in 1775
1775 establishments in the British Empire