Every trace of them disappears, through the simple erosion of human forgetfulness. They were in movement in a new country. The women were committed to drudgery and died young. The men had no proper tools to farm with, and weren’t good farmers anyway. They used up the land by improper practices. Wild animals broke into their fields. Their horses were half-starved, and their cattle sometimes actually did starve, before there was any grass in the spring. In the mountains of Virginia they listened thoughtfully to tales of how easy life was in Kentucky, and from Kentucky, when they had to sell out, or were sold out, to pay their debts, they moved on into Illinois. With their minds always on some promised land, like the Old Testament figures they so much resembled, they did not bother to record or even remember the place of their origin. My Grandmother Maxwell’s mother’s maiden name was Louisa England, and my grandmother accepted as gospel truth something that probably was not true—namely, that she was descended on her mother’s side from a little boy who wandered on board a sailing ship and was given the name of England because that was where he came from and all anybody knew about him.
