As they pressed in round about him he would sell his claim, gather his cattle and his scanty store of tools and household goods, and again wander forth to seek uncleared land.

The Lincolns, the forbears of the great President, were a typical family of this class.
Most of the frontiersmen of these two types moved fitfully westward with the frontier itself, or near it, but in each place where they halted, or where the advance of the frontier was for the moment stayed, some of their people remained to grow up and mix with the rest of the settlers.
The Permanent Settlers.
The third class consisted of the men who were thrifty, as well as adventurous, the men who were even more industrious than restless.

These were they who entered in to hold the land, and who handed it on as an inheritance to their children and their children's children.

Often, of course, these settlers of a higher grade found that for some reason they did not prosper, or heard of better chances still farther in the wilderness, and so moved onwards, like their less thrifty and more uneasy brethren, the men who half-cleared their lands and half-built their cabins.

But, as a rule, these better-class settlers were not mere life-long pioneers.