First Connecticut settlements: As described earlier, our Sanford ancestors arrived in the Boston area, then fairly quickly moved on to Connecticut, centering in two areas: the cluster of Connecticut River settlements, particularly Hartford (rather than Wethersfield and Windsor, whose settlers came from other directions); and in the new towns along the shores of Long Island Sound, particularly Milford.
North into western Massachusetts: Within a generation, some settlers from the Hartford area were already pushing northward, farther up the Connecticut River into western Massachusetts -- Thomas Sanford's uncle Andrew Warner (see sidebar at right) among them. He was one of the founders of Hadley, Massachusetts.
Vermont: Several Sanfords moved even farther, into the wilds of Vermont, starting as early as 1769 and increasing after the Revolutionary War.
Infilling Connecticut: At the same time, and starting within a generation of the original Connecticut settlements, settlers began pushing inland from the southern shore, founding new towns all across the state.
New York State
Even as they were populating Connecticut more densely and moving north to western Massachusetts and Vermont, Sanfords (along with thousands of others) were already -- all during the 1700s and after -- moving westward into all parts of New York State. An amazing number of Sanfords spent time, or settled permanently, here. To see the number of towns they settled in, go to Google Maps. Near the top of the screen is the box -- beside the "Google Maps" logo -- where you type in the place you are looking for.
Type "Amenia NY" (or "amenia ny" -- Google doesn't care about caps).
To the right of that, click on the words, "Show search options."
A new box will appear, reading "All Results"; click the down-arrow; in the drop-down menu choose "User-Created Content."
Now (and only now) click on "Search Maps" On the left half of the screen is a list of Amenia-related items. (Be sure you take these steps in the order listed, or you will end up in a maze of other stuff you didn't want.)
About the third one down should be one that says in the third or fourth line, in blue, "Sanfords in New York State." Click that line, and a map of New York State should pop up, plastered with buttons, as well as an alphabetical list of all these towns along the left margin. Click on any of these -- buttons or names -- to see something about some of the Sanfords who lived there.
(There may be an easier way of getting to this Google map. If you know how, please tell me.)
(I was going to suggest that you start out by looking for "Bethel" -- another town where Sanfords settled -- but since that town was the actual location of the Woodstock Festival (which did not take place in Woodstock!), I discovered that there are hundreds of links for that, and you might never find the "Sanfords" link.)
Keep in mind that this list and array is incomplete. I have listed just one -- or sometimes two -- families that lived in a town, and I have omitted listings where it was unclear when or how long a person or family had stayed here. So I find it amazing that the map is covered with so many items (so many Sanfords!).
Was Andrew Warner simply adventurous, eager to move into new and unknown territory? Maybe.
But there was also a more practical reason for his move in 1658 from Hartford up the Connecticut River into the wilds of western Massachusetts. We've noted that his nephew Andrew Sanford -- Thomas's brother -- was eventually (1662) charged with witchcraft, and, though he somehow got off, his wife was executed.
It is likely that Andrew Warner, like his nephew influenced by the ideas of Ann Hutchinson, was also a free-thinker, outspoken, and considered a threat by the authorities. Unlike his nephew, he decided to leave while he still could.
Westward: At the end of the Revolutionary War, the so-called Northwest Territory -- Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan -- opened up, and thousands of settlers, including many Sanfords, began to stake out claims and establish towns all across the area
Dispersal: By the late 1800s, Sanfords -- like huge numbers of other Americans -- were moving in all sorts of directions and relocating (not exactly "settling") in all corners of the country, so we can no longer talk in terms of vast movements of population.
Why migrate?
We have seen -- in the case of Thomas Sanford's uncle Andrew Warner -- that some people moved for religious freedom. (Indeed, we could argue that the entire early settlement of Connecticul -- and Rhode Island as well -- was carried out by people who found the Puritan theocracy in Massacusetts oppressive.)
But more often than not -- particularly when it comes to the westward expansion -- there is a more mundane explanation: Most early settlers were lousy farmers. They didn't know about conservation, topsoil preservation, erosion prevention, crop rotation -- any of the things that farmers today -- thanks to Agricultural Extension programs that started in the 1930s -- take for granted.
It has been calculated that in past centuries in our country, the average farmer would wear out his farm in about five years and need to move on. Indeed, with some members of our family tree who moved westward in the 1800s, we note that they moved onward every few years, probably for exactly that reason.
