Our Ancestral Movements: From Virginia to Missouri

While we have been developing the story of the family’s Missouri migration from Lawrence County, Tennessee to the bootheel region of Missouri  we have seen more information falling in place on earlier migration stories:

• We know our Littrell cousin’s we’re at the founding of Boonesborough and the blazing of the Wilderness Road with Daniel Boone. They came through the Cumberland Gap as some of the first settlers in Kentucky.
• We know that our Littrell ancestor and his cousins migrated to Kentucky, and then to Tennessee, eventually settling in the same areas as other families that were their neighbors in Virginia.
• We know that our Littrell ancestor and his neighbors and cousins also came through the Cumberland Gap and were among the first settlers to the area around the, then nonexistent, community of Dunnville, Kentucky.
• We know that some of our Ezell Cousins, traveling with the Bumpass Party from Union County, South Carolina would be amongst the first settlers in the area of Giles County. An area that would eventually grow to be the town of Pulaski, the county seat of the newly expanded Giles County, Tennessee. Possibly also coming through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky then Nashville, Tennessee.
• We know that our Littrell ancestor from Dunnville, Kentucky and some of his cousins and neighbors would be amongst the first settlers in the newly formed county of Lawrence. Settling just miles from the Giles County, Tennessee settlers. Some of these settlers would be from the same families that migrated with our Littrell ancestor into Kentucky.
• We know that our Ezell ancestor, along with our Belew and Comer ancestors and some of their other Union County, South Carolina neighbors would move into the same area as our Littrell ancestor in Lawrence County, Tennessee just miles from their Ezell cousins and uncles in Giles County, Tennessee.
• We know that the same descendants of those Littrell, Comer, Belew, and Ezell families, and their neighbors would once again migrate into the same neighborhoods in another state. This time into the bootheel area of Missouri (see also) during the Great Depression leaving over a hundred years after their ancestors settled Tennessee. (see more)

These Virginia and South Carolina neighbors lived within miles of each other in their original neighborhoods and then in their new neighborhoods in Kentucky and Tennessee they once again were neighbors, and again in Missouri. In some cases they belonged to the same churches as each other in their state of origin and state of destination. They inter married with the same neighbors in both states and left families in their old neighborhoods with each migration. We can identify some moves as a group and some that were individual families moving over short periods of time.