Interesting that Virginia has somehow managed to pull it out of us, that our ancestors, as a rule, did not tend to just take off for the blue, leaving family friends and connections behind. They went with !! or, close behind. Georgians had been emigrating into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri in small trickles, before the Civil War. Those trickles drastically increased as times became harder. By about 1868, my maternal lines, Jordan Wilcher & wife, Virginia (Hammock) had left Taylor Co, gone into first Woods Co, & then settled into Bell Co Texas, along with Virginia's cousin, Mansel McBryde & his wife, Jane (Gore), from Talbot Co. In the 1870 Bell Co Census, I also found my paternal line, John Snellings, his wife Martha (Mayo) & 3 of John's brothers & their families, all from Talbot Co. Taylor & Talbot Co's had to have been thriving, up until the Civil War. By the time that was over, a huge percentage of their young men had been killed, wounded or maimed, or, had vanished.I don't know if those "damn yankees" destroyed businesses, crops, homes in Taylor, (good question, did they?) but they surely did in Talbot. What were left were widows, orphans, the elderly. And what Reconstruction didn't finish off, the boll weevil did. Times were hard. The young people flocked to the larger cities & towns, to work in factories. Rampant outbreaks of typhoid fever & smallpox were still un-checked. (Per one newspaper report, some 800 plus had died in Columbus, Muscogee Co in one month alone.) At the same time, there was cheap, rich land to be had in Texas, where, if a man were enterprising enough, a more than decent living could be made for his family, his sons & their families. James Burnham's family went into Falls Co, as did my Benjamin F. Elliston, his wife Catherine (Hammock) & their 12 children, settling around Durango Falls & Lott bt ca 1892. Carol Johnson Petaluma, Calif 94954 (707) 763-7956 Talbot Co http://www.rootsweb.com/~gatalbot/gatalbot.htm Subscribe to Talbot Co Ga Mailing List GATALBOT-L-request@rootsweb.com