THE GREAT WAGON TRAIL

Wagon Trail at Chimney Rock, North Carolina

The Great Wagon Road was an old Indian trail. It was widely used by immigrants who first landed in the port city of Philadelphia. They traveled westward to the market towns of Lancaster and York and then south into the backcountry of Maryland (Hagerstown), Virginia, and North Carolina.

The trail stretched across southeastern Pennsylvania, more than four hundred miles to the Shenandoah Valley of the Appalachian Mountains and beyond. Nothing deterred these immigrants from crossing the vast wilderness. Imagine, if you will, that they were traveling across ancient Indian paths formerly used by the Indians in following the buffalo.

The First Roads

Buffalo trails, an important trail to the Indians, set the path from East to West across America. Some historians insist that America stole the lands belonging to the Indians. Yet the records reveal transactions wherein the Cherokee sold thousands of acres to America. The question “why?” comes to mind. Since the Indians followed the buffalo, setting up camp wherever they were — it could have been that those tracts of land were not useful to the buffalo.

That is why the genealogist must search the trail of the Buffalo.

Although several early settlements went to Maryland from Pennsylvania, the major portion of the trail includes the Alleghany and Blue Ridge Mountains, and records in North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Far West was in Augusta County, Virginia.

This is as far as your ancestors traveled. Some interesting details of the early settlers were written in the Minutes of Augusta County, Virginia.

Genealogy Tips: Minute Books are treasure troves because they list the daily business of the residents of the county. In other words, if you do not find an old will or estate in the probate court, it could be entered of record (in the Minute Books) as having been filed. And the names of some of the earliest settlers will prove their existence.

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