...Federalist reformer Benjamin Rush even denied that frontier settlers were farmers. "The first settler in the woods is generally a man who has outlived his credit ... in the cultivated parts of the state." Emulating the Indians, "he revolts against the operation...

...Rush expressed this concept of successive waves of settler-builders in 1786. The "first settler" — "generally a man who has outlived his credit or fortune in the cultivated parts of the State" — built a log cabin. He was succeeded by the second settler, who enlarged the cabin with a...

...Benjamin Rush wrote a typical account of this transition in 1786. In Rush's narrative, the first settler is "generally a man who has out-lived his credit or fortune in the cultivated parts" and has escaped to a new region: His time for migrating is in the month of April. His first object...