Barry.  It must always be remembered that migration trails are very often the only remaining avenue to solutions of dead-ends, since 18th- and 19th-century folks quite usually took the easiest and most direct route, and because travel was terribly difficult and time consuming for families; a man on a horse or afoot could go most anyplace in a short time, a family with kids and a cow surely could not. So, when we encounter mysteries of origin it is wise to look back up the likely and most passable migration routes as a first effort in solving those problems.  Greeley said, "Go West..." but genealogists need to "look back East".    

As an example, if your line seems to evaporate with an ancestor who lived in mid-TN in 1840, it is wise to note that that family might have traveled down the TN river from SW VA or NW NC, or might equally have arrived at their "where" by coming through Crab Orchard Gap from Knoxville.  You may be almost sure of one thing; they did not come straight across the Cumberlands, and they almost surely did not come south from IL or MI.  

Similarly, if your ancestor first appears in Southern OH in 1830, it may be that as a first effort you need to check up the Ohio River to Pittsburg and that area and then, next, east across PA as likely starting points for that family in their trek west, or those folks equally may have come northwest from VA.  As with those in the prior illustration, it is unlikely that these southern Ohioans came from south GA or west TX, and to look at those latter places FIRST is likely a waste of precious time.

No, you are not wrong about canoe/small boat passage through Dismal Swamp.  However, just as you might even today, if confronted with the huge task of moving your wife and little ones through that mosquito and disease laden 17th- and 18th-century jungle, you surely would try, instead, to take the trails and primitive roads along the seaboard or go a tad west and then south from such as Emporia.  

The long and short of it is that migration trails, though no sure cure-alls for problems of origins, serve the genealogist mightily by providing a direction to commence a search for an pre-1850 ancestor who appears seemingly out of nowhere and gives no clue as to his/her origins.  If your folks first appear in 1840 IN, you best not start your hunt for their parents in Arkansas.  

Paul       
  From: Barry Wetherington 
  To: Weth-L ; With-L 
  Cc: ColleneMount ; BillKing ; Bill King ; BarryCast ; [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 3:26 AM
  Subject: Migration fm VA south NC SC GA FL AL Ark LA MS


  ....although how one learns which trail an ancestor took
  seems problematical to me, and other wise, unless you have the travel log of
  your ancestor, it seems to me that it will be quite difficult and perhaps
  pointless to attempt to determine the travel path. ....what do you care which way he
  passes? Those programs that show concentrations of surnames (more useful in
  Germany, etc) probably provide better hints to the locations and migration
  paths of your ancestors. Births are a useful event to pin down a location at
  a time.

     Frankly, hope I'm wrong...

         Barry
  PS: Paul, if you catch this and are so inclined, I tell my Lost Colony &
  Pocahontas Lists, when discussing whether the 20 yrs and 100 miles
  effectively barred any intercourse between Jamestown & Roanoke Is/ Manteo,
  that there was an interior waterway between the 2 places, either through or
  around the Dismal Swamp, at least for canoes. Am I wrong?


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