I am more of spectator and cheerleader for my sister than a researcher, but it is all quite fascinating. All of my ancestors on both sides of my family had immigrated to the Americas by 1730, and all very quickly headed toward the Appalachians. My branch of the family then spread out up and down the Appalachians and the Appalachian Plateau, but others soon went on to Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma. The amount of relocating, pulling up of stakes and moving on that occurred within each generation up until at least the Revolutionary War is truly astonishing.

As I have read what others have shared and what my sister has learned, it is like reading of the history of the process of the founding of this country, its early settlement, and the economic, political and religious forces that drove the engine in microcosm, including the effects of Native Americans, particularly the Cherokee and other southeast tribes, as the first generation of my Williams anscestors to be born here moved quickly into the southern Appalachians and both fought with and married Native Americans.