This is a terrific discussion about one of the major questions of American family history. I am enjoying it immensely. I have a specific example to offer and a book recommendation. Sue Parks Patterson wrote a marvelous and carefully documented family history of the Stokes, Smith, Bowker, Ingles and other families that came from Virginia and North Carolina into Tennessee and in later generations were among the first Tennesseans to move on to Arkansas and Texas. This manuscript, "The Circle Goes Unbroken," included an appendix with letters from family members who had moved to Arkansas and Texas to relatives who stayed behind. Unfortunately much of Ms. Park's manuscript appears to have been taken down from the web. But here is an example of one letter that speaks to the subject of relocation. "Abram [Smith] was not content to be in Arkansas without as many of his relatives as he could recruit to join him. In his April 17, 1832 letter to his brothers, Guy and Tom, he extolled the virtues of the area, saying, “If you will come you will never rue the trip for I will show you the best country you ever saw and the very country you and Thomas must come to for if you will come and get a start of stalk [sic?] you will never work a day and the like of health I have never seen since I left White county....” Abram chastised them for staying “in that dammed hole that you and Thomas does.” and closes his letter with “rite [sic] quick and come quick.” He goes on to comment about educating his children: "In the 1832 letter Abram complained that “Bird is the best...child in the Territory and is ruining for the want of schooling and I have no chance to give it to him. We have plenty of schools but I can’t git [sic] him to (school?) without I had money. I have plenty of propert! y but I have nary money and in consequence of that I can’t school him.” this segment of Ms. Patterson's manuscript is still on line at http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~bearraid/circle/chap6.html Also, there is a wonderful pair of books by D. W. Meining called The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. Volume 2, "Continental America, 1800-1867," covers many of the questions being discussed here in great detail. There are many references to Kentucky. John Newton Morrel