In 1775, Richard Henderson of North Carolina purchased a large amount of Kentucky land from the Cherokees, who also hunted in Kentucky, on which he intended to establish a colony called Transylvania. Henderson's employee Daniel Boone blazed the Wilderness Trail into central Kentucky and built Fort Boone, soon renamed Boonesborough. Boonesborough and the rest of Transylvania became part of Virginia in 1776. Several families from the east soon settled there. Shawnees to the north were unhappy about American expansion into Kentucky, and they sporadically attacked Boonesborough.