Richard Henderson

…behind the area’s settlement was Richard Henderson, a North Carolina jurist who in 1775 acquired most of middle Tennessee and Kentucky in the Transylvania Purchase from the Cherokee. In 1779 he sent a party under James Robertson to investigate the Cumberland Valley. They settled at French Lick and were joined…

…Carolina men under pioneer Colonel Richard Henderson, who had just opened Boone’s Trace (an offshoot of the Wilderness Road) through the Cumberland Gap. The group, under a grant from the Cherokees (regarded as illegal by Britain and Virginia), claimed all the land between the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers, which they…