He returned to Watauga in the following spring (1771) with his family and a small group of colonists.

Robertson's wife was an educated woman and under her instruction he now began to study.
Next year a young Virginian from the Shenandoah Valley rode on down Holston Valley on a hunting and exploring trip, and loitered at Watauga.
Here he found not only a new settlement but an independent government in the making; and forthwith he determined to have a part in both.
This young Virginian had already shown the inclination of a political colonist, for in the Shenandoah Valley he had, at the age of nineteen, laid out the town of New Market (which exists to this day) and had directed its municipal affairs and invited and fostered its clergy.

This young Virginian--born on September 23, 1745, and so in 1772 twenty-seven years of age--was John Sevier, that John Sevier whose monument now towers from its site in Knoxville to testify of both the wild and the great deeds of old Tennessee's beloved knight.

Like Robertson, Sevier hastened home and removed his whole family, including his wife and children, his parents and his brothers and sisters, to this new haven of freedom at Watauga.
The friendship formed between Robertson and Sevier in these first years of their work together was never broken, yet two more opposite types could hardly have been brought together.

Robertson was a man of humble origin, unlettered, not a dour Scot but a solemn one.