Settling the
Western Frontier

The Native Lands
Indian Troubles
The Great Wagon Road
Migration Paths into Old Tryon
Nixon's History of Lincoln County
The German Catechisms
The Log House
   |     home
Settling the Western Frontier
Line
The Great Wagon Road
  The Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to Georgia was the path many German as well as other settlers took in their migration from Pennsylvania to the North Carolina frontier.  While it was called a wagon road, most people walked the path with small wagons carrying their few possessions.  Few came alone.  Usually they came in groups to the new land.  For example a group of families at the Muddy Creek Lutheran Church in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania came south and settled together in Lincoln County.  They were the Eakers, the Whisnants and the Mauneys.  The Peelers joined them later.  Because the Moores and Greens, though not Germans, settled among them, some speculate they too were from the same area of Pennsylvania.                                                                                               
      This north-south route was the backbone of commerce, culture and communication for residents of western North Carolina until well into the nineteenth century.  Indeed the residents west of the Catawba had much closer economic and social ties to Virginia and Pennsylvania than to the eastern portions of North Carolina.