This book has evolved slowly. During the last 20 years, while doing research for the “Peopling of America” project, a population study of colonial America, I found many interesting letters and documents that I thought should be made more accessible to researchers in emigration history. Originally, I planned to edit a volume of emigration documents, including letters, ship lists, depositions, advertisements for land and servants, memos, receipts, newspaper extracts, land allotments, and so forth. But letters that were written by British emigrants who were part of the migration to America before the Revolution stood out as especially interesting and illuminating. With the encouragement of Bernard Bailyn, I published some of these letters in Perspectives in American History, New Series, 3(1987). For this book, I have added more writings, and an Introduction that ties together some of the more common themes found in the letters, and provides background information on this pre-Revolutionary migration.

In putting together this volume, I have had help from many people and institutions. The funding for the research for the “Peopling of America” project was granted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the National Endowment for the Humanities. An editing institute sponsored by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission provided a necessary conduit for information and guidance about documentary editing.