Hugh Rogan, born in 1741 in Glentourne, County Donegal, Ireland, fled Ireland in 1775 because he feared arrest by the British as a former member of the Defenders, a group opposed to laws the English Parliament enacted against Catholics. A devout Roman Catholic, he left behind his wife, Ann Duffy, called Nancy by her family, and their son Bernard, beginning a twenty-year separation. After making his way to North Carolina and working as a weaver, he later joined a surveying party mapping the boundary between what became Kentucky and Tennessee. He returned to the Cumberland Valley in 1779, guarding a party of settlers led by John Donelson on a months-long trip delayed by snow and ice. Rogan took an active role in settlement there, was one of the signers of the Cumberland Compact, the first instrument of government in Middle Tennessee, and helped defend the fortified stations in the Bledsoe's Creek area, often risking his life to protect families moving into the frontier. About 1796, after attacks by Native Americans had ended, he returned to Ireland for his family, and they settled on the 640-acre tract on Bledsoe's Creek that he had received for service to the country about three miles northeast of here. Hugh and Nancy had a second son, Francis, in 1798. Hugh Rogan died in 1818 on the farm and was buried in the family cemetery there.