Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/95

70 established Fort Chissel, in Wythe County, Virginia, to protect the frontiers, and advancing into what is now Sullivan County, Tennessee, built a fort near Long Island on the Holston. There was not then a single white man living in the borders of Tennessee. At irregular intervals from 1765 to 1769, pioneer parties came from Virginia and North Carolina, forming settlements and stations. The country was one vast wilderness, its only inhabitants being buffaloes and all kinds of wild game, with the savage Indians making frequent raids, but the newcomers were not daunted by the situation, and here erected cabins, and constructed stockade forts against the attacks by the Indians. In 1769, at Fort Chissel, we find two Bledsoe brothers, Englishmen by birth. They soon pushed farther on into the valley of the Holston. This portion of the county, now Sullivan County, was supposed to be, at that time, within the limits of Virginia. The Bledsoes with the Shelbys settled themselves here in this mountainous region. They suffered the severest privation and the greatest hardships in exploring the regions and establishing their little homes. During the first year not more than fifty families crossed the mountains, but others afterward came until the little settlement swelled to hundreds, and during the Revolutionary struggle, that region became the refuge of many patriots, driven by British invasion from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, some of their best families seeking homes there. Colonel Anthony Burd, an excellent surveyor, was appointed clerk to the commissioners who ran the line dividing Virginia and North Carolina. In June, 1776, he was chosen to command the militia of the county to repel the invasions and attacks of the savages and defend the frontier. The battle of Long Island, fought a few miles below Bledsoe Station, was one of the earliest and hardest fought battles in the history of Tennessee in those times. In 1779, Sullivan County was recognized as a part of