Searching for your ancestors along this route will reveal many stories, especially once you locate where the families settled. The next step is to search county records!
Finding the ancestors during the 18th century involves tracking their movements across a raw countryside. It was a trail of wonders and great beauty, yet it also drew dangerous encounters with Indian tribes—one wonders where the starting place was. Well, in Pennsylvania, many emigrants landed on the American shore. The historian and genealogist must also rationalize that many independent groups landed in Wilmington, North Carolina, Port Royal, and Charleston, South Carolina. Indeed, the search is fascinating, full of adventure and danger.
In 1752, Bishop Spangenberg wrote from Edenton, North Carolina, that he had found everything in confusion, the counties in conflict with each other, and the authority of the legislature greatly weakened. This was owing largely to the fact that the older counties had formerly been allowed five representatives in the general assembly, but as the new counties were formed, they were allowed only two.
In that same letter, Bishop Spangenberg divided the inhabitants of the eastern counties into two classes: natives, who could endure the climate but were indolent and sluggish, and those from England, Scotland, Ireland, and the northern colonies of America, the latter being too poor to buy land there. Some were refugees from justice, those who had fled from debt or had left wives and children elsewhere. Horse thieves infested parts of the section.
"After having traversed the length and breadth of North Carolina, we have ascertained that towards the western mountains, there were plenty of people who had come from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and even from England."
The Bishop also noted that four hundred families, with horses, wagons, and cattle, had migrated to North Carolina, and among them were good farmers and very worthy people.* These settlers were believed to have been from New Jersey.
In 1751, Governor Johnston wrote to the London Board of Trade that inhabitants were flocking into North Carolina, mostly from Pennsylvania and some directly from Europe. Jeffrey's map in the Congressional Library shows the "Great Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia, a distance of 435 miles. It ran from Philadelphia to Winchester, Virginia, up the Shenandoah Valley, crossing Fluvanna River at Looney's Ferry, thence to the Staunton River, and down the river, through the Blue Ridge, thence southward, near the Moravian settlements, to Yadkin River, just above the mouth of Linville Creek, and about ten miles above the mouth of Reedy Creek."
Sources: *North Carolina Colonial Records, Vol. IV, pp. 1311-1314; History of Watauga County, North Carolina with Sketches of Prominent Families by John Preston Arthur (1915).