In 1636 Thomas Hooker, the pastor of the church at Newton (now
Cambridge), moved with his entire congregation to the banks of the
Connecticut and founded the city of Hartford. Hooker did not like the
way the Puritans acted in matters of government. He thought religious
affairs and state affairs in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were bound
too closely together. He thought also that more people ought to be
allowed to vote than were allowed that privilege in the Puritan colony.
Besides, was not the rich valley of the Connecticut a better place for
homes than the rocky and barren hills around Boston? Hooker and his
followers took their wives and children with them. They carried their
household goods along and drove their cattle before them. As they moved
overland through the roadless forests of Massachusetts, they took the
first step in that great Westward Movement which continued for more
than two hundred years and which did not come to an end until the
far-off Pacific was reached.
At the opening of the eighteenth century in almost every colony there
were great areas of vacant land, and colonial growth for many years
consisted mainly in bringing these lands under cultivation and filling
them with people. This development necessarily took a westward course,
for if the English colonists went far to the north they met the
French, and if they went far to the south they met the Spanish. In New
York the Westward Movement between 1700 and 1740 was very slow, because
the progress of the English was opposed not only by the French, but
also by powerful tribes of Iroquois Indians. But in the western part
of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina the Indians were less
troublesome and there were as yet no French at all. So it was from
Pennsylvania and from the southern colonies that the settlers first
began to move in considerable numbers toward the West.
[Illustration: Savannah in 1741.]
The first important westward movement of population began with the
settlement of the beautiful valley which lies between the Blue Ridge
and the Alleghany Mountains and which is drained by the Shenandoah
River. In 1716 Governor Spotswood of Virginia, with fifty companions,
entered this valley near the present site of Port Republic, and with
much ceremony took possession of the region in the name of King George
of England. His purpose in pushing out into the valley was to head off
the French, who at the time had already taken possession of the country
west of the Alleghanies and were pushing east as fast as they dared.
Soon after the expedition of Spotswood the settlement of the Shenandoah
began in earnest. First came a few settlers from the older parts of
Virginia. Then came large numbers of the Scotch-Irish and Germans
from Pennsylvania. These enterprising people by 1730 had crossed
the Susquehanna and were making settlements in the Cumberland
valley. In 1732 they began to move down into the Shenandoah valley
and build rude cabins and plant corn-fields. In a few years so
many people--Virginians, Scotch-Irish, and Germans--had settled
in the valley that it became necessary for them to have some form
of government. So in 1738 Virginia took the matter in hand and
organized the Shenandoah region as a county and provided it with a
regular government. Thus between 1700 and 1740 the strip of English
civilization along the Atlantic seaboard was greatly widened, and the
Frontier Line was carried westward over the Blue Ridge Mountains to the
eastern base of the Alleghanies.