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. 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. He stood about five feet nine from
his moccasins to his crown of light brown hair. He was
well-proportioned and as graceful of body as he was hard-muscled
and swift. His chin was firm, his nose of a Roman cast, his mouth
well-shaped, its slightly full lips slanting in a smile that
would not be repressed.
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