I live on a rock farm myself LOL. The most prime farmland East of Nashville the snake oil flood control salesman FDR flooded. In doing so to save Chattanooga he flooded a great portion of useable farmland north of it. The first was in 1930’s at Norris Lake and the last was in the late 1970’s I think at Tellico Lake.
I used to hunt for old bottles and doing so I used to look for old house sites. You’d see the rock piles along sides of old fields where they cleared the land. But many of the persons coming into this area had dealt with as much in places like Ireland, Germany, Britan, Scottland, and Spain, etc.
My dad’s dad’s family didn’t get down here till the 1920’s via New York, Michigan, then Kansas & Oklahoma. They sarted out in Barnstable Co Mass and stayed north for 300 years.
Generally there was two ways into Tennessee early on. Either cross the gaps from North Carolina in places like the Little Tennessee River or go on up and come down through Viginia around Maryland. Likely most persons followed rivers for the necessities of life.
Yeah, it would be interesting to see how my ancestor arrived in Middle TN, because I’m not quite sure. The folks that settled here about 20 or so years before he arrived came on flatboats on the Cumberland. They’d often repeat the story that they arrived during that brutal winter when the river froze hard and they could walk across it. The Cumberland hasn’t froze hard in some time.