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

William Jackson Myers, Moving West By Janet O'Conor Camarata William Terry Myers, nicknamed “Blackie” in his later years, was born December 7, 1861 In Terre Haute, Vigo County, Indiana at the beginning of the Civil War. He was the second son of William Jackson Myers and Mary Etta “Met” (Asher) Myers.   William Jackson Myers and his parents were originally from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and had moved west, sometime in the early 1840s, settling in south central Indiana.   By 1860, William Jackson Myers was living in Cloverdale Township, Putnam County, Indiana. He married “Met” Asher on April 30, 1857 in Owen County and shortly thereafter, moved to Clay County where his eldest son was born. When the war began in Indiana on April 12, 1861, William Jackson Myers was 31 years old living in Harrison Township, Vigo County, northwest of Terre Haute. William Jackson chose not to volunteer to serve in the Civil War. By 1862, a draft was established, and quotas were set by th