The latter, new arrivals and less experienced, settled on thinner land toward the heads of creeks and water courses.
Shortly prior to 1735, Morgan Bryan, his wife Martha, and eight children, together with other families of Quakers from Pennsylvania, settled upon a large tract of land on the northwest side of the Opeckon River near Winchester.

A few years later they removed up the Virginia Valley to the Big Lick in the present Roanoke County, intent upon pushing westward to the very outskirts of civilization.

In the autumn of 1748, leaving behind his brother William, who had followed him to Roanoke County, Morgan Bryan removed with his family to the Forks of the Yadkin River.

The Morgans, with the exception of Richard, who emigrated to Virginia, remained in Pennsylvania, spreading over Philadelphia and Bucks counties; while the Hanks and Lincoln families found homes in Virginia--Mordecai Lincoln's son, John, the great-grandfather of President Lincoln, removing from Berks to the Shenandoah Valley in 1765.

On May 1, 1750, Squire Boone, his wife Sarah (Morgan), and their eleven children--a veritable caravan, traveling like the patriarchs of old--started south; and tarried for a space, according to reliable tradition, on Linville Creek in the Virginia Valley.