My Thoughts: Joist Hite, William Russell and others managed to get grants for large tracts of land in Orange County, Va. (The part of Orange in the Shenandoah Valley) These grants were surveyed into smaller tracts and sold to newly arriving immigrants and established plantation owners who had some money. Richard Harrold bought 1200 acres from Wm. Russell about 1740 and deeded it to his sons hoping to keep them near him, but as soon as the deeds were delivered to the boys in 1758, they sold the land and headed west..James Harrold, thought to be one of Richards sons, came to Washington County, Va. in 1769 and settled on unsurveyed land..he received a deed for it about 1780. He was able to claim the land because he had built a cabin and planted corn and was living on it..He bought other land warrants and acquired other land..During the period between 1775 and 1800 many new immigrants arrived on the east coast and many of the old settlers sold their land and moved west only to find the Indians were blocking movement into Ky and beyond..Every hill and hollow in southwest Virginia was occupied by these people while they waited to move on.. James Harrold, who probably had his site set on Ky. died in 1796 in Washington county, Va., his son, Robert Harrold (Herrell), was horsemaster during the building of the road through Cumberland Gap and later was granted land in Kentucky..One half of his fathers land was sold for taxes because he never came back to claim it.. One must remember that each small community formed a local economy, there were grain mills where corn and wheat could be sold and turned into meal and flour, sawmills where logs were made into lumber, blacksmith shops which used locally produced "pig iron", wagon and stagecoach factories, shoemakers, spinners and weavers..all of them turning raw materials into finished products for local people.. Tobacco and salt produced in southwest Va. was floated by flatboat down the rivers to New Orleans to be sold..There were ways to make money in those days!! G. Lee Hearl Abingdon, Va...