page_title: History of Nashville, Tennessee
section_title: Fort Nashborough
hierarchical_section_title: History of Nashville, Tennessee / Fort Nashborough
caption_attribution_description: English: Artist's depiction of flatboats carrying settlers led by American explorer John Donelson down the Cumberland River in route to what is now Nashville, Tennessee, in 1784.
context_page_description: Native Americans had not lived in the area in the century before a frontier post of Fort Nashborough was built here in 1779 by pioneers from North Carolina. In 1784 it was incorporated as a town by the North Carolina legislature; it became a city in 1806. In 1843 it became the state capital. In the Civil War Nashville was seized by Federal troops in 1862 and became a major Union military base. Confederate General J. B. Hood was decisively defeated in the Battle of Nashville in 1864. The city became the political, transportation, business and cultural center of the Middle Tennessee region. Besides the state government, it is best known for its educational, musical and religious establishments. In 1963 Nashville and Davidson County were consolidated under a single charter and are administered by a mayor and a council.
context_section_description: John Buchanan Sr., born in either Scotland or Ireland, migrated with his family from their home in Cumberland Co., Pennsylvania, to the Watauga Valley, Washington District of North Carolina.  Afterward, they took a long horseback trek to Kentucky, left their women and traveled down to the Cumberland Settlements in late 1778, building a station on the southern side of the Cumberland River above the French Lick, on the high ground where Nashville now stands, in the early spring of 1779.  His son, Major John Buchanan, known for the siege of Buchanan's Station, is considered to be one of the founders of Nashville, Tennessee. Another settlement arrived when James Robertson left the Watauga settlement in northwestern North Carolina, traveled overland for two months, and arrived on the banks of the Cumberland River near the center of present downtown Nashville on Christmas Day, 1779. They cleared the land and built a log stockade they called the Bluff station. Richard Henderson had planned to call the settlement Nashborough in honor of General Francis Nash, who won acclaim in the American Revolution. For a brief time, court records did use the Nashborough designation but there is no evidence that any of the settlers did. Robertson's friend and fellow Watauga settler John Donelson, along with some 60 families, including women and children, came in 30 flatboats and several pirogues down the Tennessee River and up the Cumberland, arriving April 23, 1780. They founded a new community that was then a part of the state of North Carolina. The town was officially created and named Nashville in 1784, by an act of the North Carolina legislature.
  As the northern terminus of the Natchez Trace, the town quickly developed as a cotton center and river port and later as a railroad hub. It soon became the commercial center of the entire Middle Tennessee region. By 1800, the city had 345 residents, including 136 enslaved Blacks and 14 free Blacks.
caption: Artist's depiction of Donelson's flatboats descending the Cumberland River in 1784
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