Migration is simply the movement of people from one place to another.     Only those persons who leave one country to take up residence in another   are called immigrants. More specifically, the act of leaving one’s native country is called emigration. The act of entering another country is called immigration. Clearly, each immigrant to the United States emigrated from some other country. In the period before the American colonies became independent, newcomers from Europe were called colonists or settlers.        The word "immigrant" was coined only after 1787. Many emigrants came    as sojourners, seeking to gain enough economically to return home with the means to buy property and live a better life at home than when they left.

What are some reasons for migration?

1. To improve economic conditions.

2. To acquire land at reasonable cost.

3. To live in accordance with religious preferences.

4. To live in an acceptable political and social environment.

5. To reunify families and preserve ethnic traditions.

6. To take advantage of improved transportation options.

7. To escape overpopulated conditions.

8. To relocate in areas of more favorable climate.

American Migration Routes

Colonists for the most part stayed close to the Eastern shore. North-south roads predominated. Pennsylvanians went south through the Shenandoah Valley on the Great Wagon Road. Following the Revolution, people were eager to move to the abundant lands across the Appalachians. Some went through the Cumberland Gap, over the Wilderness Road, into Kentucky and Ohio. Others went through Pennsylvania and down the Ohio River. A horde of emigrants hurried westward on the National Road during the golden decades prior to the Civil War. In their Conestoga wagons, they shared the roads with stagecoaches and freight haulers, and with drovers   of cattle and sheep. By the 1840s and 1850s, many of the descendants of earlier pioneers were pushing on, traveling on trails to the far west. Latecomers journeyed to western Kansas and Colorado, to Idaho, and California, and Oregon in the 1870s and 1880s and even the early 1900s.