To Their New Homes : i8i 



they found themselves in company with Scotch-Irish settlers who 

 had come in through New England. 



The first movement of settlers to the west and southwest began 

 before the Revolution and by this time what were to become the 

 great channels of westward movement had been already marked 

 out. There was the Mohawk Valley, later supplemented by the Erie 

 Canal which was already being used by the Germans and the Scotch- 

 Irish. There was the Ohio Valley. There were the valleys of the Alle- 

 gheny Mountains and the Blue Ridge and the other mountains of the 

 Appalachian system. Settlers starting to move into these mountains 

 soon got caught in the valleys and began following them in great 

 concentric arcs that led them to the south and west. 



Beginning in 1760, many newcomers to this country moved into 

 these mountainous sections and, once started, followed them into 

 Kentucky and Tennessee and to the uplands of Georgia. Some of 

 these settlers came from Germany and some from Sweden but the 

 bulk of them came from Ireland. The descendants of this wave of 

 pioneer settlers made their names an important part of the American 

 historical record. They included Daniel Boone, David Crockett, Cal- 

 houn, Jackson, Polk, Houston and Lincoln. 



To trace out the whole complicated pattern of the ethnic settle- 

 ment of the American continent would prove to be a fascinating task 

 but would take us far afield from Atlantic history. The three chan- 

 nels that we have set forth above are, however, important to us 

 because what happened on the Atlantic in general determined the 

 pattern of western movement of the settlers after they arrived on 

 American shores. Thus, those who arrived in the ports south of Bal- 

 timore, when they moved westward, got into the Piedmont and 

 finally into the Appalachian system and thus their movement tended 

 to be deflected to the southwest. Those who came into Baltimore, Wil- 

 mington, Chester and Philadelphia tended to move into western 

 Pennsylvania where they had a choice. They could either follow the 

 mountain and valley again to the south and west or, having crossed 

 the mountains, they could roll down the Allegheny, the Mononga- 

 hela, and the Ohio. 



Ships that stayed north of the Gulf Stream throughout their Atlan- 

 tic course came into New York and the harbors of the New England 

 coast. Their westward movement carried them into the Mohawk- 

 Erie system and so west along the lakes. Thus, it is interesting to 

 observe that German families from two entirely different sources par- 



