From  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-massachusetts-ohio-connection.html The Pioneers can be summed up by the subtitle: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West.   Out here in Washington state, we think of "The West" as beginning with Lewis and Clark voyaging, mapping and collecting, the Louisiana Purchase, gold discovered at Sutter's Mill, and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. However, the idea of manifest destiny, that the new young United States would spread west was developing even during the Revolutionary War, and picked up steam after the War of 1812.   McCullough sets his tale near the beginning of this process, and weaves in many of the pioneering families from New England who saw the "American Ideal" as free, equalitarian and based on education for all. Because the US had allowed slavery in the new Constitution, the battle for freedom and equality was part of the work of settling this new country, although...