George Washington, a close friend of his father, authorized him to form Gist's Additional Continental Regiment in January 1777.

After the war, he took an American wife Judith Cary Bell (1750–1833) and the couple had four daughters, one of whom married Francis P. Blair.

Both men coveted the land at Long Island in the Holston River (now Kingsport, Tennessee) and soon fell out.

Governor Robert Dinwiddie blamed the quarrel for the failure of the Cherokees to aid the British against the French.

[2] In 1755 Gist accompanied Braddock's Expedition in 1755, serving as a lieutenant in his father's ranger company in Washington's colonial regiment.

[4] In 1760, Gist accompanied Daniel Boone and other hunters on a trek to Abingdon, Virginia, then called Wolf Hill.

[5] He was said to have sired Sequoyah in 1760 or 1761, but this is unlikely because the Anglo-Cherokee War was raging and Gist was serving in Adam Stephen's colonial Virginia regiment against the Cherokees.

Williams noted that a letter showed that in 1828, Sequoyah visited Gist relatives in Kentucky and was acknowledged as a family member.

At this time, the Stuarts and another agent Alexander Cameron were trying to get the white settlers on the Nolichucky and Watauga Rivers to move to West Florida.

When the column reached the French Broad River, Gist came into the Virginian camp under a flag of truce.

On 15 October 1776, Christian reported to Governor Patrick Henry that some of the Virginia troops recalled Gist's exploits on the frontier in a good light, while most of the soldiers wanted to lynch him as a British spy.

Gist maintained that it was impossible for him to escape so he appeared to go along with the enemy purpose, a story that was accepted by Governor Henry and the Virginia council in December.

The three companies that comprised the regiment fought with the main army in the Philadelphia Campaign in the summer and fall of 1777 and at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778.

[12] Gist preferred charges against Light Horse Harry Lee after the latter's capture of British prisoners at the Battle of Paulus Hook on 19 August 1779.

Brigadier General George Weedon, who evidently disagreed with the charges, called Gist "the head of the Wrongheads".

[12] On 6 April 1780, William Woodford's contingent of 750 Virginia Continentals arrived, having marched 500 miles (805 km).