Henry Arvin
                                                      Part 2 - Migration

                                                 In your country, like the land of promise, flowing with milk and
                                                 honey, a land of brooks of water, of  fountains and depths, that
                                                 spring out of  valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, and
                                                 all kinds of fruit, you shall eat bread without scarceness, and not
                                                 lack anything in it.                                      —John Filson, 1784 
                                                  The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke  


                                                 Ask these Pilgrims what they expect when they git to Kentucky
                                                 and the answer is land. Have you any. No, but I expect I can get it.
                                                 Have you any thing to pay for land, No. Did you ever see the country.
                                                 No but every body says its good land.           —Moses Austin, 1794
                                                                A Memorandum of M. Austin’s Journey

      “At the close of the War of 1812 the Patuxent region lay in ashen ruins. Few, if any, plantations or towns along the banks had escaped destruction or plunder at the hands of the British. Capital had flown and the infrastructure of social order was in shambles. The little urban life that had once existed had been all but snuffed out. Reconstruction was to be a slow, arduous process, and in many cases outright impossible.”¹
     For 28 year-old Henry Arvin and his 27 year-old wife Theresa, 1816 would be their last year in Charles County. They had resolved themselves to making the move to “the far West,” where the ground was fresh and where so many families from southern Maryland had already gone. Their son William was now five years old, and Thomas was three. The twins, Mary Ellen and Joseph, were less than a year old, but they still decided it was their time to go. The old Zachia Manor seemed to be played out, simply exhausted from a hundred years of abuse. Tobacco, which saps the nutrients right out of the earth, was the primary culprit. And erosion was taking its toll. The lush topsoil, which had supported agriculture for so long, was washing away, silting up the creeks and rivers. Now farmers were forced to deal with the less productive clay-mixed subsoil.
    The entire economy of Southern Maryland was in shock from the aftereffects of the War of 1812. Almost all the slaves were gone, either liberated by the British or run away. And without this source of cheap labor, the crops which were farmed in the area—tobacco in particular—could not be planted, tended or harvested at a profit. The British had ransacked Southern Maryland during the war, burning and pillaging many farms and factories, severely damaging the economy of the area. “A large number of the inhabitants, unable to bear the burdens of war, abandoned their homes to the pillagers and moved to the new settlements then opening in the far West.”²

     For much if not most of Southern Maryland, the far west meant the great state of Kentucky. Henry’s younger brother, Thomas Padgett Arvin, was already there and was about to buy 75 acres of “third rate” land. Maybe he would let them stay with him until they got a place of their own....

       Henry and his young family, under 
  difficult and dangerous conditions,
  did indeed make the trip to Kentucky.
  In 1817 they settled in Washington
  County, about seven miles southwest 
  of the Springfield.
       Twenty-seven years later, they would 
  relocate again, this time to Daviess
  County, Indiana....