Virginia - Colonial America circa 1776
Music: "Yankee Doodle"

      "There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men an uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world."

- Edmund Burke, March 22, 1775

Samantha - Deep South circa 1855
Music: "Dixie"

     It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after the rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in all the world…the plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to the warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons.

-Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

Lily - California circa 1850
Music: "California Here I Come"

Bear me from that distant strand,
Over ocean, over land,
To California's golden shore -
Fancy stop and rove no more.
- Philip Freneau 1770

Rose - Texas circa 1870
Music: "Yellow Rose of Texas"

'Twas good to live when all the range
Without no fence or fuss,
Belonged, in partnership with God,
To the government and us.

With skyline bounds from east to west,
With room to go and come,
I liked my fellow man the best,
When he was scattered some.

When my old soul hunts range and rest
Beyond the last divide,
Just plant me on some strip of west
That's sunny, lone and wide.

Let cattle rub my headstone 'round,
And coyotes wail their kin
Let horses come and paw the mound
But don't you fence me in.

-Badger Clark Jr. 

Rachel - Ohio Valley (Old Northwest Territory) circa 1790
Music: "Down in the Valley"

Come all you young men, who have a mind to range,
Into the western country, your station for to change;
For seeking some new pleasure we'll altogether go,
Come along lively lads, and we'll altogether go,
And we'll settle on the banks of the pleasant Ohio…
Girls, if you'll card, knit, and spin, we'll plough, reap, and sow,
And we'll fold you in our arms while the stormy wind doth blow.

- Excerpts from The Forget-Me-Not Songster - A collection of old ballads

Susanna - Mississippi Valley circa 1820
Music: "Oh What a Beautiful Morning"

"A bird's eye view of the whole region east of the Mississippi�offered one vast expanse of woods relieved by a comparatively narrow fringe of cultivation along the sea. Dotted by the glittering surface of lakes and intersected by the waving lines of rivers."

- James Fenimore Cooper