Sevier was cavalier as well as frontiersman.

On his father's side he was of the patrician family of Xavier in France.

His progenitors, having become Huguenots, had taken refuge in England, where the name Xavier was finally changed to Sevier.

John Sevier's mother was an Englishwoman.
Some years before his birth his parents had emigrated to the Shenandoah Valley.

Thus it happened that John Sevier, who mingled good English blood with the blue blood of old France, was born an American and grew up a frontier hunter and soldier.