Tennessee

Southeastern Genealogy is part of the Georgia Pioneers website

After the Revolutionary War, as more settlers moved westward through the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, a new State was formed, called Franklin (1784). At the time, the land of the State of Franklin was considered to have been four counties in North Carolina, but when North Carolina ceded the land to the United States Congress in April 1784, the settlers along the Cumberland River Valley thought that Congress would sell the territory to Spain or France as a means of paying off some of the government’s war debt.  Hence, the four counties counties decided they should make their own fate rather than waiting on North Carolina.

“The December 1784 constitution of Franklin did not formally define its boundaries,” Troxler writes. “By implication, jurisdiction was assumed over all of the ceded territory, and area approximating the future state of Tennessee.” Leaders within the United States began to think this posed a problem for the new union, writes Farr, because the American Revolution would only live up to its promise if they could keep the new country together.

But the State of Franklin existed as an independent state for only about four years, when the leaders decided to rejoin North Carolina (1789).

Thus, the North Carolina border counties as well as the eastern Tennessee counties should be researched.

Before Tennesse adopted statehood in 1796, comprising the territories stretched from the Appalachian Mountains boundary with North Carolina in the East to the Mississippi River, settlers of Tennessee mostly came from Virginia and the Carolinas by way of the Cumberland Gap and other land routes. Also, some settlers from Pennsylvania and New England poled keel boats from the Ohio River up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers.

New additions added to 8 Genealogy Websites (Tennessee) may be viewed here

As more records are added, this collection is expected to be of considerable aid to the genealogist.