276 The Winning of the West 



and Virginia, driving before him an old "flea-bitten 

 grey" horse, loaded with a sackful of books ; crossed 

 the Alleghanies, and came down along blazed trails 

 to the Holston settlements. The hardy people 

 among whom he took up his abode were able to ap- 

 preciate his learning and religion as much as they 

 admired his adventurous and indomitable temper; 

 and the stern, hard, God-fearing man became a most 

 powerful influence for good throughout the whole 

 formative period of the Southwest. 5 



Not only did he found a church, but near it he 

 built a log high-school, which soon became Wash- 

 ington College, the first institution of the kind west 

 of the Alleghanies. Other churches, and many 

 other schools, were soon built. Any young man or 

 woman who could read, write, and chipher felt 

 competent to teach an ordinary school ; higher educa- 

 tion, as elsewhere at this time in the West, was in 

 the hands of the clergy. 



As elsewhere, the settlers were predominantly of 

 Calvinistic stock ; for of all the then prominent faiths 

 Calvinism was nearest to their feelings and ways of 

 thought. Of the great recognized creeds it was the 

 most republican in its tendencies, and so the best 

 suited to the backwoodsmen. They disliked Angli- 

 canism as much as they abhorred and despised 

 Romanism theoretically at least, for practically 

 then as now frontiersmen were liberal to one an- 

 other's religions opinions, and the stanch friend 



5 See "East Tennessee a Hundred Years Ago," by the 

 Hon. John Allison, Nashville, 1887, p. 8. 



