It couldn't have been because of the Erie canal as much of it wasn't done at the time of the mass migration at the start of the 1800's. Were these people who had been depossessed by the towns burned in the East and had moved enmass to that part of New York? If that is true then when we are searching for people who came from the burned areas we could know to look in that part of New York, prior to their arrival in Ohio. It's a curiosity. Jessie Deith