John Sevier

John Sevier was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, on September 23, 1745. Searching for available land he could afford, he moved west in 1772 and served as a militia captain under George Washington in Lord Dunmore's War. A lieutenant colonel in the trans-Allegheny forces during the Revolution, he was commended for his services at Kings Mountain in 1780.

• In March 1785 he was elected governor of the independent State of Franklin, a portion of North Carolina where settlers desired statehood.
• North Carolina declared the State of Franklin in revolt, subdued it with force, and ceded it to Congress.
• Subsequently, Sevier was elected to the North Carolina Senate in 1789, received a full pardon, and was restored to his status of brigadier general.
• He retired to his plantation and was appointed trustee of Washington College and Blount College (now the University of Tennessee).
• Because of his military renown, he was elected the first governor of Tennessee (1796–1801 and 1803–1809), state senator (1809–1811), and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1811.
• He died on September 25, 1815, while serving as commissioner to survey the boundary between Georgia and the land of the Creek Indians in Alabama. He was buried in Knoxville, Tennessee.