Tennessee Marriages
Early to 1800

By Norman E. Wright.
1969

Page XVII
Tennessee Settlement Patterns

The first white settlers in Tennessee were primarily from the back country of Virginia and North Carolina, but some were also from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. Later, migration from South Carolina and Georgia took place, bringing settlers from all along the tidewater country into Tennessee.

The earliest settlers from Virginia and North Carolina were of English stock and had migrated from the Tidewater region to the Piedmont, then into the higher mountain valleys along the Holston, Clinch, and Watauga rivers of East Tennessee. A few French Protestants (Haguenots) were also among that number; some directly from Virginia, and others from North and South Carolina.

Settlers from Pennsylvania included English/Welsh Quakers from the southeast counties of Chester, Philadelphia, Montgomery, and bucks; German and Swiss/German Palatines from Berks, Lancaster, York, and Adams counties; and numerous Scotch-Irish (Ulster Scots) from the southwestern counties. English and German settlers from Maryland were also in the early vanguard. This writer had an early Tennessee ancestor who came from Middlesex County, New Jersey with family and friends. They spent some time in Rockbridge County, Virginia, then moved into North Carolina. Finally they moved into east Tennessee, purchasing 200 acres of land in 1781, which is still in the family's possession in Greene County, Tennessee.

Virginia was granting western lands, which were part of present Tennessee, as early as 1749, and North Carolina speculators were also active in the region before the French and Indian War (1763). Thomas Walker, from Virginia, organized the Loyal Land Company, which included much of present day Tennessee, after expeditions into Tennessee country in 1748 and 1750, and he was encouraging settlement in the region before 1760.

The French and Indian War prevented wide settlement in the region before 1763, and a "Proclamation Line" was drawn at the summit of the Appalachian Plateau, beyond which white settlers were not to progress, so it was after the Revolution that settlers really began to pour into Tennessee. Of course everyone knows the legends of Daniel Boone, born in 1734 to a Quaker family in Pennsylvania which settled in the Yadkin River Valley of North Carolina, who explored Tennessee and Kentucky country in the early 1760's. boone assisted Judge Richard Henderson of North Carolina n establishing settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee as early as 1770; and James Harrod, Michael Stoner, James Smith, and Uriah Stone were settling smaller groups in the Cumberland Valley as early as 1769.
Norman E. Wright. 1969