This system enabled the inhabitants to combine for defence, and yet to take up the large tracts of four to fourteen hundred acres,[16] to which they were by law entitled.

It permitted them in time of peace to live well apart, with plenty of room between, so that they did not crowd one another--a fact much appreciated by men in whose hearts the spirit of extreme independence and self-reliance was deeply ingrained.

Thus the settlers were scattered over large areas, and, as elsewhere in the southwest, the county and not the town became the governmental unit.

The citizens even of the smaller governmental divisions acted through representatives, instead of directly, as in the New England town-meetings.[17] The centre of county government was of course the county court-house.
Henderson, having established a land agency at Boonsborough, at once proceeded to deed to the Transylvania colonists entry certificates of surveys of many hundred thousand acres.

Most of the colonists were rather doubtful whether these certificates would ultimately prove of any value, and preferred to rest their claims on their original cabin rights; a wise move on their part, though in the end the Virginia Legislature confirmed Henderson's sales in so far as they had been made to actual settlers.