hope it sounds good

[Hammerhead]

In the year 1734 in Paris France I Kristofer Thornbury was brought in to this world. I grew up and went through school but got into some trouble when I turned 18 in 1752 I shot a man and had to flee the country. I got on the first ship to the new world and landed in Maryland. In 1753 I stepped off my past and onto my future I had heard stories that a young man could make a life in this new world. I had but little money, I sold what few positions I had and bought me a 50 caliber hunting rifle a horse and mule, some food goods, material for clothing and left out on my journey. I traveled mile after mile until I found the perfect spot in the Ohio territory I went through several hard weeks of winter with just my wedge  until spring came. Once spring was here I chopped down trees and built my cabin right on a river. I started trapping and hunting and got a good supply of furs. The next summer I had my first encounter with a native he was a nice fellow he was half Miami Indian and half English even though our countries were fighting we had no hatred toward each other. He showed me where the nearest Indian village was. We made peace with the chief and I traded very often with the village trading my furs for their good. It went on like this for another year until in 1754 the war broke out here in the new world. I avoided any battles but lost the cabin that year to a fire set by English loyalists. I Lost most of my goods in the fire. Me and my half Indian friend found shelter in the Indian village down the river where we stayed for several months. The next summer we went our separate ways I decided to go north when he decided to stay with the village and fight off who ever may threaten his people. I made it to Canada where I lived out many years as a free trapper.

[voyageur1688]

 A horse and mule as well as a gun would have been a large chunk of change (probably a years wages or more) at that time so if you had little cash to start with where did you get enough to get them? I think it would be better to have it that either your father gave you money to get away with or find some way to make it that you killed the man who was trying to take it from you or it was given to you as a reward by a person he was attacking and you killed him in the process. You had to leave because he was the son/nephew of a noble or some such who wanted you executed for it.
  Voy

[mongrel]

Or you killed the man in self-defense in an out-of-the-way place (which fits with the idea you weren't immediately caught), and upon inspection of the body found that he was carrying money and other goods that, looking at it in a practical sense, there was no point in just leaving for some stranger to come along and take. Once you've taken a man's life, taking the money off his dead body isn't such a moral issue any more, IMHO.... You killed him in a fair fight and/or simply to save your own life, and would be somewhat entitled to the spoils of war, so to speak.

I like Voy's idea of the man you killed being some form of nobleman. That would justify your having to exit, stage left, in a big hurry, and also would establish your man as the sort with enough initiative and sense of his own worth to fight even his social "betters" if that's what it took to save his own life. Precisely one of the sorts of men who would do well in the New World.

[Red Badger]

I agree with both Voy and Mongrel.... Besides which purchasing passage yourself would have used up most of your money... they only cheap way to get to the shores of this land was to become indentured to someone else... for 5-7 years as has been brought up in the past....

[mongrel]

I agree with both Voy and Mongrel.... Besides which purchasing passage yourself would have used up most of your money... they only cheap way to get to the shores of this land was to become indentured to someone else... for 5-7 years as has been brought up in the past....

During which 5-7 years, if you were lucky, you established yourself within the new society you found yourself in, and learned the lay of the land. A good master would equip his "servants" (you were actually a slave for the period of your contract, differing in nothing but skin color and the duration of your service from Africans brought over for a lifetime of being someone else's property) for life after servitude; a bad one would actually treat you worse than he might a man who was a slave for life, on the grounds that he only had a few years to make use of your labor and didn't care what shape you were in when he cut you loose, while a slave for life was a long-term investment. In either case, though, you learned what life was like in this new world, and your period of indenture gave you some time and circumstances in which to decide how you wished to live the rest of your life.

An alternative would be your family already having connections here in America, so that upon arrival you had access to employment and shelter after having used most of your money just getting here.

The fact is, though, either way, long-distance travel back in the day was expensive. Whether it was taking ship for America or joining a wagon train for the Oregon country, there was a good chunk of change involved. The poor either had sponsors (or sold themselves into slavery) or for the most part they never left. Those of modest means considered a fresh start worth giving up pretty much everything they had -- or they didn't go. So one way or another your man would almost certainly have been looking at a several-year period of employment/servitude to either pay back his travel debt or get sufficiently on his feet to outfit himself for a new life.

It might help to consider that people back in the day had a far different sense of time than we do today. Even people considered steady and mature, by our present standards, probably would have amused and/or offended our 18th-century ancestors with their impatience for things to happen immediately if not sooner. So Kristofer would most likely have accepted and even welcomed a period after stepping off the ship, to regroup, and as I put it earlier to learn the lay of the land. Most indentures provided for a man being provided with clothing, tools, and/or money, upon completion of his contract, and a man who had taken work would simply have saved his money. Either way would adequately explain Kristofer arriving in the new world and then having an outfit for his travels west. The process just wouldn't have happened overnight, is all.

Not meaning to add unnecessary complication to trying to work out a persona, but a persona to every extent possible (at least IMHO) should be a real person, and every person has a history, a back story, whether he cares to tell it or not. That history defines who he is, what he is, why he does the things he does and thinks the way he thinks.

[mongrel]

BTW you've put some good thought into your persona, and what the rest of us are doing is trying to help you build on and refine it -- not arguing with you or being critical. The basic details of your story are good.

[voyageur1688]

 I agree. No personna is perfect from the start and they all need refining and we are just trying to help you along.
Voy

[Hammerhead]

i thank you guys very much for the help i am takeing the time and doin some more research for my refined persona