This migration was not the first of its kind in the English colonies, for the movement of Massachusetts congregations into the valley of the Connecticut antedated it by several decades. Yet it furnishes an interesting illustration of the lack of permanency in American life, of the facility with which populations urged on by economic pressure of one kind or another change localities. The great movement westward over the Appalachian range which followed the War of 1812, the pilgrimages of homesteaders to the northwest and the Pacific coast, find their precedent in the exodus of these poor families from the tobacco fields of Virginia. In the last decade of the Seventeenth century the migration assumed such large proportions that the Board of Trade became alarmed and directed Francis Nicholson to enquire into its cause in order that steps might be taken to stop it. The emigrant stream that directed itself northward did not halt in eastern Maryland, for conditions there differed little from those in Virginia itself. The settlers went on to the unoccupied lands in the western part of the colony, or made their way into Delaware or Pennsylvania. "The reason why inhabitants leave this province," wrote Nicholson, while Governor of Maryland, "is, I think, the encouragement which they receive from the Carolinas, the Jerseys, and above all from Pennsylvania, which is so nigh that it is easy to remove thither. There handicraft tradesmen have encouragement when they endeavor to set up woolen manufactures."[8-11] Although this explanation does not go to the root of the matter, it was in part correct. The northern colonies held out far greater opportunities for the poor man than the slave choked fields of tidewater Maryland and Virginia. The industries of Pennsylvania and Delaware and the Jerseys demanded a certain degree of skill and yielded in return a very fair living. In other words, the poor settlers in Virginia, finding that tobacco culture was now based upon the cheap labor of African slaves, moved away to other localities where intelligence still brought an adequate reward.