Transylvania (colony)

Transylvania was a short-lived colony primarily in what is now the U.S. state of Kentucky. The colony was founded in 1775 by Richard Henderson of North Carolina, who purchased the land from the Cherokees. The most famous resident of Transylvania was the American pioneer Daniel Boone, who was hired by Henderson to blaze the Wilderness Trail through the Cumberland Gap into central Kentucky, where he founded Boonesborough, the capital of the colony. Transylvania ceased to exist after Virginia invalidated Henderson's purchase in 1776.

Background

In the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768, the Iroquois, who claimed sovereignty over what is now Kentucky, ceded their claims to this land to the British Crown. However, Shawnees to the north and Cherokees to the south both used Kentucky as hunting grounds, and were not consulted in the Stanwix treaty. Violence erupted as American settlers began moving into the region, resulting in Dunmore's War in 1774, which was fought primarily between Shawnees and the British colony of Virginia. The Shawnees lost the brief war, and were compelled to cede their claim to Kentucky.

Transylvania Company

On 27 August 1774, Richard Henderson, a judge from North Carolina, organized a land speculation company with a number of other prominent North Carolinians. Originally called "Richard Henderson and Company", the name was changed to the "Louisa Company", and then to the "Transylvania Company" on 6 January 1775. The men hoped to purchase Kentucky land from the Cherokees, who still had a claim to the region, and establish a British proprietary colony.

Treaty of Sycamore Shoals

In March 1775, Henderson met with more than 1,200 Cherokees at Sycamore Shoals (present Elizabethton, Tennessee), including Cherokee leaders such as Attacullaculla, Oconostota, and Dragging Canoe. In the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, also known as the Treaty of Watauga, Henderson purchased all the land lying between the Cumberland River, the Cumberland Mountains, and the Kentucky River, and situated south of the Ohio River. The land thus delineated, 20 million acres, encompassed an area half as large as the present state of Kentucky. Henderson's purchase was in violation of North Carolina and Virginia law, as well as the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited private purchase of American Indian land. Henderson may have believed that a recent British legal opinion (the Camden-Yorke opinion) had made such purchases legal.

Settlement

Before the Sycamore Shoals treaty, Henderson had hired Daniel Boone, an experienced hunter who had explored Kentucky, to travel to the Cherokee towns and inform them of the upcoming negotiations. Afterwards, Boone was hired to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Along with a party of about thirty workers, Boone marked a path to the Kentucky River, where he established Boonesborough (near present-day Lexington, Kentucky), which was intended to be the capital of Transylvania. Other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established at this time. Many of these settlers had come to Kentucky and their own initiative, and did not recognize Transylvania's authority.

The colony was organized by Henderson and his associates into a political community, with president, legislature, and judges. With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, Transylvania sought recognition from the Continental Congress as a fourteenth colony. Congress refused to recognize the colony since both Virginia and North Carolina claimed the land in question. In December 1776, the Virginia General Assembly organized Kentucky as a county of Virginia, and in 1778 voided Henderson's land claims in Kentucky. In compensation, Henderson and his partners received a grant of 12 square miles (31 km²) on the Ohio River below the mouth of Green River.

References

Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. Western Lands and the American Revolution. New York: Russell & Russell, 1959.

External links

"Transylvania Purchase", entry from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture

Early American land companies | Historical regions and territories of the United States | History of Kentucky