Anne Robertson Johnson Cockrill

Anne Robertson Johnson Cockrill was born on February 10, 1757, in Wake County, North Carolina.[1] Her brother, James Robertson (1742-1814), founded Fort Nashborough alongside John Donelson (1718–1785).

She moved to Fort Watauga in North Carolina, and later moved to Fort Caswell.[1][2] When it was attacked by Native Americans, she led a group of women to throw boiling water at them to ward them off.[2]

Her first husband was a justice of the peace in the Washington District of East Tennessee and was killed in an accident.[1][2][3] After he died, Cockrill and her three small daughters joined Colonel John Donelson in the migration of the first pioneers on a flatboat to go down the Cumberland River to Tennessee to the Cumberland settlements.[2] The exhibition was intended to bring families of the men who settled Nashville there.[4] During the journey, she taught the children in the boat to make small wooden boxes, filling them with river sand, and drawing letters and numbers in the sand.[3] She was later honored as Middle Tennessee’s first teacher.[5]

In 1784, she received a land grant for 640-acre from the North Carolina legislature; she was the first woman in this position.[2][4] The land was then known as Cockrill Springs and was situated on what is now Centennial Park in Nashville, Tennessee, near the campus of Vanderbilt University.[2] There is now a monument in her memory there.[2]

Anne and John married in 1784 and had eight children.[1][2]

She died on October 13, 1821, in Tennessee. She was buried in the Nashville City Cemetery.[2]

Lewis, Peyton Cockrill. A Perilous Journey: The Founding of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1781 (2005) Channing Press

• Anne Robertson Johnson Cockrill at Find a Grave