The glowing stories, told by Boone, and disseminated in the back country by Henderson, Williams, and the Harts, seemed to give promise to men of this stamp that the West afforded relief from oppressions suffered in North Carolina.

During the winter of 1768-9 there was also a great rush of settlers from Virginia into the valley of the Holston.

A party from Augusta County, led by men who had been delighted with the country viewed seven years before when they were serving under Colonel William Byrd against the Cherokees, found that this region, a wilderness on their outward passage in 1768, was dotted with cabins on every spot where the grazing was good, upon their return the following year.
Writing to Hillsborough on October 18, 1770, concerning the "many hundred families" in the region from Green River to the branches of the Holston, who refused to comply with the royal proclamation of 1763, Acting-Governor Nelson of Virginia reports that "very little if any Quit Rents have been received for His Majesty's use from that Quarter for some time past"-- the people claiming that "His Majesty hath been pleased to withdraw his protection from them since 1763." In the spring of 1770, with the express intention of discovering suitable locations for homes for himself and a number of others, who wished to escape the accumulating evils of the times, James Robertson of Orange County, North Carolina, made an arduous journey to the pleasing valley of the Watauga.

Robertson, who was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, June 28, 1742, of excellent Scotch-Irish ancestry, was a noteworthy figure of a certain type--quiet, reflective, conservative, wise, a firm believer in the basic principles of civil Liberty and the right of local self-government.

Robertson spent some time with a man named Honeycut in the Watauga region, raised a crop of corn, and chose for himself and his friends suitable locations for settlement.
Lost upon his return in seeking the mountain defiles traversed by him on the outward journey, Robertson probably escaped death from starvation only through the chance passing of two hunters who succored him and set him upon the right path.