I got an email asking why did our ancestors move and leave Virginia and go to Ohio. Between 1780 and 1800, following the American Revolution, the greatest migration yet, started west. Eastern land was worn out, taxes and land prices were rising, currency was scarce and worth nothing, and new immigrants wanted land. Added to those reasons was the state of the American treasury. Congress had received the western land claimed by the colonies and was land poor. Unable to pay the Continental Army, most soldiers received land certificates, as payment for war service instead of money. Various states also reserved land to pay their own soldiers, and the land everyone sought was over the mountains or across the Ohio River. Pioneers soon followed the now well-established trails to the forks of the Ohio and trekked into Kentucky through Cumberland Gap, but these trails were not enough. Every settler tramped to the head of his valley and crossed the mountain into the next valley, each hoping to find a shorter way to the Ohio. Thousands of settlers made their way to the thriving town of Pittsburgh at the Ohio forks and were willing to brave the treacherous Ohio River rapids and the stalking Indians along its banks. Other pioneers were far to the South where a hundred miles of Virginia mountains separated eastern Virginia and the Ohio River. South of the Pittsburgh trails, those mountains had only three major trails by 1790 including: the trail into the Greenbrier valley and down the Kanawha River; and the Wilderness Road trail through Cumberland Gap which had opened in the mid 1770's. The two trails in central Virginia developed slowly because of the harsh terrain and continuing Indian problems. Although a fort had been erected at the mouth of the Kanawha after the Battle of Point Pleasant, settlement was delayed until 1790 and even then pioneers were forced to abandon their claims and return east for safety. The same story was true about the mouth of the Little Kanawha. The major southern flow of settlers between 1785 and 1795 remained through Cumberland Gap. North Carolina granted vast acres in Tennessee to her Revolutionary soldiers and by 1790 those settlers were also moving through Cumberland Gap and down the French Broad, where Knoxville was founded in 1792. In 1788 North Carolina constructed a trail to connect Knoxville to the Cumberland River settlements around Nashville. Nashboro, as it was then called, had connections north to the falls of the Ohio at Louisville and southwest to the Mississippi. Most of Tennessee's settlements were along the western sections of both the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers away from the Indian controlled southeast. These rivers flowed along the northern and southern borders of Tennessee only to empty into the Ohio River about ten miles apart. The Cumberland's mouth has since been changed and forced into the Tennessee River. After the American Revolution the pioneer was still looking for his ideal home. He wanted free or low cost land which could be acquired in western Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. He wanted credit for his Revolutionary service which might come from claiming his bounty or from selling to a speculator and using his the money to buy land closer to home. He also wanted lower taxes, a say in his government and a market on the west side of the mountains for his crops. Every land promoter claimed these expectations could be filled in the western lands. Still the settlers were not satisfied, they wanted the entire west open to settlement and demanded as much from the government. The vast Northwest Territory had been ceded to the federal government in 1785. The land across the Ohio River beckoned because many Revolutionary claims lay north of the territory was to be surveyed and parcels offered for sale and as well as to provide military grants, but the pioneers wanted access to the new territory long before the surveys were completed. Traders and hunters had used the Ohio River as a highway for over fifty years before the settlers reached its banks. Despite Indians, many a raft loaded with families and household goods reached central Kentucky between 1775 and 1785 from western Pennsylvania. Pioneers stayed on the Virginia side of the river for only one reason. Indians. Several military expeditions crossed into Ohio, burning crops and villages, to punish the Indians for frontier raids. Both the military roads they created and the stories the returning soldiers told, guaranteed an interest in the "Ohio Country." Several military campaigns were needed to subdue the tribes. Finally in 1795, the Treaty of Greenville ended Indian occupation of most of the Ohio Territory. The new flood of settlers to "Ohio Country" made earlier migrations seem inconsequential. Ohio, as part of the Northwest Territory, was supposed to be surveyed before any land was sold. The first public lands sales for Ohio Territory were made in New York City in 1787 when 108,431 acres were sold. The second public sales were disappointing. The price per acre was only two dollars, but the settler was required to buy in 640 acre sections. In 1796, the Federal Government held two sales. At Pittsburgh, 43,446 acres of Ohio land were sold, while 5,120 acres were sold at Philadelphia. First Federal Land Offices: Marietta 1800 - 1840 Steubenville 1800 - 1840 Cincinnati 1801 - 1840 Chillicothe 1801 - 1876 Zanesville 1804 - 1840 The Virginia Military District covered parts of twenty counties between the Scioto and Little Miami Rivers. Reserved to pay Virginia Revolutionary claims, the District is the only section of Ohio surveyed in the "Metes and Bounds" system. It has been noted that 1,035,408 acres of the Virginia Military District, 25%, was patented by just twenty-five people.