Historical Perspectives

Family history does not exist in isolation. Discover the events, traditions, and historical settings that influenced the lives of our ancestors and the generations that followed.

From Long Hunters to Homesteads: The Making of Scott County, Virginia

Few counties in southwestern Virginia carry a settlement history as tangled with the story of the frontier itself as Scott...

The Wilderness Road: The Path That Opened America’s Southern Frontier

Few routes in American history influenced the settlement of the southern frontier more than the Wilderness Road. It was never...

When Neighbors Chose Sides: Loyalism in Revolutionary South Carolina

The American Revolution is often described as a colonial uprising against British rule, but in South Carolina’s backcountry, it unfolded...

Virginia Families and the Alabama Frontier: Migration in the Early 1800s

In the decades following American independence, a quiet but massive redistribution of population was underway across the eastern United States...

Westward Expansion Frontier Life: The World of John C Yandle and Missouri Settlers

When John C. Yandle left Tennessee for Missouri, he was moving with the grain of his era rather than against...

The Civil War in the Missouri Ozarks: The World James McKnight Bates Experienced

When the Civil War began in 1861, James McKnight Bates was twenty-two years old, recently married to Sarah Jane Yandle...