Another guess for you - he liked the logging industry. In Tioga County in the 1830s, logging white pine (with a little oak thrown in) and floating it down Pine Creek to the Susquehanna for the Chesapeake Bay's shipbuilding industry was very nearly the only thing going on. Leaving for Michigan in the 1840s, around the time that same industry was rolling there, would tend to make me think that even more. Lots of SI names in the lists of loggers and river pilots from those days. FWIW, Rob -----Original Message----- From: Brendan Wehrung [mailto:wehrung@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 8:18 PM To: Scotch-Irish-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [Sc-Ir] Early PA Map 1760 and some other stuff >From: "William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org> >To: Scotch-Irish-L@rootsweb.com >Subject: Re: [Sc-Ir] Early PA Map 1760 and some other stuff >Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 11:39:00 -0400 > >On 10 Apr, 2006, at 19:20, AGarvin224@aol.com wrote: > >>In a message dated 4/10/06 7:04:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, >>wehrung@hotmail.com writes: >> >>>This is a wonderful site! The big question when you have no real >>>information except a location is "why did they settle there?" often >>>answered by "how did they get there?" >>>The roads often answer the second question and these maps give lots >>>of answers. >> >>Don't forget that water played a large part in folks getting around >>those mountains - specifically, the Susquehanna and the Ohio Rivers, >>and Lake Eire, and later, the Eire Canal (my Scots-Irish family came >>to PA that way). An interesting book described how George Washington >>used the Potomac River to get to PA and then to the Ohio River. >>Ann > >But George was headed to Fort Pitt.... > >Coming from the east and Philadelphia, the Conestoga Road was one >primary path. A trail made by the Conestoga (Susquehanna) Indians, >connecting the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers. Later this trail >became the Old Lancaster Road, then the Conestoga Road. > >Later (circa 1717) this name became famous as the "Prairie Schooner" -- >the Conestoga Wagon built and designed by Pennsylvania Germans. >Nominally, what we now call the Pennsylvania Dutch -- Dutch = Deutch >(with an umlat over the u) Deutch being the German word for German! > In my case the road has to lead to Tioga County. Why my Irish ancestor chose it we'll never know, but one of the maps shows roads leading there in the early 1830's (he must have arrived about 1827-30). He repeated the feat in Michigan in 1848, when he left his family in Oakland co. (north of Detroit) and set out along what was then the newly-surveyed route of what became Grand river Rd. to the then wilderness of Montcalm County. Liked wild places with cheap land, it seems. Brendan >http://www.rootsweb.com/~pacahs/wagon.htm > >http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/wagons.html > >http://www.gameo.org/index.asp?content=http://www.gameo.org/ >encyclopedia/contents/C6621ME.html >http://www.ushistory.org/philadelphia/street_conestoga.htm > >An interesting set of musings on the path of the "Great Conestoga Road." >http://www.hansherr.org/articles.htm > > >T.T.F.N. >William H. Magill >PM University Lodge 51, GLPA >Pennsylvania Lodge of Research >Philadelphia, PA >magill@mcgillsociety.org >magill@acm.org >magill@mac.com >whmagill@gmail.com > >