My Coffee family migrated from Tennessee to the Damron Survey in Fannin County Texas in 1855. John Henry Dameron was given a 640 acre land grant by the Republic of Texas in 1838 on the requirement that he would go back to Nashville and bring settlers to the area. The Orangeville Community is located in the middle of the Damron Survey. That is where my great grand father settled, got married and survived the War of Southern Independence. Federal taxes took the land after the war and he migrated to the Texas frontier. Jerry Coffee. ----Original Message----- From: Harold Miller <hlm@qtm.net> To: Southern-Trails-L@rootsweb.com <Southern-Trails-L@rootsweb.com> Date: Monday, June 04, 2001 8:32 AM Subject: [SouthernTrails] TN/GA/AR >I have seen a pattern of TN to AL to AR. The reasons: The families had >come into what is today TN sometime around the Rev. from either Shenandoah >Valley of Virginia (having moved from places such as Pennsylvania) to TN, or >the pattern of coming from North Carolina into TN (many have begun in >Maryland). So say 1790s to 1810 they were in TN. The the War of 1812 came >and many of the men went with Jackson on one of his expeditions, moving thru >what is today Alabama and Mississippi. I guess they really liked the land, >cause you see a lot of them between 1815 - 1818 moving south. Often some of >the family stayed in Tennessee. Georgia was also an area some moved to. >They were going for free land to a new area. > >The move to Arkansas - many people were there in 1820s, but a big migration >began ca 1834-1835. This would be to the North Western corner of Arkansas. >The land was owned I am told by the Cherokees Indians, but they thought the >land was useless so did not live there. The few Indians there were Choctaw >- seems they had been beaten by the Cherokees and their land taken over. So >the Choctaw lived in bluff areas which no one else wanted. Anyway, sometime >around 1834 the goverment purchased NW Arkansas from the Cherokees and >opened it up for white settlement. Between that date into the early 1850s, >many families made the move, although most were there by ca 1840. Some who >had moved to Arkansas ca 1829 would also moved into the new area. All you >had to do was pick out your land, and become a "squatter", no money needed. >My family did not buy their land till the mid 1840s, so they lived on it >several years before they purchased it. This of course helped young >families just starting out who had no money. > >I have found when the families coming out of VA or NC got to Tennessee, some >stayed there, some to KY and on to Indiana and Illinois, and some south. >But mid 1830s many of them from all the areas met again in NW Arkansas. For >example, you find Spurlock in TN, KY, AR. Hancock, Strickland and >Reavis/Reeves in Illinois and Alabama moving to AR. And so on. So the same >family which had split in TN, some going north and some south, would meet up >again in Arkansas. > >Later, after the war in 1865, many southern Union families would make the >move to NW Arkansas for a new start. Arkansas was giving away land, it >wanted settlers. > >So it was the usual reasons, land being the major one. > >Just as later, many of these ARkansas families would move to Oklahoma and >Texas. You know the Frencher family was I think from Boone Co AR....(or >maybe Carroll). They were among those killed in the Mountain Meadow >Massacre - guess they were on their way to California. > >I was very surprized when I began to find the same families in Tennessee, >Alabama, Illinois and Arkansas. The movement back and forth was also a big >surprise. I remember the first time I found a couple of extra women in AR >census, to later learn they were relatives from Tennessee. Also, remember >that these men traveled all over the place. One who was born in TN might >marry in IL and turn up in AR, then as an old man move with grown children >to Texas and die there. > >Mary > > >============================== >Visit Ancestry.com for a FREE 14-Day Trial and enjoy access to the #1 >Source for Family History Online. Go to: >http://www.ancestry.com/subscribe/subscribetrial1y.asp?sourcecode=F11HB >