Charles Barker, Jr.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=66235323

"In the early part of the nineteenth century my two grandfathers, Dr. Charles Meriwether and Mr. Charles Barker, deciding that Virginia had become too overcrowded and effete, determined to emigrate to the wide spaces of the West where a gentleman would have more room and privacy than he had with neighbors within a few miles of him. So mounting their horses they journeyed over the mountains and through the pleasant lands of Tennessee and Kentucky, going even so far as Missouri. On their way they had traversed fertile plain on the border line between Kentucky and Tennessee whose rolling lands covered with lush grass and whose many springs of water had caught their fancy. It had, moreover, the great advantage of being many days nearer Virginia, in those days of the covered wagon and slow transportation. So they bought several thousand acres of land, almost all of which still belongs to their descendants, and here they built their homes and established their families."