Migration from Carolinas to Mississippi and Western Tenn in 1830-50.

[mayhem1802]

My question is what transpired that there was such a vast migration of families from the Carolinas to MS and West TN during the mid 1830's thru mid 1850's. I realize that vast tracts of Indian land were available for resettlement and that cotton was a major revenue crop which required large tracts of land, but was there other factors that would entice a small farmer to migrate west to MS/TN region during this time period.

[jno]

This is a British website so you may not get the specialist answers you are hoping for, but my guess would certainly be the elements you proposed. A lot of Americans were heading west towards apparently unlimited land in those days.

[Lil O'lady]

I think you may find some answers if you work through US genealogy websites. A cursory glance through google throws a lot of these up in response to your query. On the one hand there are the obvious well-recorded fctors that prompted immigration from Europe at this period, but you are asking a much more specific question which is to do with relocation and settlement rather than immigration as such. Moreover, it covers a time before the opening of the railroads, when cut-price prairie land was offered to settlers. So try looking at a few specific family examples from genealogy contacts and see if a pattern emerges.

[maxximus]

railroads

[Lil O'lady]

Max, the period being asked about is before the railroads.

[maxximus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_railroads_ in_North_America

[Lil O'lady]

Read your own link, Max. Until about 1850 the railroads that were built were relatively short-haul, linking mines to factories and so on.
The long distance cross-prairie routes were not used widely by immigrant passengers until after the date focussed on in the question.

[mayhem1802]

I think one of the reasons is that due to a failure to rotate crops the cotton played out the soil so people were looking for fresh land to farm.

[jno]

that's possibly so, mayhem, but I'm pretty sure people knew how to rotate crops by then if they wanted to; it was one of the discoveries of the agricultural revolution in Britain a century earlier. Perhaps it was easier just to move on - use the land and throw it away, so to speak

[maxximus]

yes lil o'lady i stand corrected. in reading the question west tennesse grabbed my attention and being only one state over it seemed logical. railroads make money hauling things so it was necessary to dupe people into moving to open spaces were they could haul things to them and return with raw materials. mississippi on the other hand is another matter for the time frame in the question. cheers!