The Vampire Diaries -- So Mystic Falls Was Founded In 1860?

I found out that little fact while playing Facebook's The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In game and it came as a shock to me. I figured that Damon and Stefan had been born in Mystic Falls. We know from The Originals flashbacks that Mystic Falls was founded, originally, in 1012. So what happened to to original founders of the town? Did the Originals kill off everyone in town before finally heading back to Europe or did the town denizens abandon the town to the Originals to save their lives?

The impression I got from both 1864 and the present is the Lockwoods are considered the first family of the town. It seems like the Lockwoods are the family that hosts the Founder's Ball. A Lockwood is in charge of the town as Mayor. The Lockwood family also carry the werewolf gene and werewolves seemed to been in the original Mystic Falls before the Originals arrived. Could the Lockwoods be descendants of the werewolves who lived in Mystic Falls. Supposedly, Mikael had killed all of Klaus' werewolf kin, but maybe some of them escaped the siege on them and procreated. The Lockwoods have to have gotten their werewolf genes from somewhere and it's logical to think since they were involved in the founding of Mystic Falls that they are descendants of the original werewolves who lived there. It may be their connection to Mystic Falls previous settlers that they're treated as the first family of the town. And it could be the past connection that the Lockwoods wanted to take back the town they were driven from by the newbie vampire Mikaelson clan.

That past bit of history might also explain why The Council was anti-vampire. The founding Lockwood patriarchs knew it was vampires that slaughtered their family and drove them from Mystic Falls. The werewolves and the vampires hate each other and it seems to be born from Mikael slaughtering most of them because Esther had cheated on him with one and had a baby [Klaus] by them.

You also have to wonder when Esther was creating the vampire race, why she made it possible for the werewolves to kill vampires. Was she doing it to protect her werewolf lover or was she hoping her werewolf lover might kill her husband? One thing they never really touched on was Esther's relationship with Mikael and this affair she had with her werewolf lover that created Klaus? Was Esther's werewolf lover a Lockwood and it is possible Klaus is related to the Lockwoods?

If Klaus' father was a Lockwood it would explain why the cave painting about the story of the Originals was on Lockwood property. It's too bad Plec was focused so much on the Klaus character and trying to make him so kind of tragic hero instead of connecting him to Lockwood family and exploring the Lockwood family's past. Unfortunately, the Lockwoods were but one of the many things Plec ignored. If she had revealed a Klaus/Lockwood connection it would have had more layers to the whole Klaus making Tyler a hybrid. Tyler would be his family and would have made it even more twisted that Klaus got Tyler to give his vampire girlfriend a deadly bite and then started romantically pursuing her. Not to mention he's now taken over Tyler's body.

The Fell family was also one of the founding families, as witnessed by Fells Church. One could assume that since a church was named after the Fell family, that the Fell patriarch could have been connected to the clergy. What denomination it's impossible to guess. But perhaps the lure of having your own church to spread the word of the Lord was enough of a temptation to get the Fell family to come along with the Lockwoods and build the town of Mystic Falls. Of the five founding families, the Fells don't seem to be that predominant as the other founding families.

In present day Mystic Falls Liz Forbes is sheriff of the town and in Mystic Falls in 1912 another Forbes was the law. Maybe it's written in the Mystic Falls Town Charter that a Lockwood is mayor and a Forbes is sheriff, because when Tyler's father died, who was Mayor, the job then passed on to Carol Lockwood. There didn't seem to be any election of anything. And that may be how the position of sheriff is appointed. Since Caroline's father didn't want the position of sheriff it went to his wife, Liz, instead.

So the possible infrastructure of Mystic Falls when it was founded was: The Lockwoods would be the power of the town by being in charge of it. The Forbes family would keep the peace by being in charge of the law and order in the town. And the Fells would be in charge of protecting the immortals souls of the town residents by running the church.

That just leaves where the Salvatores and Gilberts fit into the town infrastructure.According to what Carol Lockwood told Rebekah when she was trying to locate where the white oak ash tree was located, the Salvatores ran a lumber mill. So the Salvatores might have been the ones to provide the commerce for the town. The town would need a way to remain solvent and to attract people to their burgeoning little town. A lumber mill would provide jobs as it would need help cutting down the trees and transporting them to market to turn a profit. If the Lockwoods were solely responsible for supporting the town financially, they would have eventually run out of money. So having a source to make money would be a key component to the founding of Mystic Falls.

As for the Gilberts, we're always hearing about all these journals the Gilberts kept. It seems like they must have been the town record keeper recording all the events of the town. So if the Lockwood patriarch was obsessed with reclaiming the town the vampires had driven them from, he gathered together all the ingredients he needed to rebuild the town and make it a success. The Lockwoods might have been the driving force behind the vampire hate, as well, considering the past the Lockwoods might have possibly shared with the Mikaelson's.

Of course, that doesn't tell us where the five founding families lived before coming to Mystic Falls in 1860 or how they met up. Of the five founding families, the Salvatores seem to be of Italian descent. Giuseppe, Damon and Stefan all seem to be Italian names. So the question is did Giuseppe come from Italy where his sons were born to help with the founding of Mystic Falls or did a previous Salvatore descendant first come to America, since Giuseppe, Damon and Stefan have no trace of an Italian accent? And we still know nothing about Giuseppe's wife and Damon and Stefan's mother. Did she die or did she leave her family? That's pretty sad considering Damon and Stefan are two of the leading characters of the show.

Unfortunately, Julie Plec was more interested in exploring the past of a character she just brought on the show opposed to shedding more light on two of the original leading characters on the show who've been with the show since day one and who without them there wouldn't even be a show.

Another big question is when the founding families arrived in Mystic Falls, was it an empty town or were there people living there? Could those people have been vampires? There's really a wealth of stories that are waiting to be explored that would enrich the stories of the current characters. It remains to be seen if they'll ever be explored, though.