Many of the first permanent white settlers in Tennessee were Baptists who were escaping persecutions in North Carolina.

By 1781, these immigrants had established six churches and, "for their mutual advantage and edification", they organized a temporary Association which they chose to place under the direction of the Sandy Creek Association in North Carolina.

However, the remoteness of their situation rendered this measure so inconvenient that on the fourth Sunday of October, 1786, representatives from seven churches met at the Cherokee Baptist Church and erected their body into a distinct and independent Association by the name of Holston.

Holston was the first Association of Baptist churches in Tennessee, the third west of the Appalachian mountains and the twenty-third in the United States.