[DavemeisterP]

Maybe it's all just as simple as they were sick and tired of eating at the in-laws, Grog couldn't keep his hands off his little sister, and grandpa discovered how to make shine and thought it was a gift from the great earth mother. If you lived around a bunch of artsy-fartsy painters and thought that it was a gay way to make a living, your job could take you anywhere you wanted to go but there, and you were starting to stress about the monotony of the daily grinding bowl, why not look to new adventure elsewhere? Why does it have to be a scientific reason? Don't we sometimes just get tired of living somewhere and uproot the whole family to go west? Seems to be a typical trait of ours that got most of our grandparents here, why should it be any different for them?

[aculeus]

Exactly. Here's another: folks in AA relate how frequently they uprooted their families in an attempt to apply the "geographic cure" to their addiction. Could explain why Amerindians were devastated by booze once the Euros caught up with them and started pouring the firewater.