Following the Cherokee to the mountainous area of upper Greenville County were Scots-Irish  and borderline England settlers who had come to the New World through the Pennsylvania colony, particularly to the ports of Philadelphia and Chester. Moving westward almost immediately to separate themselves from other immigrants, they moved down through the Maryland colony into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia colony. By the mid-18th century, a Great Wagon Road of Pennsylvania settlers moved farther south to the piedmont area of North Carolina colony, then into upper South Carolina colony. Most all other areas of South Carolina colony came north out of Charleston or Savannah in Georgia colony.

Earliest settlers signed a treaty with the Cherokees in 1755, setting up the original Indian Boundary Line from a point, known as the Block House on the border between the two Carolina colonies on a line due south to the Enoree River. This left the northwestern corner of South Carolina colony  to the Cherokees for permanent Indian towns and settlements. The boundary line was a friendly one at first, but after two Cherokees who had gone to Virginia colony to help the British fight the French, stole several horses from settlers on their way back from Virginia, bad blood between the renegade Cherokee and the white settlers developed. It was necessary in the 1760’s to build a line of 12 fortifications on the eastern side of the boundary to protect settlers in the Revolutionary period of the 1770’s.