Crossing the Appalachians
[Image source: http://www.cyberbee.com/wwho/]
The United States was a rapidly
growing nation in the early-1800s.
[Image source: http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/reference/maps/main.asp]
The population of the United
States doubled every twenty years
between 1780 and 1830.
[Image source: America - Pathways to the Present, page 202.]
Immigration
accounted for
only 10% of
the growth.
[Image source: http://www.monroe.k12.fl.us/kls/Immigration/German/germanimmigration.htm]
[Image source: Jon Parkin]
This population growth occurred in
spite of a high infant mortality rate.
[Image source:
http://www.homestead.c
om/littlehouseontheprai
rie1/PHOTOS.html]
The median age of Americans in
1820 was about 17 years old.
Laura Ingalls
Wilder at age
seventeen.
[Image source: http://www.vvv.com/~jenslegg/]
[Image source: Microsoft Encarts]
Many people
moved west into
trans-Appalachia in
search of a prosperous future.
Many settlers from western
Pennsylvania and Virginia
traveled down the Ohio River.
[Image source: America - Pathways to the Present, page 226.]
These settlers worked hard to
clear the land in order to plant
crops and build homes.
[Image source: America - Pathways
to the Present, page 203.]
Frontiersman
Daniel Boone
explored the
present-day
state of
Kentucky
during the
late-1760s and
early-1770s.
[Image source:
http://www.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/library/95
nov/boone.html1]
As an employee of the Transylvania
Company, Boone blazed a trail
through the Cumberland Gap.
[Image source: http://www.ancestry.com/ancestry/FreeImages.asp?ImageID=121]
This road, which began in eastern
Tennessee and ran to Louisville,
Kentucky, became known as the
Wilderness road.
[Image source: http://www.cyberbee.com/wwho/]
[Image source: Harper’s Weekly]
One of the more
famous folkheroes of this
westward
migration was
John Chapman,
better known
today as Johnny
Appleseed.
Pinckney Treaty 1. Southern border
[Image source:
http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/refer
ence/maps/main.asp]
of U. S. set at 31
degrees North.
2. U. S. allowed use
of the Mississippi
through Spanish
Territory.
3. Spain and U.S.
agreed to curtail
Native Americans
from attacking the
other’s territory.
The Seminole
Indians of
Florida raided
settlements in
south Georgia
and allowed
escaped slaves
sanctuary.
[Image source: Eyes of the Nation, page 100.]
General Andrew
Jackson used
the Indian
depredations as
a pretext for
invading Spanish
Florida with
2,000 men.
[Image source: Microsoft Encarta]
The Spanish
ceded Florida to
the United States in
the Adams-Onis Treaty.
[Image source: http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/reference/maps/main.asp]
The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819
also fixed the boundary between
the Louisiana Purchase and
Spanish territory in the West.
The treaty was
negotiated by
John Quincy
Adams, the son
of John Adams,
who was the
Secretary of
State under
President
James Monroe.
[Image source:
http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/2.html]
[Images source: "North American Origins of Middlewestern Frontier Populations" by John C. Hudson in
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, volume 78, number 3 (September 1988), page 400.]
Many of the pioneers who made their
way west into the trans-Appalachian
region did so in Conestoga wagons.
[Image source: http://www.cyberbee.com/wwho/]
[Image source: http://www.dvhi.net/wagonworks/history.html]
[Source: America - Pathways
to the Present, page 206.]
During the
early1800s, the
population
center of
the United
States
shifted
west.
Before long,
over half of
the U. S.
population
lived in
transAppalachia.
[Source: America - Pathways
to the Present, page 206.]
Among the
people who
migrated to
the western
frontier were
large numbers
of African
Americans.
[Image source:
http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/reference/maps/main.asp]
Native Americans struggled to
preserve their way of life as they
were uprooted and forced to move
west of the Mississippi River.
[Image source: http://rosecity.net/tears/]
[Image source: Microsoft Encarta]
Even though
the Cherokees
made an effort
to blend
European ways
with their
traditional
culture, they,
too, were forced
to move.
Because so many perished along the
way, the Cherokee trek westward is
known today as the Trail of Tears.
[Image source: http://rosecity.net/tears/trail/map.html]
[Image source: America - Pathways to the Present, page
[Image source: http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/reference/maps/main.asp]