Jo --- You have opened up a topic that is of great interest to many of us --- the immigration routes of our early ancestors into northeastern NC. Once we have traced our early ancestors into eastern NC, we have great difficulty trying to find out where they came from. For example, my earliest known ancestors were Alexander Mitchell (b. 1722) (wife Desire)and his son, Abraham Mitchell (b. 1742) (wife Ellender). We know that Abraham Mitchell and some of his sons owned real property in New Bern, Craven Co, in the 1790's, and that one of his sons (my ancestor), Hardy Mitchell (b. 1768) (wife Barbara), first appeared in the 1790 federal census for old Dobbs Co. These do not seem to fit in with the Mitchell family of Onslow county with similar names. We know that some of my Mitchell descendants remaining in New Bern were involved in mercantile and shipping endeavors, suggesting a possible New England connection, but where in New England?. It is hard to tell where this Mitchell family came from. Did they come from Virginia or Maryland to Dobbs Co and then to Craven Co? Did they come first to Dobbs Co or Craven Co? Did they come from the Bertie Co area to Dobbs or Craven Co? Did they come from the West Indies? Did they come from New England? Did they come directly from Scotland, England or Ireland? Did they come from somewhere else? The possibilities are so numerous that it is hard to know where to begin in trying to track them down. I would appreciate any suggestions for approaching this type of problem, and any source references. I would like to see our genealogical societies in the eastern NC area undertake a project to track the early migration routes into NC and the early families that took each of those migration routes, together with source references for the various migration routes. (I know that work has been done and posted on websites the migrations out of NC to the states to the west, but I do not know of any projects or works tracking the early migration routes into NC). I would appreciate any direction in narrowing down the areas of search. Thank you for bringing up this important topic. Roger Settlemire ----- Original Message ----- From: "prytherch" <prytherch@cconnect.net> To: <NC-PCFR-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 6:04 PM Subject: [NC-PCFR] Routes into early NC > 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 > >

Roger Settlemire wrote: >You have opened up a topic that is of great interest to many of us --- the >immigration routes of our early ancestors into northeastern NC. >The possibilities are so numerous that it is hard to know where to begin in >trying to track them down. I would appreciate any suggestions for >approaching this type of problem, and any source references. > > On this subject, I would highly recommend "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer. Should be in most public libraries and is easy to find used as it is used as a textbook in colleges. While it is not NC specific, but covers Migrations from Great Britain to what is now the US, I find it very informative in helping to understand migrations during the 1600-1700's, and also the formation of the distinctive cultures of different regions of the US. Stephen, St. Louis From the dustjacket: "This volume, the first in a cultural history of the United States, takes up a problem of origins. It is about the transplanting of four British folkways to Americaa process which defined the regional cultures of the United States, and created the pluralism on which American freedom is based. From 1629 to 1775, North America was settled by four great waves of English-speaking immigrants. The first was an exodus of Puritans from the east of England to Massachusetts Bay (1629-40). The second was the movement of a Royalist elite and their indentured ser vants from the south of England to Virginia (1640-75). The third was the Friends' migration from the North Mid lands of England and Wales to the Delaware Valley (1675-1725). The fourth was a flight from the borderlands of North Britain and northern Ireland to the American backcountry (1717-75). These four groups differed in religion, rank, generation and place of origin. They had different English dialects, different traditions of vernacular architecture, different ideas of family and marriage, different attitudes toward gender and sexuality, different practices of child-naming and child-raising, different beliefs about age and death, different rituals of worship and magic, different forms of work and play, different customs of food and dress, different traditions of education and literacy, different modes of settlement and association. They also had profoundly different ideas of comity, order, power and freedom. Albion's Seed describes these cultures in detail, and discusses their continuing importance in American history. Today most people in the United States (more than 80 per cent) have no British ancestors at all. These many other groups, while preserving their own ethnic identities, also assimilated regional cultures which had been created in the colonial era. The concluding section of Albion's Seed explores the ways in which regional cultures have persisted in the United States from 1789 to 1989, and still control attitudes toward politics, education, government, gender, and violenceon which differences between American regions are greater than those between European nations. Albion's Seed argues that four British folkways in early America created an expansive pluralism which became more libertarian than any single culture alone could be. Together they became the foundation stones of a free society in the United States."