Swaggerty Fort at Clear Creek
   National Register of Historic Places 1973.    

. . . . this peaceful site is located six miles north of the French Broad River in Cocke County, Tennessee.   As this area at Clear Creek was being settled by pioneers during the 1780's it was a dangerous frontier wilderness in the over mountain
country of North Carolina.
By 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War the French Broad River had been determined by the North Carolina legislature as the Cherokee tribal boundary south of which no white families were legally to settle.  The new government in Washington recognized this border between legal white settlement north of the river and
the Cherokee hunting ground south of the river. 
However, the French Broad border was soon ignored,  both by land office officials and by settlers. White settlements began to grow - cabins were built and crops were planted on Cherokee land south between the French Broad and the Pigeon Rivers. 
Those families who were legally settled north of the French Broad had to build stations or family forts for protection from Cherokee retaliation through most of the 1780's.
The Swaggerty Fort was originally built by the Swagerty family for such protection.
 

German Immigrant Frederick Swagerty
and son, surveyor Abraham Swagerty
were among First Settlers in Tennessee

                                   by Iris Teta Eubank Wagner
                                          
America moved west by its frontier settlements established by the men and women willing  to tolerate  rudimentary conditions and the risks to life that were present on the frontier - taking the risk for the opportunity.  And the opportunity was most often being first to find and patent the best land. 

Frederick Swagerty had lived thirty-four years in Pennsylvania when he made the third most important move of his life.   He had emigrated from Germany in 1749 as Friedrich Schweickhart, and in 1762, leaving a more settled area in Lancaster County, he moved west across the Susquehanna River from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and obtained warrants to survey, and purchased, several tracts of land in the county of Cumberland.  Now, in 1783 he was traveling 600 miles south to the frontier wilderness of the over mountain country in North Carolina to settle and once again build a life in the wilderness.

Name of Frederick's wife or subsequent wives (?)
Research so far has not revealed the name of Frederick's wife or perhaps subsequent wives.  There are clues though.   There is the possibility that the first wife's surname was Zimmerman, the daughter or granddaughter of a Swiss immigrant who was a physician in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.   The spelling of Frederick's surname changed among documents during the years he lived in Pennsylvania - from Schweickhart to Swygart to Sweikert and finally to Swagerty by 1769, when he surveyed a tract on Cocalamus Creek in Cumberland County on a warrant of John Gallagher, near what is now Millerstown on the Juniata River.   This last version of Frederick's original surname  appears to have a more Irish phonetic influence, especially when it is spelled with two "g's."  Very possibly a second, or third, wife's surname may have been Gallagher or  Gibson or McCoy (McCay)  Yet, there has been no document found so far to prove a wife's surname. There have been only clues, perhaps, among the land records.

Frederick and son Abraham's land company
Frederick and son Abraham formed a  land company.  The following quote is from "The Land of the Lake," by G. L. Ridenour: A History of Campbell County, Tennessee, p8  :

"William Reed, Esquire, of Beaver Dam Creek entered land on the East Fork of the first Creek that falls into Clinch River which he later deeded to William Reed, Constable.  Another tract of land was identified as being on the north side of Clinch River in the Caney Valley by some called Bull Valley including the first small creek that runs across the valley above Crooked Creek, so-called by Swaggerty and company who surveyed that land.  After Swaggerty's death, James Gibson, April 8, 1803, was appointed administrator."

As well as proof for the land company, this item also establishes the year and approximate date of Frederick's death.

Note:  In the early County of Cumberland, Pennsylvania, in the 1750's, the Gibson family was prominent in representing the inhabitants of this frontier county in calling for more military presence and protection from Indian attack. James Gibson and his associate Matthew Smith wrote to the Penn government in Philadelphia and appeared in person at the legislature there in 1756.  . . .  from the Philadelphia Archives  

Abraham Swagerty was a prominent surveyor of major tracts of land in Tennessee, and by his death in 1822 had left his name indelibly on numerous land records of east and middle Tennessee.  One-hundred years after Abraham's death an article was published in  The New York Times advertising for sale by an auction house original surveys by Abraham Swagerty amounting to about four million acres, about one-sixth of the State of Tennessee.

(left) This article was published in The New York Times March 29, 1922, reporting the sale of those Abraham Swagerty surveys.

Thomas Perkins Abernethy's From Frontier to Plantation : A Study in Frontier Democracy references the surveys on page 173 :  "In the State Library of Tennessee there are copies of six plats of surveys which appear to have been made by Abraham Swagerty in 1795 for Stockley Donelson.  Together they include slightly more than four million acres, or about one-sixth of the
State of Tennessee."

1778 -  Abraham Swagerty entered his first tract of land in North Carolina on February 26, 1778, two months after the opening of the land office of the newly formed Washington County, North Carolina. 

1780  :  Frederick Swagerty's First tract of land - 100 acres - entered in North Carolina
Irene Griffey, in Earliest Tennessee Land Records, includes a land entry for Frederick Swagerty :  on February 5, 1780 Frederick entered 100 acres.  It is the 100 acres Frederick is listed as owning on the 1783 First Tax List for Greene County, North Carolina.   Frederick was still living in Fermanagh Township in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania in 1780 ; he appears on a Tax List of Industries as owning a Distillery, and also as a "keeper," of a store or since he was a Distiller, perhaps a tavern.    In 1781 he bought a large tract of land in Fermanagh.  So, it is likely Abraham entered the tract at the land office in Frederick's name.

1782  : Frederick's Last Tax Assessment in Pennsylvania
Frederick's last tax assessment in Pennsylvania was in 1782 where he owned a Distillery and was taxed for 260 acres of land, three horses, and four cattle.

1783 : Frederick Among the First Tax Payers of Greene County, North Carolina
On the 1783 First Tax List of Greene County, North Carolina, Frederick is listed as the owner of 100 acres.   Within three weeks in October and November, 1783, he had entered three tracts in the Clear Creek area amounting to 800 acres.

1796 : Frederick  owned 1,300 acres in the Clear Creek area that would become in 1797 Cocke County, Tennessee.   His son JAMES SWAGERTY was age twenty-two in 1796, and son JOHN SWAGERTY about twenty-six.  Unmarried at the time the tax was assessed, both James and John are listed as having paid the poll tax.   James married later in the year in September, and John married in 1798.

 Survey of Frederick's 100-acre tract along Clear Creek
                              Land entered February 5, 1780
                              Surveyed December 4, 1792
                              North Carolina State Grant, February 23, 1793
       Appreciation  to Swagerty researcher Dr. Paul Thomas Miller for sharing this survey, and the articles that concern the four million acres Abraham  surveyed for Stockley Donelson.

 Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee  -  Microfilm Collection #1177
[Earliest Tennessee Land Records & Earliest Tennessee Land History, Irene M. Griffey, p384, Clearfield Co., 2003, Baltimore]

The survey appears to be in Abraham's handwriting, as his signature is similar to handwriting in the body of the document.  The chain carriers (S.C.C.) were his younger brothers JAMES SWAGERTY and JOHN SWAGERTY.

Abraham Swagerty, District Surveyor
By the time Abraham surveyed Frederick's first 100-acre tract  in 1792 (see below), he had been appointed Surveyor of the Sixth District, in what is now upper east Tennessee north of the French Broad River.  

Abraham had served at the beginning of the Revolutionary War with the famed Pennsylvania Riflemen, suffering much hardship in the march across the Maine wilderness in the Patriots' attempt to take Quebec.    Wounded in the failed attempt, Abraham was held prisoner until his release in July, 1776.   Abraham likely spent the next year or so recuperating at home in Fermanagh Township along Cocalamus Creek, and he may have studied surveying at  the Carlisle school where the famed Gen. John Armstrong (Kittanning uprising) served as a trustee.  Members of the Armstrong family had moved to North Carolina and some had become prominent in state government.

Frederick Swagerty's Land Grants & Purchase
in Greene County, North Carolina 

 Entry Date - Oct. 22, 1783
 Grant # 127 - 1786, Bk 1, p115, 400 acres  . . on Clear Creek
 Entry Date - Oct. 22, 1783
 Grant # 139 - 1786, Bk 2, p116, 200 acres  . . . on a branch of French Broad River
 Entry Date -  Nov. 7,  1783 
 Grant # 1202 - 1793, Bk2, p532, 200 acres . . . beginning at said Swagerty's line . . .  
 Entry Date -  Feb. 5,  1780
 Grant # 1204 - 1793, Bk 6, p464, 100 acres. . . beginning at a white oak . . .

 Warrant #  1229   Grant # 202   -  - 1793, Bk C, p86, 200 acres

  Purchase from Jacob McConnell, October 28, 1795, 200 acres, deed proved by son-in-
  law Joseph O'Haver

Frederick Swagerty's Land Grant for his initial 100 acres
Reproduction of the Original Land Grant Description
where James, Sr. lived in the Swagerty house at the Clear Creek settlement.
This tract was entered on February 5, 1780
The tract was surveyed by Abraham Swagerty December 4, 1792
The State of North Carolina issued the Land Grant (below) on February 23, 1793

Officials attempted to stop the illegal push by white settlers, as evidenced by a letter written in 1782 from North Carolina Governor Alexander Martin to Col. John Sevier.  [Ramsay's Annals of Tennessee, p.270]. 

                 "Sir :  I am distressed with the repeated complaints of the Indians respecting the
              daily intrusions of our people on their lands beyond [south of] the French Broad
              River.  I beg you, sir, to prevent the injuries these savages justly complain of, who
              are constantly imploring the protection of the state and appealing to its justice
              in vain.  By interposing your influence on these, our unruly citizens, I think will
              have sufficient weight, without going into extremities disgraceful to them and
              disagreeable to the state.  You will, therefore, please to warn these intruders off
              the lands reserved for the Indians . . . "
                 

 From J.G.M. Ramsay, Annals of Tennessee, p279 . . . .
             "It continued to be necessary for two years[1784/85]to keep out scouts between
             Pigeon and French Broad.  In this time Nehemiah and Simeon Odell were
             killed, scalped, and their guns taken.  A boy ten years old, named Nelson, was
             killed, and his horse taken seven miles up Pigeon.  McCoy's Fort was built on
             French Broad, three miles above New Port; Whitson's, on Pigeon, ten miles
             above New Port, where McNabb since lived; Wood's five miles below.  These
             were all guarded several years.". . . .

Ramsay also writes that late in 1783, in response to the settlers moving onto their land, "the Indians commenced hostilities, by stealing horses and cattle and retreating across the Pigeon Mountains in what is now Cocke County." 

Archivist Wayne C. Moore -  The First Families of Tennessee
Settlers continued to move onto Cherokee land, killing animals on tribal hunting grounds.  By 1784 the French Broad settlements were severely threatened by the Cherokee response.   State archivist Wayne C. Moore writes in The First Families of Tennessee that, according to Capt. John McFarland [area military official at the time], the first settlers on the French Broad River, had "to fort every summer" during long stretches of tribal incursions and attack.

Problems continued through the 1780's.   In 1788 a French Broad inhabitant petitioned Congress :
                     "We have been closely confined in forts these six months past and . . . our
                  farms not attended [and] our horses and cattle drove from our stations."
                 Moore adds, "Fresh intrusions on Cherokee lands nearly always sparked
                 a new round of atrocities and retribution."

The expedient need for shelter and protection from the Cherokee threat was of prime and immediate concern to those first settlers moving into the French Broad River country during the1780's.   The Swaggerty Fort may have been the first structure that FREDERICK  SWAGERTY and his family built for shelter and protection. 

 The Swaggerty Fort is built over a spring at Clear Creek. 
                       From Moore  :
                      "Almost as important as the soil itself  [to the settler] was the presence
                  of clear running water, preferably a freestone spring."
Moore quotes Tennessee artist and writer of the early 1900's, Emma Bell Miles :
                 "The site of a cabin is usually chosen as near as possible
                  to a fine spring.  No other advantages will ever make up for the lack
                  of good water."                      
The site of the Fort had dual advantages in terms of available water, with both Clear Creek and the spring.

Original Narrative and Website © copyright Iris Teta Eubank Wagner 2010

Sources for the Swagerty narratives
James and Delilah Meek Swagerty, The Swagerty Bible, published in Tennessee Ancestors, August 1986, Vol 2, p126-127.  The Bible record was submitted for publication by Mrs. Violet K. Wolfe of Monroe County, Tennessee.  The Bible was owned in 1986 by Mrs. Grace Reid Wear Kirkpatrick of Madisonville, Tennessee, descendant of Susannah Swagerty Johnson, daughter of James Swagerty, Jr. and Nancy Clark Swagerty.

James G. M. Ramsey, Annals of Tennesse ; Originally Printed in 1853 for J.G.M. Ramsey, MD, by Walker and Jones, Charleston, South Carolina.  Reprinted 1967 with the addition of a biographical introduction, annotations and index for the East Tennessee Historical Society, Knoxville, Tennessee.  Reprinted 1999 by the Overmountain Press.

www.seviercountylibrary.org/genealogy/cockeco/ccsurvey.htm  Cocke County, Tennessee, Survey Book "A" 1822 - 1854, W. P. A. Transcription by A. R. Mews [?] and Heber[?] Parrott.  Typed by Agnes Mattux and Willis Hutcherson. 

   Fanny Swagerty Eubank and son James Eubank, 1940 photos of the Swagerty log house.

   Annice Graddon Eberle, Swagerty Family File, Stokely Memorial Library, Newport, Tennessee.

   Marguerite White Williams, 1958 photos of the Swagerty log house.

Thomas Perkins Abernethy, From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee : A Study in Frontier Democracy, Chapter: Jackson, Blount, and Sevier, Southern Historical Publications No.12, University of Alabama Press, 1967, p173.

Irene M. Griffey, Earliest Tennessee Land Records & Earliest Tennessee Land History, Clearfield Company, Inc., reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland, 2003, pp384, 385.

G. L. Ridenhour, Land of the Lake : A History of Campbell County, Tennessee, p8.

The National Register of Historic Places - Tennessee, Swaggerty Blockhouse - also known as the Swaggerty Fort,  Building # 73001756

David F. Mann, The Dendroarchaeology of the Swaggerty Blockhouse, Cocke County, Tennessee : A Thesis Presented for the Master of Science Degree, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2002.

Greene County, North Carolina, Marriage Bonds, Greene County Courthouse, Greene County, Tennessee, James Swagerty to Delilah Meek, August 30, 1796.

East Tennessee Historical Society, First Families of Tennessee : A Register of Early Settlers and Their Present-Day Descendants, copyright 2000, East Tennessee Historical Society

Tennessee State Land Records, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Microfilm Collection #1177, Chuck Sherrill,  State Historian, Director.

Pollyanna Creekmore, Early East Tennessee Tax Payers,  (Greene County 1783, Cocke County 1839, Map of Cocke County 1832, Bill for Creation of Washington County), Southern Historical Press, Easley, South Carolina, reprint edition 1988.

www.progenealogists.com  The Palatine Project.  Pennsylvania. The Ships' Lists of men who took the Oath of Allegiance and became Naturalized Members of the Colony of Pennsylvania.  Using sources such as books by Burgert, Yoder, and Hacker, some family members of the men, and where the family had originated, are listed.

Bridgett Schneider, online copyright, 1996-2008, List of Taxables in Captain Samuel Gragg's Company for 1796, Greene County, Tennessee, Genealogy, Early Tax Lists.

Sarah Sweigert O'Haver, family information from Bible and papers  given Mrs.O'Haver by her father Frederick Swagerty. (Sarah and Joseph O'Haver moved their family from Cocke County, Tennessee to Greene County, Indiana before 1820. ) 

  Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs, Harrisburg, original surveys.   The Pennsylvania
  Archives, Harrisburg. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission website. Digital Documents,

  Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives, Digital Documents,
  including Land Records (East Side Applications, Westside Applications, Warrant Register,
  Patentee Register), Westside Application Register, April 1767, John Ross entry #3413;
  Frederick Sweikert entry #3414.

  Silas Wright, History of Perry County, in Pennsylvania, from the Earliest Settlement to the Present
  Time, Millerstown, 1872, Wylie & Griest, Printers, Bookbinders and Stereotypers, 1873.

  Ralph Beaver Strassburger and William John Hinke, Pennsylvania German Pioneers, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
  (the signature edition, p466) of the Ships' Lists, Pennsylvania German Society, 1934.

 William Henry Egle, Pennsylvania State Library, Notes and Queries of Pennsylvania: Historical and Biographical, Harrisburg Publishing Company, 1898 (Original from the University of Michigan), Digitized July 14, 2006, by Google Books.

Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, Third Edition, Ancestry Publishing, 2006.