The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South

After researching my family tree, I found it interesting that for several branches generation after generation were going from Ireland to Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, then strangely up to Indiana and Illinois. Other branches of my family tree took the National Road west, but the Great Wagon Road is an interesting story for the development of the early eastern United States. It was a road "worn down in earlier ages by buffalo." Later after the extinction of the eastern buffalo it was "the ancient Warrior's Path...used by Iroquois tribesmen of the north to come south and trade or make war in [what later would become] Virginia and the Carolinas." While much has been written about the Scots-Irish, this book includes other Protestant migrants such as the German, Moravian, Palatine, and Quakers. The book also describes the various Protestant preachers such as Francis Asbury and Peter Muhlenberg that so affected the settlers, broadly cast the seeds of religious freedom and anti-slavery. Many of those clans who migrated to North Carolina, moved onto Tennessee and Kentucky only to find that they could not compete economically with slaveholders and moved north to the free labor states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. There they met other branches who generally followed the National Road west from Philadelphia. The book is full of details that give the reader clear pictures of what life was like living along the great wagon road and various branches west. I recommend the book for those wanting an in-depth image of what their ancestors did to survive and make a life for themselves in this part of the country.

I do a lot of genealogy research and I knew for a fact that my ancestors migrated from the Philadelphia area down to North Carolina via the Great Wagon Road. They came into America via the Port of Phila in 1738 and were in North Carolina sometime in the mid to late 1750s to early 1760s. The book was a real learning lesson, I never knew there was such a "road" on the eastern seaboard states like there was out west. It was really good at informing you of the trials and tribulations our ancestors faced with the countryside, the indians, the British and the French. I highly recommend this book, it opens your eyes to just how many moved from the North to the South and the way they went. Although near the end of the book it did jump around, it nevertheless held my attention. Great source material for those of you researching your roots in these areas.

This is a very interesting book pertaining to the migration of settlers from the North to the South. I was hoping to find some records on my family genealogy but really enjoyed the book.

This book is great for those interested in genealogy and tracing their ancestry from the early 1700's in the PA/MD/DE area to the Carolinas. I often wondered why they took the route they did from the eastern seaboard into South Carolina. Now I know. I was especially interested in the Scotch-Irish emigration since it was the lineage of my ancestry. The book is well written and makes history come alive.