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Bellinda,
You have basically described the major migration patterns in the early south. Generally, second and third sons moved to new lands while the oldest inherited from the father or grandfather.
The major point is that these folks didn't move alone. They moved in groups and had lots more back and forth travel from new lands to old than one would expect. E.g., John A. Watts (m. Elizabeth Rawles) and sons took nearly a decade to move from GA to MS Territory. They can be traced on juries, land transactions, census, etc. moving back and forth taking care of business.
Thus, we have many collateral family groups, moving through the south from 1725 to 1875. And these family groups overlap. E.g., your Evans lines and related collateral families tie in with the John A. Watts line which isn't (so far) related to my Thomas/John/Josiah Watts line. Yet, your Evans may tie into my Evans lines.
You mentioned several lines that are collateral to my Watts, in addition to the Middleton family. Withers, Allen, Boykin, even Llewellyn and Jones.
Of course, what happens here is that when you get back to VA in the late 1600's, the number of your ancestors is fairly large. (e.g. eight generations back you have 256 direct ancestors). When you compare that to the number of families or collateral family groups in VA, you've covered most of the bases.
As an aside, you mention the death of Chief John Bowles. A few years ago, on a family trip, we saw a sign stating "killough Massacre Site". We decided to investigate following ever smaller signs onto ever smaller roads. Finally, on a narrow dirt road, we suddenly came upon a wide half mile section which teed through some impressive gates to an equally wide road down to a monument. All bore the distintive CCC (WPA) type construction on the 1930's.
Arriving at the site, the monument and adjacent graves were surrounded by a four foot chain link fence. A man and a boy were mowing the grass outside and inside the fence.
We read on the monument that the Killough family was massacred by Indians in 1830. While reading the names, the man shut off his mower, walked up to us and stated "Don't believe that, it's not true" He went on to explain that the family was massacred by aband of mostly Mexicans, dressed as Indians, led by the former mayor of Nacadoches, Vincent Cordova, who was ousted by the Texas Revolution.
The Mexican plan was to get the Texans to fighting the Indians in a hope of then effecting a counterrevolution. Their plan succeded in that Thomas Rusk led a company which attacked the Cherokees, and later killing Chief Bowles.
However, the counterrevolution failed because Sam Houston sent his friend (and slave) as ambassador to the Indians. That man was able to molify the attack and bring peace.
I asked the man how he knew all this and received the answer, "See, the fourth name down on that monument? That's my great-great grandfather." The man and boy were mowing the family plot.
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