Among those who pushed adventurously forward in that direction, was a certain Thomas Fielding, who migrated from Virginia in the autumn of 1811; his family consisting of a wife, two sons and one daughter. Passing by the settlements in St. Clair county, he pressed on across the prairies, with a world of fertile acres spread before him, until he reached the banks of Shoal Creek, in the county of Bond. A few miles south-west of the point, where the town of Greenville has since been built, he found a tract of land which combined all the advantages of which he was in search. A prairie, several miles in width, was bounded by high and valuable timber along the creek, and stretched away toward the north and west, in all the rich, unbroken beauty of primeval nature. Elevated, but well watered, undulating, though not rugged; that portion of which, with the freedom of the wilderness, he took immediate possession, was easily converted into a beautiful and productive farm. Just within the skirt of the timber, protected by a grove of stately oaks, he erected a spacious, though primitive, mansion; and here, in the grand solitude of wood and plain, he prepared, with his family, to spend the remainder of his life. It was chiefly with a view to the welfare of that family that he had left the older and more thickly-peopled state of Virginia, to seek a home in the Far West. He was growing old; his sons were approaching manhood: and, after assisting their father in providing for his age, it was natural that they should be solicitous about their own future. Each, accordingly, with the concurrence of the father, selected for himself a sufficient domain; and such was the energy with which they prosecuted their “improvements,” that, by the spring of 1813, there were three separate farms, immediately contiguous, under active cultivation. Both the sons were married in the course of the following summer—for other emigrants had followed Fielding’s “trail,” until, at this time, there were, perhaps, twenty families within a circle of ten miles diameter. Jane, the daughter, still remained with her parents; but the frequent visits of a certain John Edgar, who lived some eight miles down the river, seemed to give color to the rumor, now rife in the settlement, that she was soon to exchange her maiden name, for that of the young Ranger Captain.