Ancestors do not live in isolation–after all, that’s how they come to have descendants.
But it never ceases to amaze me how often extended family members migrate to where others from their family have settled. Siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, etc. In my own research it is rare for me to have an immigrant settle where absolutely no one from their family had already settled or eventually followed. The followers, particularly if they were the immigrants nieces or nephews may have arrived fifty years later, but the often eventually made their way across the pond.
It was not just immigrants to a new country who tended to follow this pattern. Migrants across the United States often did the same thing.
And if the other settlers were not biologically related, they were often related by marriage or had been “near neighbors” when they lived “back home.”
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