entucky, on a hunting trip, in 1769. Six years
later he began to colonize it, in flat defiance of the British
government, and in the face of a menacing proclamation from the royal
governor of North Carolina. On the Kentucky River, three days after the
battle of Lexington, the flag of the new colony of Transylvania was run
up on his fort at Boonesborough. It was not until the following August
that these "rebels of Kentuck" heard of the signing of the Declaration
of Independence, and celebrated it with shrill warwhoops around a
bonfire in the center of their stockade.

Such was the stuff of which the Appalachian frontiersmen were made. They
were the first Americans to cut loose entirely from the seaboard and
fall back upon their own resources. They were the first to establish
governments of their own, in defiance of king and aristocracy. Says John
Fiske:

"Jefferson is often called the father of modern American democracy;
in a certain sense the Shenandoah Valley and adjacent Appalachian
regions may be called its cradle. In that rude frontier society,
life assumed many new aspects, old customs were forgotten, old
distinctions abolished, social equality acquired even more
importance than unchecked individualism. The notions, sometimes
crude and noxious, sometimes just and wholesome, which
characterized Jeffersonian democracy, flourished greatly on the
frontier and have thence been propagated eastward through the older
communities, affecting their legislation and their politics more or
less according to frequency of contact and intercourse.
Massachusetts, relatively remote and relatively ancient, has been
perhaps least affected by this group of ideas, but all parts of the
United States have felt its influence powerfully. This phase of
democracy, which is destined to continue so long as frontier life
retains any importance, can nowhere be so well studied in its
beginnings as among the Presbyterian population of the Appalachian
region in the 18th century."

During the Revolution, the Appalachian frontier was held by a double
line of the men whom we have been considering: one line east of the
mountains, and the other west of them. The mountain region itself
remained almost uninhabited by whites, because the pioneers who crossed
it were seeking better hunting grounds and farmsteads than the mountains
afforded. It was not until the buff