William Linville was a first frontier explorer and settler of the Tanglewood lands along the Great Wagon Road running from PA to GA. Born in Chester and raised in Conestoga, PA, he married Eleanor Bryan and moved by 1733 to the Shenandoah Valley, VA, on Linville Creek, where he served as a militia captain. Around 1749-50 he built a log cabin near this site and obtained original Lord Granville Land Grants in 1753 and 1755. His older brother Thomas Linville, the first American-born Linville, settled at Belews Creek, NC, northeast of the Moravian settlement at Salem. His sister Alice Linville Bryan was purported to be the mother-in-law of Daniel Boone, and his daughter Ann Linville married George Boone, Daniel's older brother, and settled in KY. In late summer 1766, William Linville and his son John were killed by natives while hunting in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and their bodies were retrieved and buried by George and probably Daniel Boone. A river, waterfall, and gorge in the Linville Wilderness Area bear his name, and he was remembered as a frontiersman and long hunter, a colonial term for adventurous men who left home and hearth for months to explore, hunt, and trap in the wilderness frontier.