Lynn Bancroft: Here in Mecklenburg County, we’re kind of unique in finding ourselves along what they used to call the Great Wagon Road — a route many immigrants took over years and years of migration.
Lynn Bancroft: Here in Mecklenburg County, we’re kind of unique in finding ourselves along what they used to call the Great Wagon Road — a route many immigrants took over years and years of migration. Many people came into the United States further north, via Maryland, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and settled in those areas. Then, as they felt the need to move on, those people tended to travel along one or two routes: They either went straight across the upper Midwest through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, or they came down the Eastern Seaboard and turned toward Tennessee. Mecklenburg County is right where they traveled through and turned, so there are a lot of people who settled in this particular area of North Carolina for a generation or two and then moved on. We have some unique records that other people might not have.