Since
my last post, we have finished our move to the new condo and the old house is
up for sale. We are still settling in, trying to find a place for all the items
we brought with us. We have sold, given away or discarded loads of stuff, some
quite valuable, we thought, but for which there was limited or no interest to
others to purchase it. So we have downsized in space and things.
This
post deals with another ancestral line who also moved from Maryland in the
early 19th century. Thomas and Ellen (Tunstall) Mayfield came to the
US around 1811 we think, settling soon after in Baltimore. No passenger or
other records have yet been found to confirm that date. They had two children
born in London in 1804 and 1805. The rest of their seven children were all born
in Baltimore. Ellen died there around 1833. Thomas was a medical doctor and
presumably practiced in Baltimore. A family story states he fought for the US
side in the War of 1812.
According
to a biography of one of his sons, also a physician, Thomas and several of his
children moved to Jefferson County, Indiana in 1834, where he farmed and
practiced medicine until his death there in 1859.
It
is very likely that Thomas Mayfield travelled to Indiana via the National Road,
previously called the Cumberland Road. Work on it was started in 1811 beginning
in Cumberland, Maryland. It was open to Wheeling, West Virginia by 1818 and to
Indianapolis by 1829. It would later be extended to St. Louis, Missouri on the
Mississippi River. Private toll roads already existed between Baltimore and
Cumberland, Maryland where the new road to the west began.
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Map showing the major
towns and cities along the Cumberland or National Road downloaded August 18,
2015 from http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ah-nationalroad.html
A
previous trail had been built in 1755, primarily for the military, by Virginia
troops and British regulars. It was named after their commander, General Edward
Braddock of the Coldstream Guards – Braddock
Road. George Washington accompanied the Braddock expedition to the Ohio
region against the French who occupied the lands. The road was the first major
route to cross the Appalachian Mountains. The Cumberland Road generally
paralleled the route set out by Braddock’s men but much improved for wagon
traffic.
 |
Map of Braddock’s
Military Road, downloaded August 18, 2015 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braddock_Road_(Braddock_expedition)#/media/File:Cumberland_md_braddock_road.jpg
With
the completion and improvements of the National Road, the northern interior was
open to settlers the length of the Ohio River right into Indiana. Members of my
Mayfield family were in all likelihood part of those groups that moved westward in
search of new land and opportunity in that rapidly-developing state.
The
move to Indiana was a major event in my family’s history. It was a way station
for many branches of the family for at least a couple of generations. From there, many families eventually moved further west to
Kansas and Oklahoma as those territories opened up. My 2nd
great-grandmother, Hannah Tunstall (Mayfield) Miller-Watson was one of those
later migrants, moving there with her second husband. She had lived in
Cincinnati, Ohio with my 2nd great-grandfather, John Conrad Miller,
and where three of her six children were born. The background picture on this
blog is of Hannah’s family.
 |
Map showing the
major events and residence locations of members of the Mayfield family along
with the route taken during moves to new locations
I’ll
have more to say about those further migrations in a later Moving post here.
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