The delegates, seventeen in all, met at Boonsborough and organized the convention on the 23d of May.

Their meetings were held without the walls of the fort, on a level plain of white clover, under a grand old elm.

Beneath its mighty branches a hundred people could without crowding find refuge from the noon-day sun; it was a fit council-house for this pioneer legislature of game hunters and Indian fighters.[20] These weather-beaten backwoods warriors, who held their deliberations in the open air, showed that they had in them good stuff out of which to build a free government.

They were men of genuine force of character, and they behaved with a dignity and wisdom that would have well become any legislative body.

Henderson, on behalf of the proprietors of Transylvania, addressed them, much as a crown governor would have done.
The portion of his address dealing with the destruction of game is worth noting.