Watauga Association
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The Watauga Association (sometimes referred to as the Republic of Watauga or the Watauga Settlement) was an autonomous government from 1772 to 1777 in what is now Northeast Tennessee. The Articles of the Watauga Association established an independent government, based on "democracy" as we know it today, four years before the American Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson.
The first permanent settlement south of the present Virginia line was made along the Watauga River in what is today the city of Elizabethton located in Carter County, Tennessee. Andrew Greer (father of Joseph Greer, later known as the "Kings Mountain Messenger")[1], an Indian trader, and Julius C. Dugger came to the area from Virginia around 1766. In 1770, after the collapse of the Regulator movement in North Carolina, sympathizers from that colony under James Robertson fled and established homes farther west on the Watauga River, effectively beyond the reach of the colonial authorities. For their mutual protection these settlements united in 1772 and drew up a written agreement, called the Watauga Association.
The Watauga Association was intended to serve as the sovereign government for the region, independent of any existing state. A five-man court constituted the government. In 1771, North Carolina sent a surveying party into the region and reached a settlement with the Cherokee. The land agreement with the Cherokee placed the Watauga Settlement within the Cherokee preserve, and North Carolina’s government ordered the Wataugans to vacate the valley. Deeply alarmed, the settlers appointed a team of negotiators to meet with the Cherokee, who in 1772 agreed to lease the Watauga Valley to the colonists for ten years. After this action, the colonists drafted and ratified Articles of Association, adopted Virginia’s legal code, and effectively became the first independent republic on American soil. Other settlements along the Holston and Nolichucky Rivers also adhered to the Watauga Association.
A survey of lands found that the property claimed by the Watauga Association were in fact part of the claim that North Carolina held. Shortly after the survey, the settlers of the Watauga Association pledged to assist North Carolina in the Revolutionary effort if they would reclaim the lands. The Watauga Association formally accepted North Carolina’s jurisdiction in October of 1775, rallying to the cause of American independence. In 1775 they organized as Washington District, and in 1776, at their own request, they came under the protection of North Carolina, which incorporated the area as Washington County in 1777. Thus, the Watauga Association was absorbed into North Carolina. After the American Revolution the Wataugans belonged to another new, short-lived government, the State of Franklin.
James Roberston remained on the site until 1779, when he led a settlement party to the banks of the Cumberland River to found Fort Nashborough, which today is Tennessee's capital, Nashville. Valentine Sevier, Sr., the father of Gen. John Sevier, Tennessee's first governor, came at about the same time as Robertson.
One of the first forts built in this region was the Watauga Fort, erected upon land owned by John S. Thomas, about half a mile northeast of the mouth of Gap Creek in Carter County, Tennessee. The Watauga Association also erected a crude building housing both a courthouse and jail nearby the Watauga Fort.
On the early morning of July 21, 1776, several women who had gone outside Watauga Fort to milk the cows were fired upon and soon all occupants of the fort were attacked at daybreak by a large body of hostile Cherokees. Fort Watauga was defended at the time by Robertson and then-Lieutenant Sevier with about forty men and some 150 additional settlers, including the entire garrison from Gillespie Station on the Nolichucky River below Jonesborough. The warring Cherokees were twice repulsed from Fort Watauga, but remained before the fort for six more days, at the end of which time the approach of reinforcements from other settlements along the nearby Holston River put them to retreat.
Source: [2]
