omposed of
Col. Richard Henderson, Col. John Williams, Thomas Hart, Col.
David Hart, Capt. Nathaniel Hart, Col. John Luttsell, James
Hogg, William Johnston, and Leonard Henley Bullock.

Henderson's paternal great-grandfather was a Scottish
immigrant, and one of his grandmothers was Welsh. The family
settled in Hanover County, Va., where Richard, son of Samuel
Henderson, was born April 20, 1735. Samuel moved with his
family to North Carolina, in 1745, and became sheriff of
Granville County. Richard had the education of a rural youth of
good station, and became a lawyer. In 1767 he was appointed one
of the two associate justices of the superior court of the
colony, and served with great credit for six years, when the
court was abolished. During professional visits to Salisbury,
Henderson heard frequently--chiefly through the brothers
Hart--of the exploits of Boone, and the latter's glowing
reports of the beauty and fertility of Kentucky. Relying
implicitly on Boone's statements, these four men energetically
resolved to settle the country. In the autumn of 1774,
Henderson and Nathaniel Hart visited the Cherokees to ascertain
if they would sell their claims to Kentucky, and receiving a
favorable reply agreed to meet the Indians in treaty council at
the Sycamore Shoals, on Watauga River. On their return home,
they were accompanied by a wise old Indian (Little Carpenter),
and a young buck and his squaw, delegates to see that proper
goods were purchased for the proposed barter. These goods were
bought in December at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, N. C., and
forwarded by wagons to Watauga.

Boone was then sent out to collect the Indians, and when the
council opened (March 14, 1775) had twelve hundred assembled at
the Sycamore Shoals--half of them warriors. The council
proceeded slowly, with much characteristic vacillating on the
part of the Indians; but on the third day (March 17) the deed
of sale was signed to what came to be known as "the great
grant:" The tract from the mouth of the Kentucky (or Louisa)
River to the head spring of its most northerly fork; thence
northeasterly to the top of Powell's Mountain; thence westerly
and then northwesterly to the head spring of