Colonel Samuel Barton (May 1749 – January 1810) was a pioneer and Patriot of the American Revolution (1775–1783) but is remembered more for the exploration and settlement of what was to become Nashville, Tennessee. Little is known of his early youth. Family tradition holds that Samuel, born in Virginia, was left bound as an apprentice while his father returned to England for business only to be lost at sea. Recent y-DNA testing of a male descendent of Samuel Barton has shown that this branch of Barton’s are part of a lineage whose earliest known member in America was Lewis Barton of Maryland.