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The Transylvania Purchase

© Jim Buckenmyer

Land speculation has a bad name. If you think of someone as a speculator it brings out many negative images. While there are reasons that we see this pastime as exploitive, the frontier would never have developed without it. Much of the land we think of as the frontier was acquired all at one time. The largest real estate transaction, corporate or private, in the United States was the Transylvania Purchase.

A man named Richard Henderson was prominent in the politics of North Carolina. Like many politicos of the time he thought the best way to get rich was to buy western lands, and develop them. There were legal obstacles to obtaining these lands. The biggest obstacle was the Proclamation of 1763. Henderson went to the Royal Attorney General and got a decree that the Proclamation did not forbid him from buying up the lands he desired. The King disagreed, but Henderson decided to ignore him.

While Henderson wanted to buy large tracts of land he needed someone to search out what lands would be best. In 1763 he met a young man named Daniel Boone. Boone was just back from Braddock's ill fated campaign and looking for another adventure. They were a perfect match. Boone made many exploratory trips into the wilderness. In 1769 he made an extended trip into the area we now call Kentucky. In 1773 when Boone attempted to take his and other families back to Kentucky the Natives attacked and killed six, including his oldest son.

Henderson remained interested in purchasing western lands, but he was elected as a judge which precluded any active role in a land company. In 1774 he, no longer a judge, formed the Louisa Land Company. In January of 1775 this was reorganized into the Transylvania Company. It was then that his partner Nathaniel Hart and Daniel Boone went to the Overhill Cherokee towns to begin negotiations. Boone had suggested the purchase of the Kentucky lands at that time because he knew that the Cherokee were daunted by the defeat of the Shawnee in 1774. He felt that by selling these lands the Cherokee could form a buffer between them and the North. He also suggested that by selling these lands the Cherokee could reroute the advance of White settlement. Clinch Mountain would provide a natural barrier.

In preparation for the purchase Henderson had assembled a houseful of trade goods and invited the Cherokee to come to North Carolina to see them. Chief Attakullakulla took many tribesmen with him and viewed the goods. Boone then set the date of March first 1775 for talks. The place for them was set at Sycamore Shoals in the Watauga settlement.

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