at
Sycamore Shoals in
Elizabethton, Tennessee and the
Wilderness Road into Kentucky. Boonesborough was founded as '''Boone's Station''' by the frontiersman
Daniel Boone while working for
Richard Henderson and Nathanial Hart of the
Transylvania Company. Boone led a group of settlers (which included a number of enslaved
African Americans) through the mountains from
Fort Watauga (present-day
Elizabethton in
Tennessee), carving the
Wilderness Road through the
Cumberland Gap, and established
Fort Boonesborough. Boone lived there from 1775 to 1779. The region was at that time part of the
Commonwealth of
Virginia, which officially chartered Boonesborough in October 1779. It was one of the first English-speaking communities west of the
Appalachian Mountains. Boone successfully led his fellow settlers during the
Siege of Boonesborough in 1778. He then moved to his son Israel's settlement at
Boone's New Station near present-day
Athens, Kentucky. Although the town served as a
way-station for
pioneers venturing further into Kentucky during the 1780s and 1790s, it never attracted a significant long-term population, and thus slowly declined. By 1877, Boonesborough had "almost disappeared as a village". ==Further reading==