John Sevier was an American soldier, frontiersman, and politician, and one of the founding fathers of the State of Tennessee.  He played a leading role in Tennessee’s pre-statehood period, both militarily and politically, and he was elected the state’s first governor in 1796. He served as a colonel of the Washington District Regiment in the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780, and he commanded the frontier militia in dozens of battles against the Cherokee in the 1780s and 1790s