Prior to its formation in 1849, Watauga County was a hunting ground for the Cherokee and part of the trail blazed by frontiersman Daniel Boone, for whom the county seat was later named. Primarily settled by whites after the Revolutionary War, many of the county s earliest families came to the Appalachians from the Piedmont region of North Carolina and, prior to that, from the North New England, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. These settlers were mainly of European extraction English, German, Scottish, Irish, Swiss, and Welsh along with a smaller African representation. Nestled in the...