Primogeniture only played a role if the person died intestate. Folks seemed to have a habit of writing their will just a month or two before they died. Many wills named all of the children in the distribution of the land. Land was plentiful for the first few generations. But each generation divided and re-divided the land again and again until the parcels were not profitable. It took about 52 acres to support a person. The soil in the tidewater played out after so many plantings. With each generation folks moved further and further west pushing the frontier further out until they came up against the mountains. They were met by the folks from Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey moving where they could get land to raise their families. Land policies were not as generous there as they were in Virginia. Often the entire family sold their land and moved to Kentucky, Ohio or Tennessee. IN a study I did of Albemarle Co. Virginia, the court document of Albemarle were continued in Elbert County, GA where many of the families that lived on the Buck Island Creek area moved to Georgia and continued the pattern of intermarriage there and several went on to Alabama as new land opened up. Whenever new land was safe to move to, folks usually with a kinship web based on intermarrying cousins and in one instance a whole church congregation went together and to give each other support. Margaret Margaret R. Amundson, CGsm is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by Board-certified associates after periodic proficiency evaluations.