Jo; I certainly was not "bored" by your information. I have noticed many wills in eastern NC mention business interests in New England especially up through the first 1/3 of the 1700s. It looks like the big money was being made in shipping during that period. That said, some of these families could have established a business office in places where their ships called frequently and sent sons, nephews and cousins to man them. Makes me wonder of some of the missing family members actually ended up somewhere up the coast. In the early days as I understand, one could get land for the import of sailors each time they entered a colony and even after the reforming of the laws, each colony allowed a one time head right irrespective of the individuals head right use in the other colonies. So if a family used their children to acquire land in VA, the children could still go across the border into MD or NC or both and acquire land. I would love to hear more about this from someone who has more knowledge than I do. Marilyn > From: "prytherch" <prytherch@cconnect.net> > Reply-To: NC-PCFR-L@rootsweb.com > Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 21:04:05 -0500 > To: NC-PCFR-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: [NC-PCFR] Routes into early NC > Resent-From: NC-PCFR-L@rootsweb.com > Resent-Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 19:29:24 -0700 > > Did I miss something? I didn't see a discussion of how most of our ancestors > reached NC. I have found that to be an interesting subject. None of my > direct ancestors have ever been born west of I-95 since their respective lines > found their way into this state. Most of them did, indeed, come first to > Virginia and then into NC - some as early as the mid-1600's. I have found, to > my surprise, however, that a few old, old NC families were seafaring families > and settled in NC first, although their ships visited ports in Burmuda, the > Caribbean and other ports in Colonial America as well as NC waters. They > could have settled anywhere. These people primarily came to the Roanoke River > area early on. The Roanoke was navigable all the way to Williamston up until > about the 1950's to ships of relatively shallow draft. > > The lumber here also attracted quite a few families from New England and Long > Island even before Revolutionary Days. The attraction of the lumber was for > ship-building at that time. I think it interesting that we seem to have more > members of the Mayflower Society who were born in NC than we do of the Ancient > Planters (Jamestown settlers' descendants). > > If you want to look at immigrants as recently as the mid-1700's, you will find > that many of the Scottish Highlander refugee families came directly into the > Port of Wilmington to settle the Cape Fear Valley. Even Flora McDonald, who > sheltered Bonnie Prince Charlie took refuge in NC. She had to leave, though, > when the Revolution came, because she was a Tory. > > Hope I didn't bore you, but I seem to have at least one ancestor that took > each of the possible routes, so don't overlook an unusual possiblity. Until I > read the November issue of PCGQ, I never would have guessed that part of the > mid-1800's immigration of Carolinians to Texas was by ship from Eastern NC > ports. > > Jo ROBERSON Prytherch > > > > > > > > > ==== NC-PCFR Mailing List ==== > Post to this mail list at: NC-PCFR-L@rootsweb.com > Visit the PCFR website at http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncpcfr > Browse our rich collection of old family photographs, private documents, and > public records. > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go > to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237 >