Over the past several years, while researching for my new book Kings of the Blue Ridge, I decided to examine every major claim made about this ‘Robert Jimerson Carruthers’ and compare those statements against surviving eighteenth-century records.

Reverend Robert ‘Jimerson’ Carruthers is really just -

Robert Carruthers Sr. (1715-1812).

“The old wilderness had not yet disappeared beneath towns, courthouses, and organized roads. Much of the land stretching beyond Pennsylvania and Virginia still belonged more to rivers, mountains, weather, and Native paths than to the Crown itself. It was into this raw and changing frontier that the Carruthers family turned southward, leaving Pennsylvania behind and entering the long migration route that would later become known as the Great Wagon Road.”