5/6/01 4pm EDT Mark, You posted this query way back in the early part of March....just now finding time to respond. >Dear List Members, > This is my first posting to the list, and I was wondering if anyone > could help me. I've been trying--in vain--to trace the roots of my > ggrandfather William Wood, killed while still young in a mining accident > in north Alabama in the late 1890's. In exploring all possible paths > (literally) of research, it occured to me that the family preserves a > memory that William Wood was of Scotch-Irish descent. His family > eventually ended up in Tennessee, from where he moved to north Alabama, > probably in the 1880's. Would >anyone on the list be aware of migration routes taken by Scotch-Irish >settlers into Tennessee? Is anyone aware of Scotch-Irish settlements >along such a route in Tennessee? If I can narrow my search to a specific >area in Tennessee, I may yet find the forebears of William Wood. Many thanks, >--Mark in Mobile, AL Migration patterns across the early frontiers are much easier to pinpoint than later routes across "civilization" simply because there were not that may, relatively speaking. One had limited choices of, say, crossing the Allegheny Mountains in 1750, compared to what was available 100 years later. By the mid to late 1800s (the period you are asking about), the frontiers had just about evaporated except for the Western Plains. The land east of the Mississippi River was widely populated and transportation of all sorts, including steamboat & rail were commonplace. This means that in the mid 1800s your ancestors could have arrived in Tennessee from any direction, any state. Also, by this time, it would be probably safe to say that most towns had a mixed ethnic population....I doubt if there were any "Scotch-Irish settlements" around in Tennessee at this time. Anyone know of any? Having lived in East Tennessee most of my life, I know that much of the population there before Federal programs such as Oak Ridge (Manhattan Project - atomic bomb) and TVA had Scotch-Irish ancestry. Your best bet would probably be the Census records, and Social Security Index, and have you tried the Rootsweb WOOD mailing list? No doubt the information is out there! Larry Shahan Kodak, TN