Truemigration

This was something I found of interest in the back of Grandmother's book, on page 232, under the related families section. One of these days I will get a section on the site with these listing's, but until then I wanted to put this on here so all of you might better understand what it was like back before trains, planes and cars and the difficulties of migrating from one state to another.

"The Migration from Symons Creek MM by the Morrises" (From Winslow - Morris Genealogy, by Fred E. Winslow, p. 55)

The Jehoshaphat Morris family came to Indiana in a wagontrain with others from Symons Creek Monthly Meeting (Pasquotank County) during the early summer of 1815, carrying their certificates from the meeting to Lick Creek MM in Washington County, Ind., and were among the founders of the Blue River Monthly Meeting of July 1, 1815. Other families who came with them were the Truebloods, Whites, Nixons, Symons, Coxes, Pritchards, Cosands, and perhaps others.

They followed a trail near the North Carolina-Virginia state line, west to Cumberland Gap, at the corner of the Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Here they found a 1500-foot-mountain to climb to get to the top of the pass. No doubt here they stopped while two or more teams of horses or oxen were hitched on the lead of each wagon to pull it up the mountain. Then the wagon was guilded down the west side with its own team, the wagon being held by brakes. When all were over, they followed the trail northwest down a valley between high mountains, to Corbin, and on to Lexington. Here a trail turned north to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana, but they followed the newer trail northwest to the Ohio River at Charlestown Landing, about fifteen miles up the river from Louisville. They, like others, crossed there rather than risk a ferry crossing nearer the falls of the Ohio. From Charlestown, they followed an old Indian trail northwest between 25 and 30 miles to Blue River, their future home. The trip took perhaps eight to ten weeks, for the most part through an unbroken wilderness, camping each night in the open.

Here, near Blue River, each family selected a place for a home, usually located near a spring of flowing water. Jehoshaphat selected a farm with two springs, one a source of Blue River, about seven miles northeast of where Salem now stands. In 1818, his older brother, Aaron, and his family of seven sons, came over and settled half a mile north of Jehoshaphat. Their claims were composed of several hundred acres of level ground on the watershed, known for generations as "The Flat Woods" and the "Morris Neighborhood." When Pritchard, Jehoshaphat's son, was married, he built and lived in a home at the spring, a fourth mile from his father's home, where he died in 1887. The farm has been in continuous possession of the descendants, and is now owned by the fifth generation from Jehoshaphat.