The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949 Page: 208
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Texas, i2.3 per cent and 14.0 per cent.26 Plainly, the disposition
to move south by west was far weaker than the disposition to
move west. This observation leads to a second point. The tend-
ency to proceed due west reflected not veneration for parallels
of latitude as such, but preference for the climate, topography,
soils, and vegetation already known to the migrant. But the kind
of country familiar to persons from Tennessee, Kentucky, and
the semi-Southern regions above the Ohio pretty well ended with
north Arkansas and Missouri. To go farther, short of the Pacific
coast, would usually require either an acceptance of some degree
of plains environment, or an angling north or south from the
parallel of former residence. Besides, the region west of Arkansas
remained Indian country, and the region west of Missouri, or-
ganized in 1854 as Kansas Territory, proved not altogether in-
viting, in its political aspects, to the migrant bent upon placid
pursuit of his own business. This situation perhaps induced an
appreciable deflection south into Texas. Emigrants from certain
parts of Tennessee, the least northerly and the largest source of
settlers trending southward, could feel reasonably at home in the
central and upper counties of East Texas; few of them went into
the lower counties. Emigrants from states northwest or north of
Tennessee-chiefly, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana-
could not enter East Texas without encountering a changed en-
vironment, but they kept the change to a minimum by stopping
almost entirely in the northern counties. (See again Table 4 and
Figure i.)
26Another fairly good index is the ratio of ascertained arrivals of families in
East Texas to total families in the source state in 186o. For the fourteen leading
sources these ratios were, in descending order: Mississippi, 1 to 62; Alabama,
1 to 71; Arkansas, 1 to 87; Louisiana, 1 to 130; Tennessee, i to 14o; Georgia, i to
181; Florida, i to 397; Missouri, i to 453; South Carolina, 1 to 733; Kentucky,
1 to 753; North Carolina, i to 1,317; Illinois, i to 2,176; Indiana, 1 to 3,389;
Virginia, 1 to 4,113.
(To be concluded)208
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949, periodical, 1949; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101121/m1/216/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.