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 Richard Henderson: 
 
 The Authorship of the Cumberland 
 
 Compact and the Founding 
 
 of Nashville. 
 
 By ARCHIBALD HENDERSON. 
 
 (Reprinted iiroin the Tennessee Historical Magazine, September 1916.) 
 

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PLATE !. 
 
 
 
 
RICHARD HENDERSON: THE AUTHORSHIP OF 
 
 THE CUMBERLAND COMPACT AND THE 
 
 FOUNDING OF NASHVILLE.* 
 
 (Reprinted from the Tennessee Historical Magazine, September 1916.) 
 I. 
 
 Ill tbe middle years of the eighteenth century the first con- 
 structive movement in the !:^outheru Appahichian region, look- 
 ing toward extensive colonization beyond the mountains, was 
 initiated by great land companies having their headquarters 
 in North Carolina and Virginia. In 1750 that same Dr. 
 Thomas Walker who had won repute as an explorer upon a 
 former journey when he gave the name of Cumberland to 
 mountain, gap and river, was despatched upon a tour of ex- 
 ploration to the westward in behalf of the Loyal Land Com- 
 pany of Virginia; and in 1751, Christopher Gist, whose name 
 is associated in our memory with that of George Washington, 
 was summoned from his remote home on the Yadkin, near 
 the dwelling place of Daniel Boone, to spy out the western 
 lands beyond the mountains in the interest of the Ohio Land 
 Company.^ 
 
 Although no historian adverts to the subject, there can be 
 little doubt that Daniel Boone was given the initial spur to his 
 distant wanderings through the stories of the fertile lands 
 upon the western waters brought back by his neighbor, Christo- 
 pher Gist, who lived above him upon the Yadkin. As early as 
 1760, and no doubt much earlier, Daniel Boone, gun in hand, 
 was scouring the wilderness of Tennessee, and penetrating as 
 far to the westward as the Long Island of the Holston River. 
 At Salisbury, the county seat of Rowan, he became known 
 to the young attorney, Richard Henderson, who often prac- 
 ticed in the court where Daniel Boone's father, Squire Boone, 
 presided as one of the "worshipful justices.'' To Henderson, 
 richly endowed with imaginative vision, Daniel Boone, the 
 scout and hunter, narrated bizarre and romantic tales of the 
 rich lands, fertile pastures and boundless hunting grounds 
 beyond the towering, olive mountains. The King's Proclama- 
 tion of 1763, which was indubitably made to allay for the time 
 being the alarm of the Indians along the border, was by no 
 means designed to set permanent western limits to the colonies. 
 
 *An address delivered in Watkins Hall, Nashville, Thursday, April 
 27, before the Joint Meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Asso- 
 ciation with the Tennessee Historical Society. 
 
 'J. S. Johnston, "Early Explorations of Kentucky," Filson Club 
 I'nblications, No. 13, 1898. 
 
Ai'CnihaJd Ilcndeyson 
 
 This proclamation gave Henderson the first practical sug- 
 gestion to utilize the knowledge and the genius of Boone in 
 exploration in behalf of capital and enterprise. Kealizing 
 that the western lands must eventually be thrown open to 
 colonization, Richard Henderson, soon after the issuance of 
 the Royal Proclamation, organized a land company for the 
 primary purpose of engaging an expert scout and surveyor to 
 spy out the western lands and with the ultimate object in 
 view of effecting a purchase from the Indians. The original 
 company which consisted of three partners, Richard Hender- 
 son, Thomas Hart, and John Williams, was given the name 
 of ^'Richard Henderson and Company.'' Boone was engaged 
 for the undertaking, not only because of his natural genius 
 as an explorer, but also on account of his innate taciturnity 
 and his faculty of keeping his own counsel. Henderson was 
 wise enough to give Boone discretionary powers in regard to 
 prosecuting his inquiries; and in one noteworthy instance, the 
 circumspect Boone deemed it the part of wisdom to com- 
 municate the purposes of his mission to some hunters, to en- 
 able him to secure the results of their information in regard 
 to the best lands they had encountered in the course of their 
 hunting expeditions. In the autumn of 1764, during the jour- 
 ney of the Blevins party of hunters to their hunting ground 
 on the Rock Castle River, near the Crab Orchard in Kentuiky, 
 Daniel Boone came among the hunters, at one of their Ten- 
 nessee station camps, in order, as expressed in the quaint 
 phraseology of the day, "to be informed of the geography and 
 locography of these woods, saying that he was employed to 
 explore them by Richard Henderson and Company."- It was 
 upon this journey that Samuel Callaway, his kinsman, ac- 
 companied Daniel Boone, who, as Ramsey says, "though he 
 had previously hunted on the western waters, came again this 
 year (17()4) to explore the country, being employed for the 
 purpose by Henderson and Company."^ 
 
 Among the hunters who kept penetrating ever further to 
 
 ''John Haywood's Civil and Political History of Tennessee, edn. 
 1823, p. 85. Judge Haywood was intimate from boyhood with the 
 Henderson family, and was the schoolmate of Archibald Henderson, 
 son of Richard, at Springer College in Granville County, the seat 
 of the Henderson family. Judge Haywood's successor to the post 
 of reading clerk to the North Carolina House of Commons, in 1789, 
 was his friend. Major Pleasant Henderson, Richard's brother, and 
 pioneer with Boone at Boonesborough and with Robertson at the 
 French Lick. On his removal to Tennessee, Judge Haywood formed 
 the acquaintance of many of the pioneers, from whom he received 
 innumerable accounts of their personal experiences — notably James 
 Robertson, John Sevier, and Timothe de Monbreun, 
 
 "Ramsey's Anyials of Tennessee, Phila., 1853, p. 69. 
 
Richard Henderson 
 
 the westward, during each succeeding year beginning with 
 1760, was a trained woodsman and expert scout, Henry Scaggs, 
 whom Boone encountered upon more than one occasion in his 
 western wanderings. It was doubtless upon the recommenda- 
 tion of Boone, who recognized his great skill as hunter and 
 scout, that Henry Scaggs was engaged as prospector by the 
 land company known as Richard Henderson and Company, 
 As early as 1763, Scaggs (sometimes incorrectly spelled Suggs 
 or Scraggins) had already passed through Cumberland gap, 
 and hunted for the season on the Cumberland; and in 1765, 
 as the agent of Richard Henderson and Company, he made 
 an extended exploration of the lower Cumberland, fixing his 
 station at what was afterwards known as Mansker's Lick, 
 from its supposed discovery by Caspar Mansker in 1771.^ 
 Aware of the inadequacy of his knowledge of the western coun- 
 try derived from the fragmentary reports brought back by 
 Boone and Scaggs, Judge Henderson for a time took no step 
 toward western colonization ; but when the news of the Treaty 
 of Fort Stanwix reached North Carolina in December, 1768, he 
 realized that the western lands, though ostensibly thrown open 
 for settlement under the aegis of Virginia on pretext of the 
 purchase of the shadowy claim of the Six Nations to the Ken- 
 tucky region, could only be legally obtained by extinguishing 
 the Cherokee title. The arrival of John Findlay, the Penn- 
 sylvania trader, in the valley of the Yadkin late in 1768 was 
 singularly opportune; for Boone himself had never penetrated 
 further westward than the northeastern fringe of Kentucky, 
 whereas Findlay had reached Kentucky as early as 1752, and 
 knew the route thereto through Ouasioto Gap and along the 
 course of the Great Warriors' Path. Seizing the golden op- 
 portunity thus jiresented, Judge Henderson secured the services 
 of Boone and five others, including Findlay as guide, to make 
 an exhaustive survey and examination of the Trans-Alleghany 
 region of Kentucky and Tennessee on behalf of the land com- 
 pany. Following a two years' sojourn in this region, in which 
 he ranged far and wide through Kentucky and as far down as 
 the valleys of the Green and Cumberland rivers, hunting in 
 joyous company with Caspar Mansker and the Long Hunters, 
 Boone returned to North Carolina with graphic accounts of his 
 explorations and of the nature of the country. 
 
 ^Haywood's Civil and Political History of Tennessee, ed. 1823, 
 p. 35; Ramsay's Annals of Tennessee, Phila., 1853, pp. 69-70; Al- 
 brig:ht's Early History of Middle Tennessee, Nashville, 1909, pp. 23, 
 29-30. 
 
ArcJiibald Henderson 
 
 II. 
 
 If Daniel Boone was the first great instrument in further- 
 ing the speculative designs of the land company, James Rob- 
 ertson was assuredly the second, though no whit less impor- 
 tant than Boone. In 1772 the Watauga settlers secured from 
 the Cherokee Indians, for a valuable consideration, a ten years' 
 lease of the lands upon which they were settled; and Boone, 
 who had established friendly relations with Robertson in 1771, 
 communicated to Henderson the details of the leases and pur- 
 chases from the Cherokees of the rich valley lands made by 
 Robertson, Brown and Sevier. After consultation with the 
 Indians, Robertson informed Boone, Henderson's confidential 
 agent, that he believed, if the inducement were large enough, 
 the Indians were ready to sell. Following the disastrous fail- 
 ure of his own unauthorized and individual effort in 1773 to 
 effect western colonization without even attempting to secure 
 by purchase the Indian title, Boone in 1774 advised Hender- 
 son and his associates to attempt the purchase immediately, 
 since the Cherokee, as reported by Robertson, were at last 
 disposed to sell their claim to the Kentucky area.'^ Acting 
 upon legal advice solicited and received from the highest 
 judicial authorities in England — an obscure subject of great 
 importance into which I cannot enter at this time — Judge 
 Henderson, accompanied by Colonel Nathaniel Hart, person- 
 ally visited the Cherokee chieftains in their principal village 
 and secured from them their consent to sell their title. Re- 
 organizing the land company, originally known as Henderson 
 and Company, first into the Louisa and then into the Transyl- 
 vania Company, Judge Henderson, with the aid of Boone 
 and Robertson, and some of his own associates, carried through 
 the Great Treaty at Sycamore Shoals on March 14-17, 1775, 
 purchased for 10,000 pounds sterling the Cherokee title to 
 the Kentucky and Tennessee areas, and commissioned Daniel 
 Boone and his axemen to cut out the passage to the heart of 
 Kentucky, famous in liistory as the Wilderness Trail. 
 
 III. 
 
 Not the least erroneous statement in Mr. Roosevelt's Win- 
 ning of the West is his singular assertion — which his own book 
 in i)art denies — that after the confiscation of the Transylvania 
 purchase by the Virginia legislature in 1778, Judge Richard 
 
 '^The Harbinger, Chapel Hill, 1834, in which Major Pleasant Hen- 
 derson, Judg:e Richard Henderson's brother, and Daniel Boone's friend 
 and fellow-pioneer, relates that in 1774 Richard Henderson followed 
 Daniel Boone's advice in attempting the purchase of the Kentucky 
 area from the Cherokee. 
 
Richard Henderson 
 
 Henderson "drifts out of history." Surely there is excuse for 
 such a statement in view of the strange, yet not wholly in- 
 explicable, fact that the Tennessee historians, Haywood and 
 Ramsey, upon whom Mr, Roosevelt so strongly relied, com- 
 pletely ignore the very man who was the directing and con- 
 trolling spirit in the exploration, colonization and government 
 of the wilderness empire of the Cumberland. Writing Ten- 
 nessee history from the local point of view, magnifying the 
 dangers and the hardships of the hunter and the borderer al- 
 most exclusively, these historians committed the grave error 
 of neglecting to place themselves at the source and of failing 
 to study the colonization of Tennessee in the light of economic 
 control. Having recently described the true role of Daniel 
 Boone as the agent of commercial enterprise," I purpose now 
 to narrate, in the light of a wealth of documentary material 
 in my possession and inaccessible to Mr. Roosevelt and the 
 Tennessee historians, the true story of the Transylvania Com- 
 pany in its relation to Tennessee and of the guiding and con- 
 structive role of its president in the founding of the great and 
 flourishing city in which I now stand. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Following the stern fight for the rights of the Transyl- 
 vania Company which Henderson and Burke made in the 
 Virginia Legislature at Williamsburg in the late autumn of 
 1776 — a hopeless battle in which they were worsted through 
 the all-powerful influence of two great men, Patrick Henry 
 and George Rogers Clark — Judge Henderson appeared before 
 the Commissioners of the States of North Carolina and Vir- 
 ginia at the Treaty of the Long Island of the Holston on 
 July 18, 1777, and presented an elaborate memorial in behalf 
 of the alleged rights of the Transylvania Company.^ Lacking 
 the authority from their respective governments to inquire 
 into the validity of private purchases from the Cherokee and 
 fearing to jeopardize the delicate business for which the}^ 
 were assembled, the Commissioners unanimously voted to 
 ignore the memorial of the Transylvania Company. In No- 
 
 "Cf. the following papers by me, dealing- in some detail with this 
 phase of the subject: "The Beginnings of American Expansion," 
 North Carolina Review, September and October, 1910; "Richard Hen- 
 derson: his Life and Times," Charlotte Observer (thirteen instal- 
 ments), March 9-June 1, 1913; "The Creative Forces in Westward 
 Expansion," American Historical Review, October, 1914; "Richard 
 Henderson and the Occupation of Kentucky, 1775," Mississippi Val- 
 ley Historical Review, December, 1914. 
 
 'Haywood's Civil and Political History of Tennessee, edn. 1823, 
 Appendix, pp. 500-3. 
 
Archibald Henderson 
 
 vember of the next year, the Virginia House of Delegates 
 deGlared the Transylvania purchase void; but in consideration 
 of the very great expense incurred by Richard Henderson and 
 Company in purchasing the said lands, '*by which the Com- 
 monwealth is likely to receive great advantage, by increasing 
 its inhabitants and establishing a barrier against the Indians," 
 the General Assembly granted to Richard Henderson and 
 Company two hundred thousand acres of land situated be- 
 tween the Ohio and Green Rivers, where the town of Hender- 
 son, Kentucky, now stands.^ 
 
 With this bursting of the Transylvania bubble and the 
 vanishing of the golden dreams of Henderson and his asso- 
 ciates for establishing the fourteenth American Colony in 
 the heart of the Trans-Alleghany region, all might well have 
 seemed lost. But is Richard Henderson disheartened by this 
 failure of his imperialistic dreams? Does he, as Mr. Roosevelt 
 crassly affirms, "drift out of history?" No; the purest and 
 greatest achievement of his meteoric career still lies before 
 •him. The genius of the colonizer and the ambition of the 
 speculator, in striking conjunction, inspire him to attempt 
 to repeat on North Carolina soil, along solidly practical lines, 
 the revolutionary experiment which the extension of the sov- 
 ereignty of the Old Dominion over the Kentucky area had 
 doomed to inevitable failure. It Avas no longer his purpose, 
 however, to attempt to found an independent colony, separate 
 from North Carolina and hostile to the American government, 
 as in the case of Transylvania, which had been hostile to the 
 royal government and founded in defiance thereof. Millions of 
 acres within the chartered limits of North Carolina had been 
 purchased by him and his associates from the Cherokee on 
 March 17, 1775. One of the courses of the Great Grant, as it was 
 called, read: ''down the sd. (Cumberland) River, including 
 all its waters to the Ohio River;"'' and James Robertson in 
 his deposition before the Virginia Commissioners, Ai)ril 16, 
 1777, describing the Sycamore Shoals Treaty, categorically 
 stated: "The Indians then agreed to sell the laud as far as 
 Cumberland River and said Henderson insisted to have Cum- 
 berland River and the waters of Cumberland River, which 
 the Indians agreed to.''^° To establish the fact that this vast 
 territory lay within the bounds of North Carolina and not of 
 Virginia was the first and most vital consideration of the 
 Transylvania Company; for while Virginia had declared the 
 
 'Journal, Virginia House of Delegates, November 4 and 17, 1778. 
 Cf. also Heninff's Statutes at Large, X, 571. 
 "Draper Mss., 2CC42. 
 "Draper Mss., ICC 160-194. 
 
Richard Henderson 
 
 title of the Transylvania Company void. North Cal^olina, 
 under American rule, had shown no disposition to nullify the 
 claims of Henderson and his associates. In order to estab- 
 lish the fact that the great Cumberland region lay within 
 the chartered limits of North Carolina, it was necessary to 
 prolong the dividing line between North Carolina and Vir- 
 ginia, which had never been extended further to the westward 
 than Steep Rock Creek. Henderson's unpublished correspond- 
 ence reveals his conviction that the Cumberland region lay 
 within the chartered limits of North Carolina; but James 
 Robertson was under the impression that the Cumberland 
 region, including the French Lick, w^ould, when the dividing 
 lines should be run, fall within the bounds of Virginia.^^ 
 
 Judge Henderson's comprehensive design of the promotion 
 of an extensive colonization of the Cumberland region now 
 moves rapidly toward completion. It is simply a case of 
 history repeating itself. Just as Henderson, in his Boones- 
 borough project, had chosen Daniel Boone, the ablest of the 
 North Carolina pioneers, and his companions, to spy out the 
 land and select sites for permanent future settlement, so now 
 he chooses as the leader of the new colonizing party the ablest 
 pioneer of the Watauga settlement, James Robertson. Large 
 inducements to assemble and lead this party were indubitably 
 offered by the Transylvania Company to James Robertson. 
 Nothing less than such inducements would have influenced 
 Robertson to abandon the comparatively peaceful Watauga 
 settlements, where he was the acknowledged leader and the 
 Indian agent in the employ of the State of North Carolina, 
 and to venture his life in this desperate hazard of new for- 
 tunes. 
 
 With that untiring energy and sure efficiency so charac- 
 teristic of the man, James Robertson now proceeds actively 
 to recruit a party for the preliminary exploration, and to 
 make all the needed arrangements for subsequent coloniza- 
 tion on an extended scale. "The extensive purchase made 
 by the Henderson Associates," says Putnam, the picturesque 
 historian of Middle Tennessee, "and the further reports made 
 by hunters and agents of the large land company as to the 
 country beyond the mountains, and the very favorable terms 
 upon which large tracts — a thousand acres — would probably 
 be granted, were attracting unusual attention. The Hender- 
 sons, Hart, and other members of the company were now 
 causing it to be extensively known that they were making 
 preparations to emigrate, and take possession of the country, 
 A considerable number of families agreed to move out in the 
 
 "Putnam's Middle Tennessee, p. 67. 
 
Archibald Henderson 
 
 fall. Some were to go by land with cattle, and what could 
 thus be packed, others to descend the Tennessee to the Muscle 
 Shoals, and being there met by their immediate friends, travel 
 across to the Cumberland and into Kentucky; or if it should 
 be deemed easiest and best, this party, with women and chil- 
 dren, should continue all the distance by water."^^ In his 
 letter to Gov. Eichard Caswell, of North Carolina, written 
 from Washington County on January 14, 1779, in regard to 
 a proposed military expedition to be made by North Carolina 
 against the Cherokees, James Robertson writes : "I am well 
 informed that the first day of March near 200 men and many 
 families amongst them, are to meet at the Long Island of 
 Holston in order to go down the river, with a design to settle 
 Cumberland river, a fork of the Ohio, which might be a con- 
 venient time for the Expedition; and posably (sic) under the 
 cover of Women and Children they might pass unmolested ; and 
 I have told the Indians that people are going to settle that 
 country the coming spring."^^ Preparatory to this emigra- 
 tion, as pointed out by Putnam, "it was agreed that a number 
 of men should go in the spring of the year and plant some 
 corn upon the Cumberland, that bread might be prepared for 
 the main body of emigrants upon their arrival in the fall. 
 Robertson selected his men, or found suitable volunteers to 
 go with them, experienced woodsmen and able-bodied men."^* 
 On February 6, 1779, as stated by Moses Fisk in his liistorical 
 sketch of Tennessee, James Robertson as leader, accom])anied 
 by George Freeland, William Neely, Edward Swanson, James 
 Manly, Mark Robertson, Zachariah Wells, and William Over- 
 hall, and one negro man, "set out on this adventure to exam- 
 ine the purchase made by Richard Henderson and Company, 
 at the treaty of 1775.'"^ 
 
 The immediately following phases in the story of the 
 Cumbei'land settlement are familiar enough to all who are 
 acquainted with early Tennessee history. Yet certain docu- 
 ments which have recently come to my attention in archives in 
 
 ^''History of Middle Tennessee, Nashville, 1869, p. 61. 
 
 'W. C. State Records, xiv, 247. 
 
 "Putnam, 1. c, 63. 
 
 '"The words quoted are from Putnam, I. c., p. 64. In Fisk's sketch, 
 entitled, "A Summary Notice of the First Settlements Made by White 
 People within the Limits Which Bound the State of Tennessee," and 
 published in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, Vol. 7, under 
 date July 1, 1816, it is stated that Robertson, accompanied by "ten 
 men, including' a negro, started for the Holston settlement to ex- 
 plore and take possession of the country on the Cumberland." 
 
Richard Henderson 
 
 England, North Carolina and Virginia, give additional inter- 
 est and piquancy to the situation. The significant facts are 
 as follows: The Long Hunter, Gaspar Mansker, of German 
 extraction, in 1771 "discovered" the famous lick which bears 
 his name; and influenced by Tom and Sam Bryan, with whom 
 he re-visited the Cumberland country in 1775, he claimed this 
 land by right of settlement under the State of Virginia.^® 
 Furthermore, Col. Arthur Campbell, the Virginia borderer, 
 had visited the Cumberland country in the early seventies — 
 a fact unknown to the Tennessee historians — and had regis- 
 tered, under Col. Wm. Preston, surveyor of Fincastle Co., Va., 
 his claim to "1,000 Acres at a place called Caspar's Lick, be- 
 ing on a creek that empties into Cumberland below the Bar- 
 rens." Col. Campbell also located 1,000 acres of land for 
 Col. Wm. Byrd, the third, who devised it to his son Charles in 
 his will as follows: "I give my son Charles, who never of- 
 fended me, a thousand acres of land in the County of Fin- 
 castle, known by the name of the Salt Springs, and which was 
 surveyed for me by Mr. Arthur Campbell, being part of the 
 land I claim under his Majesty's Proclamation of 1763."^^ 
 Most important of all, George Rogers Clark, the Virginian, 
 had purchased three thousand acres of land at the French 
 Lick in the year 1776; and referring to this purchase in a 
 letter to Patrick Henry from Fort Patrick Henry, in the 
 Illinois Country, March 9, 1779, he says : "I thank you for 
 your remembrance of my situation respecting lands in the 
 Frontiers. I learn that Government has reserved on the lands 
 on the Cumberland for the Soldiers. If I should be deprived 
 of a certain tract of land on that River which I purchased 
 three years ago, and have been at a considerable expense to 
 improve, I shall in a manner lose my all. It is known by the 
 name of the great french Lick on the South or West side 
 
 ^"Unpublished letter from Col. Arthur Campbell to Gov. Richard 
 Caswell of North Carolina. In this letter, dated Richmond, November 
 8, 1782, in speaking of his preemption of 1,000 acres "on the waters 
 of Cumberland River," Campbell remarks: "There is a man in that 
 country by the name of Mansker who now claims the land by right 
 of settlement, but my location was made several years before he 
 moved to that country, and I believe he would never have troubled 
 me by interfering with my claim had he not been instigated by Tom 
 and Sam Bryan, with whom he was intimate — ." Cf. Albright's Early 
 History of Middle Tennessee, 28-30. 
 
 "Cf. Arthur Campbell to Richard Caswell, Governor of N. C, 
 November 8, 1782, Archives N. C. Historical Commission. For will 
 of Col. Wm. Byrd, 3d, which was dated July 6, 1774, and proved 
 February 5, 1777, cf. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 
 Vol. IX, pp. 80 et seq. After the Cumberland region was found to 
 lie within the bounds of North Carolina, letters and memorials from 
 Arthur Campbell and the widow of Col. Wm. Byrd were presented 
 
Archibald Henderson 
 
 containing three thousand Acres. If you can do anything for 
 me in saving it, I shall for ever remember it with gratitude."^^ 
 From these, and other pre-emptions doubtless known to 
 him, James Robertson suspected that the French Lick lay 
 within the bounds of Virginia. In particular, the fact of 
 Clark's purchase of the three thousand acres, including the 
 French Lick, a purchase doubtless effected through the in- 
 strumentality of Col. Arthur Campbell, was well known at 
 Watauga and along the border. Although the inducements 
 held out to him by the Transylvania Company were greater 
 than those held out by the State of North Carolina, Robert- 
 son resolved to remain on the safe side by attempting to 
 secure from George Rogers Clark as owner, holding the title 
 under the Virginia claim, ''cabin rights" to the pre-emptions 
 on the Cumberland at the French Lick.^^ Certain it is that, 
 
 in 1782 to the North Carolina legislature for validation of these land 
 titles. Neither application was successful. Mrs. Byrd's memorial 
 was not brought up for final action in the Noi'th Carolina Legislature 
 until four years later; there was some delay caused by the failure to 
 attach a copy of Col. Byrd's will to Mrs. Byrd's memorial. In their 
 report, dated December 31, 1786, in reply to the petition of Rev. 
 Robert Andrews, to whose charge Mrs. Byrd's interests were com- 
 mitted, the committee, consisting of General Rutherford, General 
 Gregory, Mr. Relfs and Mr. Lewis, state in specific terms: 
 
 "That it appears to your committee by the papers and documents 
 before them that the late Honorable William Byrd was entitled for 
 his military services to five thousand acres of land under the Procla- 
 mation of his Britannic Majesty in Council of 1763. That in conse- 
 quence one thousand acres thereof are located, as appears by a 
 Certificate of the late Colo. William Preston, Surveyor of Fincastle 
 County in Virginia, at the great Salt Lick on Cumberland River 
 now called Nashville. 
 
 "Your Committee considering the nature and extent of the sd. 
 proclamation, and it being fully ascertained to them by the exten- 
 sion of the boundary line between this and the State of Virginia, that 
 the aforesaid entry was made on lands within the proprietary part 
 of the Carolina's {sic) and consequently not within the gift of the 
 Crown, are of opinion that the claim of the late Honorable William 
 Byrd to the said lands is inadmissible." Archives of the N. C. His- 
 torical Commission. Cf. State Records of N. C, xviii, 33, 190. 
 
 "B. M., Add. Mss., 21, 782, f. 199. This letter is printed in "George 
 Rogers Clark Papers, 1771-1781," Vol. viii, Illinois Historical Collec- 
 tions, Vol. Ill, Virginia Series, edited by J. A. James, 1912, pp. 304-5. 
 In a letter to William Mayo, Virginia, 1. c, pp. 380-1, copied from 
 Draper Mss., 50 Jl, George Rogers Clark, writing from Louisville, 
 Kentucky, January 8, 1780, says: ". . . but in order to have done 
 with it I have purchased that quantity (10,000 acres) of Improvement 
 on Cumberland and Inclose a memorandum (sic) the Best Land in 
 that Countrey as they war first Chose." 
 
 '""Robertson had agreed to go to the Illinois and purchase 'cabin 
 rights' of General George Rogers Clark, from whom some of the 
 emigrants recently from Virginia gave assurance that such land- 
 
Richard Henderson 
 
 shortly after planting corn on the present site of Nashville, 
 and taking other necessary steps attendant upon the estab- 
 lishment of an infant settlement, Robertson made a long trip 
 through the wilderness to Post St. Vincent, visited General 
 Clark at Fort Patrick Henry, and "had an understanding 
 with him, to be carried into execution upon subsequent ap- 
 plication. "^° The nature of this understanding is easily sur- 
 mised, namely that the settlers on Clark's lands on the Cum- 
 berland would, at some future time, pay him the purchase 
 money for the "cabin rights" to their pre-emptions, should the 
 French Lick, on the extension of the North-Carolina-Virginia 
 line prove to fall within the chartered boundaries of Virginia. 
 
 VI. 
 
 As early as 1777, following the Treaty at the Long Island 
 of Holston in July of that year, it became manifest to the 
 commissioners of the State of North Carolina and Virginia 
 that, owing to the progress of emigration westward and the 
 growing aggravation of uncertainties as to land titles, it 
 would be eminently desirable to extend still further westward 
 the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia. In 
 the latter part of 1778, acts providing for the extension and 
 marking of the boundary line were passed by both North 
 Carolina and Virginia; and among the Commissioners ap- 
 pointed from North Carolina were Judge Richard Henderson, 
 Col. John Williams, and Capt. William Bailey Smith, all of 
 whom had played active parts in the founding of the Colony 
 of Transylvania. The Commissioners from each State agreed 
 to meet in the latter part of the summer of 1779 at the western 
 end of the line formerly run, and thence to prolong the line 
 westward. Meantime the colonization of the Cumberland, in- 
 stigated by Judge Henderson as President of the Transylvania 
 Company, and to be engineered by James Robertson, had been 
 delayed ; and the party of settlers had failed to start from the 
 Long Island on March 1st as prophesied by Robertson. Col. 
 Nathaniel Hart, one of the proprietors of the Transylvania 
 Company, living at Boonesborough, Kentucky, actively fos- 
 tered the plans for the expedition by water of Col. John Don- 
 elson, and supplied him with some corn for the journey. "In 
 connexion with the early history of Kentucky," records his 
 son. Col. Nathaniel Hart, Jr., "it may not be amiss to state 
 
 claims could be procured for very small sums." Putnam's History of 
 Middle Tennessee, pp. 64-5, 67. The present research thus first ac- 
 curately accounts for Robertson's long and arduous journey to the 
 Illinois country. 
 
 '"Putnam, I. c, p. 65. 
 
Archibald Henderson 
 
 that Cumberland (now Middle Tennessee) was also mainly 
 settled under the auspices of Henderson and Co."-^ Judge 
 Henderson left his home in Granville County, North Carolina, 
 on August 18, 1779, and together with John Williams and 
 William Bailey Smith, joined the Virginia Commissioners at 
 a waste cabin on Steep Rock Creek on September 1." 
 
 In the course of the running of the line, so graphically 
 described in the Journal of Daniel Smith;-^ there developed 
 a lack of agreement between the commissioners of North Car- 
 olina and those of Virginia with reference to the observations 
 upon which the running of the line must depend; and upon 
 reaching Cumberland Mountain, on November 18, the Caro- 
 lina Commissioners abandoned the further running of the line. 
 Judge Henderson, accompanied by his brothers. Pleasant, 
 Nathaniel and Samuel, and a few others, went on in order to 
 observe the Virginia Commissioners continue their line to the 
 Tennessee River; and reached Boonesborough on Christmas 
 Day, 1779.-* On this same date, the swarm of colonists from 
 the parent hive at Watauga, which had gone overland under 
 Robertson's guidance, passed their first day at the French 
 Lick, and on January 1, 1780, crossed the river on the ice to 
 the present site of Nashville.^^ 
 
 It is most significant that the document, known as the 
 
 ""N. Hart, Jr., to Wilkins Tannehill, in Louisville News-Letter, 
 May 23, 1840. 
 
 "In connection with the running of the dividing line, the follow- 
 ing passage from a letter of Col. Richard Henderson's now in my 
 possession, postmarked Holston, September 12, 1779, is of more than 
 ordinary interest: 
 
 "The Virginia Commissioners, to wit Doctor Walker and Major 
 Daniel Smith (of Clinch) who from some inaccurate observations 
 before we came had given out in speeches that the Long Island would 
 be miles in Virga. and thereby had blown up the inhabitants with 
 hopes of great extension of territory, are brought to bed. — Indeed 
 the people here in General look as if they had lately miscarried, and 
 hourly are making applications for Land from our Company &c. — 
 Men who, two years ago, were clamorous against Richard Henderson 
 and Company, and Damning their title, are now with pale faces, 
 haunting our Camp and begging our friendship with regard to their 
 Land." 
 
 "'Tennessee Historical Magazine, March, 1915. 
 
 ""In Fleming's Journal we read, under date of December 25, 1779: 
 "Sam. Henderson arrived with some of the Commissioners from 
 Carolina having quitted running the line on some disagreement with 
 the Virginia Commisrs. who continued to go on with the line. — Dec. 
 26. Clear and moderate. Mr. Henderson took the Lat. and made 
 this place 37° 48'." In Durrett Collection, University of Chicago 
 Library. 
 
 "Putnam's History of Middle Tennessee, p. 66. 
 
Richard Henderson 
 
 Cumberland Compact, explicitly testifies — although the fact 
 has been ignored by historians — that the French Lick was 
 founded under the auspices of the Transylvania Comj)any and 
 the patronage of Judge Henderson, and gives the date of 
 the founding as January 1, 1780. The rate of valuation at 
 which payment for the Cumberland lands was to be made, in 
 case the title of the Transylvania Company should be con- 
 firmed, was fixed, viz. : "According to the value of money on 
 the first day of January last, being the time when the price 
 was made public (and) settlement encouraged thereon by said 
 Henderson. "'° 
 
 VII. 
 
 Meanwhile the fate of this colony which he had promoted, 
 and upon whose efforts the subsequent fate of the Transylvania 
 Company depended, was weighing heavily upon the mind of 
 Judge Henderson. The terrible hardships of this bitter winter, 
 ever afterwards known as the "hard winter,'' which he had 
 endured in the course of his difficult and dangerous journey 
 to Boonesborough, brought to his mind the thought of equal 
 or greater hardships which Robertson and his party must 
 likewise have borne in their arduous journey overland to the 
 French Lick. But his concern was, if anything, greater for 
 the party of men, with many women and children, also des- 
 tined for the French Lick, who under the leadership of Col. 
 John Donelson had set sail from Fort Patrick Henry, on 
 Holston River, in the good boat Adventure on December 22, 
 1779. With paternalistic care and a lively sense of responsi- 
 bility for the welfare of these two parties which he had him- 
 self induced to make the great venture. Judge Henderson pro- 
 ceeds to purchase, in Kentucky, at huge cost a large stock of 
 corn for the colony at French Lick. In a letter of John Floyd's, 
 dated Harrodsburg, 20th Feb., 1780, is found the following 
 statement: "I have no bread yet, but expect a small supply 
 from my friend Col. Henderson at Boonesborough, who has 
 greatly befriended me by sparing that which he may want him- 
 self, and only waits for high water to send it down with his own 
 on the way to the mouth of Green River, where he is about 
 
 ^"Cf . the facsimile accompanying this article, on which these words 
 appear. Putnam records: "Col. Henderson was a sound lawyer, 
 a man of thoroug:h education, an accomplished gentleman, an honor- 
 able and patriotic man, and sought and took no advantage of the 
 confidence placed in him. Sales were made, but payment conditioned 
 on a confirmation. Purchasers here were never urged to make any 
 payments on contracts into which they had entered. Old settlers 
 ever entertained for Henderson a very high regard as a gentleman 
 and patriot." Middle Tennessee, 88-9. 
 
Archibald Henderson 
 
 to form a settlement."-' The corn for the Cumberland settle- 
 ment, hundreds of bushels, purchased by Judge Henderson at 
 Boonesborough, was on March 5, 1780, "sent from Boones- 
 borough in perogues under the command of the late Major 
 William Bailey Smith of Ohio County, Kentucky, This corn 
 was to be taken down the Kentucky River, and over the falls 
 of the Ohio, to the mouth of the Cumberland, and thence up 
 that river to the fort at French Lick. It is believed to have 
 been the only bread which the settlers had until it was raised 
 there in 1781; for although corn was planted there in 1780, 
 yet the place was so annoyed by the Cherokees, that the set- 
 tlers were not permitted to cultivate it."-^ There is a note of 
 deep impressiveness in this heroic triumphing over the obsta- 
 cles of obdurate nature and this thoughtful provision for the 
 exposed Cumberland settlement projected and promoted by 
 the Transylvania Company — the purchase by Judge Hender- 
 son and the shipment by Col. Hart, in that awful winter of 
 bitter cold and obstructed navigation, of this indispensable 
 quantity of corn valued at sixty thousand dollars in depre- 
 ciated paper. 
 
 While Major William Bailey Smith, with his precious 
 cargo of corn, was making the long journey by water to the 
 French Lick, Judge Henderson, accompanied by his brothers, 
 Pleasant and Nathaniel, and by Col. Nathaniel Hart, started 
 overland to join Robertson and Donelson, and to draw up a 
 
 ^'Draper Mss. 33 S 317. "Green river," which flows into the Mis- 
 sissippi not a great distance from the mouth of the Cumberland river, 
 is an obvious error in the above statement. It should read "Cumber- 
 land river." The settlement, as we know, was not to be made at the 
 mouth of the Cumberland. 
 
 ""This statement is made by Col. Nathaniel Hart, Jr., son of Col. 
 Nathaniel Hart, one of the partners of the Transylvania Company. 
 Col. Hart continues: "This corn had been raised by my father at 
 Boonesborough, in 1779; and I have now before me an account against 
 Col. Donaldson (Donelson) for nine bushels, which he says ought 
 to rate high at the French Lick, as it had been worth $200 per bushel 
 at Boonesborough." Nathaniel Hart, Jr., to Wilkins Tannehill, Spring 
 Hill, April 27, 1839, in Louisville News-Letter, May 23, 1840. Clearly 
 Donelson derived the information as to the price of the corn from 
 Col. Richard Henderson, the purchaser, at their meeting on March 31. 
 In Butler's History of Kentucky (1834 ed.), note, p. 99, the follow- 
 ing abstract from Col. John Floyd's correspondence states: "The 
 price of corn fluctuated from fifty dollars per bushel in December, 
 
 1779, to one hundred and sixty-five dollars per bushel, in January, 
 
 1780. These prices were at a period of obstructed navigation, and 
 in depreciated paper; but its value in gold and silver is not knovni." 
 It is clear that by February, 1780, the price had risen still higher, 
 to the almost incredible price of $200.00 per bushel. 
 
Richard Henderson 
 
 form of government for the infant settlement on the Cumber- 
 land.2« 
 
 The most memorable entries in Donelson's famous journal 
 are the references to Henderson and Robertson — projector and 
 leader, respectively, of the Cumberland settlement. Although 
 James Robertson failed to meet Donelson's party at the Muscle 
 Shoals or to leave signs there for their guidance, they were 
 met further up the river, on Friday, March 31, by the watch- 
 ful and anxious Henderson. The entry in Donelson's journal, 
 demonstrating the wise forethought of the promoter of the 
 settlement, reads as follows: "Set out this day, and after 
 running some distance, met with Col. Richard Henderson, 
 who was running the line between Virginia and North Caro- 
 lina. At this meeting we were much rejoiced. He gave us 
 every information we wished, and further informed us that 
 he had purchased a quantity of corn in Kentucky, to be 
 shipped at the Falls of Ohio, for the use of the Cumberland 
 settlement. We are now without bread, and are compelled to 
 hunt the buffalo to preserve life."^° 
 
 Judge Henderson, his two brothers, and Col. Hart arrived 
 at Col. Daniel Smith's camp, at Amos Eaton's, on Friday, 
 
 ""This party must have started about the middle of March; for 
 on March 10 Judge Henderson was still at Boonesborough. In a 
 letter describing conditions in Kentucky, written from Boonesborough, 
 March 10, 1780, one reads: "A Boat of Colo. Henderson's is setting 
 off tomorrow or next day for the falls (Louisville) by which we 
 shall send an address to Colo. Clark to superintend this matter and 
 obtain his answer as soon as possible. Mr. Henderson's boat will 
 be at Leestown on Tuesday next and will be convenient for you to 
 send by." A. L. S. in Draper Mss., 50 J 18, printed in George Rogers 
 Clark Papers, 1771-1781, pp. 396-8. This letter contains the follow- 
 ing endorsement: 
 
 "March 10, 1780. 
 
 "At a full meeting of the inhabitants of Boonsb'gh Collected on 
 the melancholy Occasion of the foregoing Letter it was unanimously 
 agreed that the sd. Letter should be Written which was accordingly 
 Done, and Capt. David Gess Direct'd to subscribe his name Thereto 
 for and in Behalf of the Whole. Certified under my hand this 10th 
 of March, 1780. Richd. Henderson." 
 
 ""Putnam: Middle Tennessee, p. 75. In a statement made by Mrs. 
 Donelson, she relates: "When they met Col. Rd. Henderson, Gen. 
 Dl. Smith & Capt. Nathl. Hart, on Cumberland, all were rejoiced, 
 particularly Colo. Donelson, who was highly delighted — learned of 
 Capt. Robertson's safe arrival at the Salt Lick (now Nashville) — 
 that corn had been purchased in Kentucky." The information that 
 Capt. Robertson and party had arrived safely at the Salt Lick prior 
 to March 14, was furnished by General Daniel Smith, who was there 
 on that date. Through inadvertence, he makes no reference in his 
 journal to the presence of Robertson and his party at the French 
 
Archibald Henderson 
 
 April 7, and left that place shortly after April 10^^ for the 
 French Lick, doubtless arriving there in advance of Donelson 
 and his party. Silently eloquent of the granite endurance and 
 courageous spirit of the typical American pioneer — thankful- 
 ness for sanctuary, for reunion of families and friends, for the 
 humble shelter of a log cabin — is the last entry in Donelson's 
 Diary, of date Monday, April 24, 1780 : 
 
 "This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big Salt 
 Lick, where we have the pleasure of finding Capt. Robertson 
 and his company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be 
 enabled to restore to him and others their families and friends, 
 who were entrusted to our care, and who, some time since, 
 perhaps, despaired of our meeting again. Though our pros- 
 pects at present are dreary, we have found a few log cabins 
 which have been built on a cedar bluff above the Lick by Capt. 
 Robertson and his company." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The lapse of time now forbids me to pursue further this 
 story of the strenuous struggles and incredible hardships of 
 the Cumberland settlers, who established here a permanent 
 buhvnrk against the copper-hued savage and laid here forever 
 the foundations of what is now the great and populous city of 
 Nashville. I will content myself with presenting to you one 
 fundamental historical truth as the culmination of this re- 
 search. This is the question in regard to the authorship of 
 the famous Cumberland Compact. The cocksure Mr. Roose- 
 velt, with his habitual dogmatism, concludes, without proof 
 or evidence, that the author of that remarkable document was 
 James Robertson.^- The inherent truth of the situation, if 
 other evidence were not finally conclusive, demonstrates this 
 to be impossible. The best informed writer on this subject, 
 Putnam, who in 1846 discovered the original document now 
 
 Lick. In reference to Mrs. Donelson's statement (Draper Mss., 
 32S304-305), Draper observes that Mrs. Donelson thinks the corn 
 never came. This is an error. The corn vv^as brought safely in to 
 the French Lick; and Major William Bailey Smith, who was in com- 
 mand of the boats which bore the corn, reached the French Lick 
 in time to sign the Cumberland Compact. Doubtless Mrs. Donelson 
 was thinking of Isaac Bovirman's batteau from Kaskaskia, which fell 
 into the hands of the Chickasaw Indians. 
 
 ""Cf. Daniel Smith's "Journal," Tennessee Historical Magazine, 
 March, 1915, p. 63, which contains the following: "April 7th. Friday 
 Horses not all found — Received a letter from the Governor to go to 
 the Falls of Ohio on particular business. Col. Henderson brought 
 this letter." 
 
 '"'A study of the original document would have repaid Mr. Roose- 
 velt and have saved him from error. 
 
PLATE II. 
 
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Richard Henderson 
 
 jealously preserved in the archives of the Tennessee Historical 
 Society, says : "As Richard Henderson, and the other members 
 of the 'Transylvania Land Company' were here at this junc- 
 ture (April, 1780), he (Henderson) was foremost in urging 
 some form of government."^'* A brief inspection will dem- 
 onstrate its character. First of all, tlie Cumberland Compact 
 is a mutual contract between the co-partners of the Transyl- 
 vania Company and the settlers upon the lands claimed by the 
 company. It is, moreover, a bill of rights, through careful 
 provisions safeguarding the rights of each party to the con- 
 tract. The significant feature of the document is that it is an 
 elaborate legal paper which could have been drafted only by 
 one intimately versed in the intricacies of the law and its 
 tierminology. Nothing, indeed, could more effectively exhibit 
 the purpose for which the Association was established and 
 the Compact drawn up than the following clause in the in- 
 strument itself: 
 
 ''That as no consideration-money for the lands on Cum- 
 berland River, within the claim of the said Richard Hender- 
 son and Company, and which is the subject of this Association, 
 is demanded or expected by the said Company, until a satis- 
 factory and indisputable title can be made, so we think it 
 reasonable and just that the twenty-six pounds thirteen shill- 
 ings and four pence, current money, per hundred acres, the 
 price proposed by the said Richard Henderson, shall be paid 
 according to the value of money on the first day of January 
 last, being the time when the price was made public (and) 
 settlement encouraged thereon by said Henderson, and the 
 said Richard Henderson on his part does hereby agree that 
 in case of the rise or appreciation of money from that — an 
 abatement shall be made in the sum according to its raised or 
 appreciated vahie."^* 
 
 The indisputable facts that Richard Henderson, eminent as 
 lawyer and jurist, was the only lawj^er on the Cumberland in 
 May, 1780, and that his name heads the list of two hundred 
 and thirty-odd signatures to the document known as the 
 Cumberland Comjiact, has led one of the justices of your own 
 Supreme Court, a deep student of early Tennessee history, the 
 Hon. Samuel C. Williams, to state in print that "without se- 
 rious doubt" Judge Henderson was the draftsman of the com- 
 pact of government. 
 
 Familiarity with original letters of the sturdy Robertson — 
 with both his chirography and his mental processes — and also 
 with the chirography and contents of the Compact conclu- 
 
 '"Putnam: Middle Tennessee, p. 84. 
 '^Compare plate I. 
 
Archihald Henderson 
 
 sively dispels the notion that Robertson may have been the 
 author and draftsman of the compact. I am now, and have 
 been for some years, able to alter the "without serious doubt" 
 of Judge Williams into "without any doubt whatsoever," by 
 the categorical statement that the document of May 1, and 
 also the document of May 13, 1780, are written throughout in 
 the same handwriting; and this handwriting is the bold and 
 characteristic chirography of the man who purchased the ter- 
 ritory, projected and personally co-operated in the settlement, 
 sedulously nurtured it with the fruits of the earth purchased 
 at fabulous cost, and led in urging the adoption of a written 
 form of government at the French Lick — the President of the 
 Transylvania Company, Judge Richard Henderson, of North 
 Carolina. 
 
 It may be the time is not far distant when in this great 
 city of Nashville, patriotically signalized by its monuments 
 and memorials to James Robertson, sagacious and paternal 
 leader, and to John Donelson, intrepid and successful pioneer, 
 there shall be erected some adequate memorial to the pioneer- 
 ing genius and empire-building imagination of the man who 
 inaugurated and engineered the hazardous and arduous enter- 
 prise of a settlement at the French Lick, drafted the Cumber- 
 land Compact, and is rightfully entitled to divide with James 
 Robertson and John Donelson the honors in the founding of 
 Nashville. Archibald Henderson. 
 
 Fordell, University of North Carolina. 
 
PLATE 111. 
 
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Richard Henderson 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 In connection with the question of the authorship of the Cumber- 
 land Compact, I append an affidavit made by the two Tennessee 
 historical scholars who have made the most minute and critical study 
 of the original document, preserved in the archives of the Tennessee 
 Historical Society. My thanks are now gratefully expressed to these 
 gentlemen, Mr. John H. DeWitt, president of the Tennessee Historical 
 Society, and the Rev. W. A. Provine, D.D., for their minute com- 
 parison of the documents; to Mr. J. S. Walker of Nashville, for 
 valuable assistance and suggestions; and to Professor St. George 
 L. Sioussat for courtesies extended. I am indebted also to the late 
 Gen. Gates P. Thruston, sometime president of the Tennessee His- 
 torical Society, for courtesies extended me several years ago in con- 
 nection with the present research. 
 
 All historical scholars without exception, who have compared the 
 original manuscript of the Cumberland Compact or facsimile thereof 
 with attested specimens of Judge Richard Henderson's handwriting, 
 testify that the original Cumberland Compact is drafted throvighout 
 in Judge Henderson's handwriting. It is jierhaps worthy of note 
 that in the body of the document Judge Henderson employs a formal 
 or conventional capital R, of a sort which he did not habitually use 
 in making his own signature. The six (6) signatures which I have 
 traced from the original documents or from facsimiles, photographic 
 or photostatic, shown on a plate (III) accompanying this article, ex- 
 hibit variations in the making of the capital H as well as in the mak- 
 ing of the capital R. 
 
 The interested student may compare the facsimiles of documents 
 which accompany this article — the one being a page of the Cumber- 
 land Compact (Plate I), the other being a letter from Judge Hen- 
 derson to Capt. Holder (Plate II). 
 
 In the paper above printed, with accompanying documents, it is 
 now established that Judge Henderson drafted the original Cumber- 
 land Compact. It is not unreasonable to suppose, although there is 
 no proof of it, that certain clauses in the document were drawn by 
 Judge Henderson with the assistance of Captain James Robertson. 
 Indeed, the laws, as drafted, represented the collective will of this 
 pioneer community; and it may be that both Robertson and Donelson, 
 voicing this collective will, thus aided Judge Henderson to draft a 
 series of articles for the government of their association. 
 
 Archibald Henderson. 
 
Archibald Henderson 
 
 AFFIDAVIT. 
 
 State of Tennessee, 
 County of Davidson. 
 
 We, W. A. Provine and John H. DeWitt, make oath that on April 
 28, 1916, with Dr. Archibald Henderson, of Chapel Hill, North Caro- 
 lina, we carefully examined the original Cumberland Compact (in 
 the custody of the Tennessee Historical Society), and compared the 
 same with certain photographic facsimiles of certain pages of writing 
 furnished us as the genuine handwriting of Judge Richard Hender- 
 son of North Carolina, who was president of the Transylvania Com- 
 pany, to-wit, a page of the diary of Richard Henderson written in 
 1775, the original of which is in the Draper Mss. at Madison, Wis- 
 consin; a photostatic copy of his memorial to the Legislature of 
 North Carolina in 1784, the original of which is in the archives of the 
 North Carolina Historical Commission, Raleigh, North Carolina; 
 and a pencil tracing of his signature as judge of the Superior Court 
 of North Carolina, the original of which is in the court house at 
 Salisbury, N. C. (The information as to the nature and location 
 of these papers being furnished us by Dr. Archibald Henderson.) 
 While our attention was not given to the subject-matter of these 
 writings, nevertheless, we made a very careful comparison of the 
 handwriting with the handwriting of the text of the Cumberland Com- 
 pact and the name of Richard Henderson as the first signer thereto; 
 and we are both convinced without reservation that the handwriting 
 of the Cumberland Compact and all of the aforesaid documents is 
 one and the same. We especially noted that the signatures of Judge 
 Richard Henderson as traced from the Salisbury court house records 
 and as appended to the Cumberland Compact are identical. 
 
 We are convinced from these comparisons that Judge Richard 
 Henderson was the draftsman and author of the original Cumber- 
 land Compact. 
 
 (Signed) W. A. Provine. 
 
 John H. DeWitt. 
 
 Sworn to and subscribed before me, on this the 30th day of May, 
 1916. John H. Lechleiter, 
 
 (Seal) Notary Public. 
 
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