* On the way, Robertson had fallen in with a party of men and families bound for Kentucky and had persuaded them to accompany his little band to the Cumberland.

Robertson's own wife and children, as well as the families of his party, had been left to follow in the second expedition, which was to be made by water under the command of Captain John Donelson.
* In honor of General Francis Nash, of North Carolina, who was mortally wounded at Germantown, 1777.
The little fleet of boats containing the settlers, their families, and all their household goods, was to start from Fort Patrick Henry, near Long Island in the Holston River, to float down into the Tennessee and along the 652 miles of that widely wandering stream to the Ohio, and then to proceed up the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland and up the Cumberland until Robertson's station should appear--a journey, as it turned out, of some nine hundred miles through unknown country and on waters at any rate for the greater part never before navigated by white men.
"Journal of a voyage, intended by God's permission, in the good boat Adventure" is the title of the log book in which Captain Donelson entered the events of the four months' journey.

Only a few pages endured to be put into print: but those few tell a tale of hazard and courage that seems complete.

Could a lengthier narrative, even if enriched with literary art and fancy, bring before us more vividly than do the simple entries of Donelson's log the spirit of the men and the women who won the West?
If so little personal detail is recorded of the pioneer men of that day that we must deduce what they were from what they did, what do we know of their unfailing comrades, the pioneer women?
Only that they were there and that they shared in every test of courage and endurance, save the march of troops and the hunt.

Donelson's "Journal" therefore has a special value, because in its terse account of Mrs.Jennings and Mrs.Peyton it depicts unforgettably the quality of pioneer womanhood.