of Our Early Pioneers Submitted By: Max Reed A common misconception is that poor workers in eastern cities, being unable to make a living in the eastern cities headed for the frontier. According to Westward Expansion, the cost of moving west was a barrier that few easterners could overcome. If a prospective pioneer wanted to begin life anew, he must move to the extreme edge of the frontier, appropriate government land, clear his fields and personally conquer the wilderness; this required technical knowledge acquired by prior experience. When such skills were lacking, his only choice was to settle in a community already undergoing development. This was expensive. He would be forced to pay between $1.25 and $10.00 and acre for land, $5 to $20 and acre to have it cleared, $112 for a split-rail fence, from $100 to $375 for tools, $150 for draft animals, $50 for a long cabin, $25 for transportation and $100 for food to support his family until his own farm came into production. Few eighty-acre farms were established that did not cost their owners at least $1,500 - a sum far beyond the reach of the average eastern workingman whose wages seldom rose above $1 a day. Even those who sought to become independent farmers by working first as hired hands in the West found the path difficult; they learned the needed skills but often found it impossible to save the money to buy a farm from their wages of $150 a year and keep. So most new areas were occupied by farmers from nearby regions who had either the frontier skills to begin life anew cheaply or the capital necessary to put land into production. Thus the west was settled in rolling waves; a farmer improving his land, selling at large profit and moving on to the frontier starting anew. With shelter assured, the frontiersmen began clearing his land. Four or five years of back-breaking labor was needed to clear the ten or fifteen acres necessary to support a family. During this period the pioneer family lived on grain purchased from nearby farmers, but two good crops would pay for the farm and all improvements. The settlement of Tennessee began between 1790 and 1795. The influx was so great that when a site was chosen for the new capital, a central site was chosen at Knoxville at the mouth of the French Broad river. It was said that during the summer of 1795 immigrants were so thick on the Old Walton Road that they crowded each other from the highway; 26,000 crossed the Cumberland in two months. By 1796, 77,000 people lived in Tennessee and the territory was ready to enter the Union as a state. Please place in the Subject Line: WEBPAGE-HISTORY 
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