page_title: Richard Henderson (jurist)
section_title: The Transylvania Compact
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Henderson (jurist) / The Transylvania Compact
caption_attribution_description: English: Meeting of the Transilvania House of Delegates. At Boonesborough, May, 1775. From "Boonesborough; its founding, pioneer struggles, Indian experiences, Transylvania days, and revolutionary annals" by George Washington Ranck (1901).
context_page_description: Richard Henderson was an American pioneer and merchant who attempted to create a colony called Transylvania just as the American Revolutionary War was starting. After the Declaration of Independence and the organization of the state government in North Carolina, he was re-elected judge, but was prevented from accepting that position by his participation in a scheme organized under the name of the Transylvania Compact.
context_section_description: Henderson followed Boone to a site that came to be called Boonesborough, located on the southern bank of the Kentucky River, Henderson encouraged the few settlers there to hold a constitutional convention.
  In May 1775, under the shade of a huge elm tree, a compact organizing a frame of government was drafted. The intended government entailed executive, legislative, and judicial branches. After concluding the Transylvania Compact, Henderson returned to North Carolina and on behalf of his fellow investors in the land scheme petitioned Congress seeking to make Transylvania America’s fourteenth colony. Despite those efforts, Congress was unwilling to act without the consent of Virginia and North Carolina, both of whom claimed jurisdiction over the region in question.
  In June 1776 the Virginia General Assembly prohibited the Transylvania Land Company from making demands on settlers in the region and in December 1778 declared the Transylvania claim void.
  Henderson and his partners instead received a grant of 12 square miles (31 km²), on the Ohio River below the mouth of Green River.
caption: The Transylvania Constitutional Convention, May 23, 1775 at Boonesborough. Anonymous sketch: "On May 23, 1775 a convention of the people in the deep wilderness of Kentucky gathered in a constitutional convention, meeting under the shade of a huge elm tree (the limbs of which extended at least a hundred feet wide), and which its president, Richard Henderson, called "our Church, State-house, Council Chamber, etc."
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