I've been doing a lot of genealogical research and found that most branches of my family arrived in the US from Europe in the late 1700s and then spent one generation on the east coast (NJ, VA, NC typically) then traveled in-land to TN, KY, MO between 1800-1820. I want to learn more about that process. Most of them seem to have been farmers who were too poor to have slaves/employees. Would they have been granted land in advance and known where they were going? If so, would they have had that information in Europe before they even came over? How big were the convoys, typically?
I'm particularly interested in finding some books on the subject if there are any. Thanks!
Pre Erie Canal meant that they most likely went through the Cumberland Gap and became subsistence farmers and shopkeepers in the Kentucky/Tennessee area before maybe moving farther south or west, but not for another generation. The threat of Indian attacks was HUGE for a good portion of this time as the government did basically nothing to protect settlers from the Indians, so the Kentucky Militia essentially became a big ass private army for the governor and therefore frontier society was very martial. The people who were moving there were most likely people with roots already in the US or were Scotch-Irish immigrants to the Carolinas.
After the Tecumseh Confederacy was demolished during the War of 1812 with Tecumseh's death, the old NW, which included Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, suddenly became wide open for land settlement as the Indians moved west or north, or in most cases, died, as the winter of 1813 and 1814, with supply from Canada cut off, was devastating. TONS of people flocked to grab claims of land in those three states and made farms, and many were English and Scottish immigrants. The repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain made this a very proftable venture later on, and the population of those states exploded really quickly. Ohio had already undergone this process after the Erie Canal was finished as it allowed people to quickly ship goods to NYC.
Later waves of German and Scandanavian immigrants would settle the further north regions of Michigan and Minnesota.
But the experience generally was one where people just simply took a boat over the Atlantic, made their way to some claim of land in the west that was available for dirt cheap, and then set up a farm or moved to one of the rapidly developing towns.
Every time an Indian tribe would bite the dust or agree to move west or north or settle down, land became available and immigrants were the first usually to claim it.