History - Historic People

On Mar. 17, 1775, the Transylvania Company, led by Richard Henderson, was involved in the largest private real estate transaction in the history of the United States. He purchased 20 million acres of land from the Cherokee Indians, that included the Cumberland River watershed and lands on the Kentucky River.

Dragging Canoe

As one of the minor chiefs, Dragging Canoe, opposed to the selling of the Cherokee ancestral hunting grounds, warned the whites they were purchasing a "dark and bloody ground." He and his band of disaffected warriors would wage war against the settlers for the next twenty years.

Another governor, William Brownlow, lived in Elizabethton for a brief period of time, and started his newspaper "The Whig" here, later moving it to Jonesborough.

 Elizabethton was the home of Mrs. Daniel (Mary) Stover, daughter of President Andrew Johnson. The president died at the Stover home, located north of Elizabethton on the Watauga River.