shington County Sevier was treated as practically commander of the
militia some time before he received his commission as county
lieutenant. He was rapidly becoming the leader of the whole district. He
lived in a great, rambling one-story log house on the Nolichucky, a
rude, irregular building with broad verandas and great stone
fire-places. The rooms were in two groups, which were connected by a
covered porch--a "dog alley," as old settlers still call it, because the
dogs are apt to sleep there at night. Here he kept open house to all
comers, for he was lavishly hospitable, and every one was welcome to bed
and board, to apple-jack and cider, hominy and corn-bread, beef,
venison, bear meat, and wild fowl. When there was a wedding or a
merrymaking of any kind he feasted the neighborhood, barbecuing
oxen--that is, roasting them whole on great spits,--and spreading board
tables out under the trees. He was ever on the alert to lead his mounted
riflemen against the small parties of marauding Indians that came into
the country. He soon became the best commander against Indians that
there was on this part of the border, moving with a rapidity that
enabled him again and again to overtake and scatter their roving
parties, recovering the plunder and captives, and now and then taking a
scalp or two himself. His skill and daring, together with his unfailing
courtesy, ready tact, and hospitality, gained him unbounded influence
with the frontiersmen, among whom he was universally known as
"Nolichucky Jack." [Footnote: MSS. "Notes of Conversations with Old
Pioneers," by Ramsey, in Tenn. Hist. Soc. Campbell MSS.]

The Virginian settlements on the Holston, adjoining those of North
Carolina, were in 1777 likewise made into a county of Washington. The
people were exactly the same in character as those across the line; and
for some years the fates of all these districts were bound up together.
Their inhabitants were still of the usual backwoods type, living by
tilling their clearings and hunting; the elk and buffalo had become very
scarce, but there were plenty of deer and bear, and in winter countless
wild swans settled down on the small lakes and ponds. The boys followed
these eagerly; one of them, when an old man, used to relate how his
mother gave him a pint of cream for every swan he shot, with the result
that he got the pint almost every day. [Footnote: "Sketch of Mrs.
Elizabeth Russell," by her grandson, Thomas L. Preston, Nashville,