This map project on the Roads and Trails of Colonial America started by questioning what routes the immigrant ancestors used during their southern and western migrations. The assumption was that our earliest immigrant ancestors were limited to the waterways which accessed the coast and an occasional Indian path. And for the most part, that was true, However, further research proves that the Native population used trails and routes extensively to travel and trade throughout the hinterland and even to the coast. The challenge was for our early ancestors to identify the many routes and survive the journey.
2. Immigration from Great Britain
a. Settlement of Jamestown, Virginia
b. Settlement of the Virginia Colony
c. Creation of the Carolina Colony
d. Protestant Flight from Ulster to the American South
e. Early Lewis Immigrants to America
3. Immigration from the lands which would become Germany
a. Brief History of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
c. German Protestants from the Lower Palatinate and Switzerland
1. Internal Migration: Ethnic German Swiss to Alsace and the Palatinate of the Rhine
2. External Migration: Open Warfare and Starvation as the One-Two Punch
3. Chain Migration: The Pennsylvania Dutch Experience
4. Coerced Migration: The New York Palatinate Experience
5. Commercial Migration: The Redemptioners
4. Dutch Migration to America
a. Brief History of the Dutch Republic and the Eighty Years War
b. French Huguenots in the Spanish Netherlands (1556 to 1656)
c. Settlement of New Amsterdam
d. The Dutch Reformed Church of Minisink
5. Colonial American Westward Migration
a. The Old Mine Road (1660 to 1730)
b. The Great Wagon Road (1731 to 1800)
c. Into the Interior: from the Delaware to Ohio
1. The Conestoga Road (c. 1711)
2. The Bethlehem Pike (1740)
3. Owens Road (1787)
4. Forbes Road (1758)
d. Over the Alleghenies to Ohio
1. The Pioneer Road (1746)
2. McCullough's Path (1756)
3. Braddock's Road (1755)
4. The National Road (1806)
5. Zane's Trace (1796)
e. Crossing the Appalachians
2. The Valley Road (1765)
3. Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road (1775)
5. Avery's Trace to Nashville (1788)
6. Jackson's Military Road (1820)
f. Gone to Georgia
1. Free Land (1780 to 1785)
2. The Nathan Smith Settlement, Franklin Co GA (1795)
3. Georgia Land Lotteries (1800 to 1833)
4. The Unicoi Trail to Georgia (c. 1802)
g. White Flight from the Carolinas: "Mississippi/ Alabama Fever" (1798 to 1819)
h. Georgia to the Mississippi Territory: The Three-Chopped Way (c. 1807)
6. Irish Famine Migration
b. Causes of the Famine (1845 to 1849)
Beginning in 1845, Ireland suffered one of the greatest famines in modern times. Between 1845 and late 1850, the population of Ireland was reduced by 50%; as 1 out of 4 persons died from starvation or associated diseases and 1 out of 4 persons migrated, mostly to America.
c. Coffin Ships
7. German Coerced Migration (c. 1848)