They realized that the qualities they inherited from their forefathers ought to be further developed by them as their forefathers had originally developed them.

They knew that their blood and breeding, though making it probable that they would with proper effort succeed, yet entitled them to no success which they could not fairly earn in open contest with their rivals.
Such were the different classes of settlers who successively came into Kentucky, as into other western lands.

There were of course no sharp lines of cleavage between the classes.

They merged insensibly into one another, and the same individual might, at different times, stand in two or three.

As a rule the individuals composing the first two were crowded out by their successors, and, after doing the roughest of the pioneer work, moved westward with the frontier; but some families were of course continually turning into permanent abodes what were merely temporary halting places of the greater number.
Change in Subjects of Interest.
With the change in population came the corresponding change in intellectual interests and in material pursuits.