Tennessee Colonial Records

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Colonial Records

History

The French established a trading post at Fort Prudhomme in 1682, with other forts built in subsequent years. The French ceded the land to Great Britain after 1763. The first permanent settlement in Tennessee was in the Watauga Valley by settlers from North Carolina and Virginia. The Watauga Settlement was included in the Washington District of North Carolina and later Washington County. With land ceded from South Carolina, the state of Franklin was laid out 1784, however, North Carolina did not acknowledge it as a state. In 1790, Tennessee became part of the Southwest Territory in the United States.

Resources

• The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century: Comprising its Settlement, as the Watauga Association, from 1769-1777; a Part of North Carolina, from 1777 to 1784; the State of Franklin from 1788 to 1790; the Territory of the U.S., South of the Ohio, from 1790 to 1796; the State of Tennessee, from 1796 to 1800 by James Gettys McGready Ramsey. (Charleston, SC: Walker and James, 1853. Reprint. n.p., 1967).
• Before Tennessee: The Southwest Territory, 1790-1796, a Narrative History of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio by Walter T. Durham. (Piney Flats, TN: Ricky Mount Historical Association, 1990).
• History of the Lost State of Franklin by Samuel Cole Williams. (New York: Press of the pioneers, 1933).
• History of the South Carolina Cession and the Northern Boundary of Tennessee by W. R. Garrett. (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing house, 1884).
• Partial census of 1787 to 1791 of Tennessee as taken from the North Carolina land grants by Lucy Kate McGhee. (Washington, DC : The Author, n.d.).
• Records Relating to Tennessee in the North Carolina State Archives by C. F. Coker. (Raleigh: The Archives, 1980).
• Religion in Tennessee, 1777-1945 by Herman A. Norton. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981).
• Spartanburg County/District, South Carolina, deed abstracts, books A-T, 1785-1827 (1752-1827) by Albert Bruce Pruitt. (Easley, South Carolina : Southern Historical Press, 1988).
• Tennessee, a History, a 1673-1932 by Philip May Hamer. (1933. Reprint. Tucson, AZ: W.C. Cox, 1974).
• The Wataugah Purchase, March 19, 1775 at Sycamore Shoals of Wataugah River: The Cherokee Indians to Charles Robertson, Trustee for the Wataugah Settlers, an Index of the Wataugah Purchase, the North Carolina Land Grants and Deeds Through 1782 by Mary Hardin McCown. (Johnson City, TN : Overmountain Press, 1976).