Craig Kilby wrote:

>>I have not encountered such "big picture migration" to the deep south 
>>states like Mississippi. That migration pattern, in my experience, was 
>>generally deep south to deep south (South Carolina & Georgia > Alabama & 
>>Mississippi).<<

Check out the migration from Virginia down to Georgia and west along the 
federal road into Alabama, especially in the 1830s when land was opening up 
in Alabama for settlement. For example, from 
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2999 :

"Between 1790 and 1850, these primarily white yeomen farmers [from states 
like Virginia and the Carolinas] would bring large-scale plantation 
agriculture and the approximately one million enslaved African workers that 
made it possible, to the frontier, transforming the wilderness into a region 
defined by its cotton-based economy"

I don't know how many came from Virginia specifically, and how it compares 
to the numbers involved in western migration, but many did, and others were 
Virginians who had already migrated first to Georgia, then moved west to 
Alabama. There was a "get rich quick" aspect to the migration, as cotton 
lands opened up in the fertile black belt. The Tayloes of Virginia, for 
example, sent Henry Tayloe and some of their slaves down to Perry and 
Marengo Co. Alabama, though his mismanagement meant the plantations there 
never prospered under him.

Hank Trent
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