General Notes

Christine Brown says Robert was born 9 November 1749 near Harrisburg,
Virginia.
Robert was a Private in Francis Lang's Company in Revolutionary War.
(Christine Brown says Robert was a captain.) Moved to Sevier County,
Tennessee in 1784.
John A. Shields in one manuscript put Robert's birth at 1740. He says
there were 11 sons, one who died in infancy. Another source says there
were 12 brothers and two died in infancy.
Court records indicate that Robert acquired land in 1781 on Smith Creek,
a branch of the Calfpasture River in Augusta and Rockbridge Counties,
Virginia. As heir to his brother John of Botefort County, Robert conveyed
land to William Shields in 1782.
John A. Shields says the family settled in the western wilderness near
Pigeon Forge because the government of North Carolina was offering cheap
land and tax exemptions and because they were pressed in Virginia by high
taxes, poor markets, ruinous competition of slave-labor plantations (the
Shield's were not slaveholders), hard times and the increasing needs of a
large family. Daniel Boone, described as "a kinsman," and other hunters
and explorers had brought back glowing accounts of the fertility of the
land, abundance of game and beauty of the country, all of which was added
to accounts by the eldest son, Thomas, who had spent three years
exploring the unsettled region of East Tennessee.
In 1784, the Shields and McMahan families (Mrs. Deborah McMahan was Nancy
Stockton's recently widowed sister) loaded their possessions in three
wagons and embarked on the long trail down the Shenandoah Valley. At Big
Lick (Roanoke), the party divided. One wagon, in charge of Robert's son
James, 13, with Nancy, Janet and the smaller Shields boys, went to Yadkin
Settlement in North Carolina, where they remained with Robert's cousins a
year before proceeding to Tennessee. The other two wagons proceeded as
far as the settlement on the Watauga where the McMahans and Thomas' and
Richard's wives remained until the following year. In 1785, the McMahans
and the Yadkin party of the Shields family went on with the pack animals
via the old Traders Trail.
At the Watauga Land Office, Robert Shields bought a tract of land on
Middle Creek, a tributary of the Little Pigeon River in what is now
Sevier County, Tennessee. This was far beyond the most remote of the
frontier settlements. The most remote settlement up until that time was
at Big Island in the French Broad River, about 20 miles northeast of
Robert's land. From Watauga to Middle Creek was about 100 miles as the
crow flies and more than 200 miles by the pack-animal trail and about 150
miles via the footpaths through the forest.
In 1784, Robert and his five older sons, carrying on their backs such
scanty equipment as was absolutely essential, proceeded on foot by
mountain paths known to Thomas. They often traveled days without seeing a
settler's cabin. Once they were all stalked by two Indians with
flintlocks and tomahawks. Thomas, becoming aware of the lurking danger,
took two long-rifles, going some distance ahead of the others, and hid
until the trailing Indians passed him. He killed both of them.
After about two weeks, they reached the mouth of the Little Pigeon River.
Leaving the regular trail, they turned south up that stream to their new
location. On what is now known as the old T. D. McMahan place on Middle
Creek, a branch of the Little Pigeon River, they built a temporary cabin
at the foot of Shields Mountain, started a clearing and began the
erection of Shields fort.
On the frontier, a fort was a prime necessity for protection from hostile
Indians. Following the Revolution, Spain claimed the land west of the
Alleghenies and bitterly opposed settlement from the United States. The
Spanish incited the Indians, especially the Cherokees, offering large
bounties for white settlers' scalps. Some accounts say that between 1780
and 1795