USA > Wyoming > The pioneer women of Wyoming : an address before the Wyoming Valley Chapter, D.A.R. > Part 2
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WYOMING A DEFENSELESS OUTPOST.
The year of 1777 closed with nearly all the able bodied men of Wyoming away in the public service. The re- mainder, in dread of the savages, were building stockades, and this without compensation. The aged men were formed into companies. Small-pox was abroad. Connecticut had made a levy of £2,000. A gloomy outlook indeed. Yet at a town meeting a measure was adopted which challenges admiration. At a meeting legally warned and held Decem- ber 30, 1777, it was voted to supply the soldiers' wives and the soldiers' widows with the necessaries of life.
It may be interesting to note some of the prices prevail- ing at that time, such as would affect our pioneer women.
Yarn stockings, a pair JOS.
Spinning women, per week 6s.
Beef, a pound . 7d.
Good dinner at tavern . 2S.
Metheglin, per gallon 7S
Shad, apiece 6d.
Yard wide check flannel 8s.
Yard wide white flannel 5s.
Yard wide tow and linen 6s.
Eggs, per dozen . 8d.
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Justice and gratitude demand a tribute to the praise- worthy spirit of the wives and daughters of Wyoming. While their husbands and fathers were on public duty, the women cheerfully assumed a large portion of such labor as they could do. They planted, made hay and husked corn. Besides this they leached their ashes for making saltpetre with which to produce gun powder for the public defense. For be it remembered that the companies enlisted in Wyo- ming had to furnish their own arms and ammunition. Mr. Hollenback had brought a large mortar to the settlement and in this saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur were pounded up together so as to make powder. This description of the making of powder was given Mr. Miner by Mrs. Bethia Jenkins, an eye witness.
As the season advanced, the women and children were put in great peril by the threatened invasion of British and Indians from Niagara, and the officers and men in Wash- ington's army pleaded to be allowed leave of absence that they might hasten to the defense of their families. On the ground that the public safety required their presence at the front the permission was not granted. As Miner says: "History affords no parallel of the pertinacious detention of men under such circumstances." Wives wrote to their hus- bands, begging them to come home and many responded to the piteous call, though unable to obtain permission to do so. Who can blame them for placing the pleadings of wife and children above the cruel order of their superiors to remain at the front. Their fears were only too well founded, the threatened invasion came and some of the brave patriots who hastened home, fell in the fore front of the battle of that memorable year. Congress at last recognized the peril and ordered troops to Wyoming, but it was too late.
MASSACRE OF WYOMING.
Meanwhile as news of the invasion came, all was ex- citement in the Wyoming settlement and our pioneer mothers clasped their children in their arms and sought refuge in the stockades, trembling with dreadful apprehen-
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sion. "Care sat on every brow and fear on many a heart too firm to allow a breath of apprehension to escape from the lips. The fields were waving with an abundant harvest, but the people were like a covey of patridges, cowering beneath a flock of blood scenting vultures, that soared above, ready to pounce on their prey ; or like a flock of sheep huddled to- gether in their pen, while the prowling wolves, already sent their impatient howl across the fields, eager for their vic- tims."
It is not necessary to recount the already oft told story of the battle, other than to attempt to arrange the scanty material which is to be had concerning the part which the women took. It is related that after the enemy had invaded the valley, Daniel Ingersoll, who was at Wintermoot stock- ade, made preparations for resistance. His wife was cast in as heroic mold as himself and she seized the only weapon available, a pitchfork, to assist her husband. The Winter- moots at this juncture, suspected heretofore of sympathy with the Britisk cause, now threw off their mask. Ingersoll was told that the British Butler would be a welcome visitor at the Wintermoot stockade, and releasing the wife, the hus- band was made a prisoner.
Forty Fort being the largest stockade in the valley, the . women and children were there assembled. There they re- mained while the battle was in progress. As the brave defenders of the settlement marched out to the unequal conflict, their chief anxiety was for their wives and children.
"Men," said Col. Zebulon Butler, after he had formed . the line of battle, "yonder is the enemy. The fate of the Hardings tells us what we have to expect if defeated. We come out to fight, not only for liberty, but for life itself, and what is dearer, to preserve our homes from conflagration, our women and children from the tomahawk. Every man to his duty."
Of the four hundred Connecticut men in the fight, less than one hundred came out alive. The British commander officially reported the taking of two hundred and twenty-
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seven scalps and some of the fugitives what had taken to the river were shot and their scalps not obtained.
At Forty Fort the bank of the Susquehanna was lined with trembling wives and mothers awaiting the issue. How their hearts must have been wrung with anguish as the dis- tant firing subsided and they learned of the defeat from the rapidly increasing number of fugitives. No sooner had the tidings of the slaughter become known than the inhabitants of the settlement prepared for immediate flight. Such as were not ready to join the first fugitives sought refuge at the stockades, principally Forty Fort, where the women and children were guarded by Col. Denison's few soldiers. Many fled without waiting to prepare food, consequently great suffering ensued. The several paths to the eastward were crowded with terror stricken fugitives. There were four avenues of escape open to them :
I. The Warrior's Path, which left the lower part of the valley and crossing the mountain reached the settlements by the way of the Lehigh River. A party of one hundred women and children taking this route had but a single man to lead the way and otherwise protect them.
2. The route over the Wilkes-Barre Mountain and through the "Shades of Death," to the Delaware River, afterwards the Wilkes-Barre and Easton turnpike. Most of the fugitives took this route. This was one of the paths by which the settlers had come to the valley, and which was opened as a military road by Sullivan's army in the year following the battle.
3. To the Delaware by way of Cobb's Gap at Lack- awaxen passing where Scranton now stands.
4. Perhaps a thousand persons went by boats or rafts or on land down the Susquehanna. A letter written to the Executive Council of Pennsylvania by William Maclay, nine days after the battle, contained these words: "At Sunbury I saw such scenes of distress as I never saw before. The river and roads leading down it were crowded with men, women and children fleeing for their lives."
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The number of men, women and children who fled from Wyoming was not far from three thousand. "The terrible odds of the conflict," says Wilcox, "while not positively known, had been feared by all. And while husbands and fathers and sons made preparations for the battle, mothers and children anticipated the worst and prepared for flight."
. Miner thus graphically recounts the start: "A few who had escaped came rushing into Wilkes-Barre fort, where trembling with anxiety the women and children were gathered awaiting the dread issue. The appalling news of the disaster proclaim their utter destitution. They fly to the mountains, evening is approaching, the victorious hell- hounds are opening on their track. They look back on the valley-all around the flames are kindling; they cast their eyes on the range of the battlefield; numerous fires speak their own horrid purpose. They loiter! The exulting yell of the savages strikes the ear! A shriek of agonizing woe! Who is the sufferer? Is it the husband of one who is gaz- ing? The father of her children? Their flight was a scene of widespread and harrowing sorrow. Their dispersion being an hour of the wildest terror, the people were scattered sîngly, in pairs, in larger groups, as chance separated them or threw them together in that sad hour of distress. Yet the mind pictures to itself a single group, flying from the valley to the mountains on the east and climbing the steep ascent, hurrying onward, filled with terror, despair and sorrow. The affrighted mother whose husband had fallen- an infant on her bosom, a child by the hand, an aged parent slowly climbing the rugged steep behind; in the rustle of every leaf they hear the approaching savage, a dark and dreary wilderness is before them, their beloved valley all in flames behind them, their dwellings and harvests all swept away in this flood of ruin, the star of hope quenched in this blood shower of savage vengeance."
The widow Abbott and her nine children fled down the river to Catawissa and then taking to the mountains made their way, nearly three hundred miles, to their former home in Windham County, Conn.
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More than twenty mothers were called on to lose two or more loved ones in the battle.
Sonie of these terror stricken women gave birth to children in their flight through the wilderness.
A Mrs. Truesdale was one of these. She and her babe were placed on a horse in a rude sling and compelled by force of circumstances to follow the flying throng. Mrs. Jabez Fish and her children hastened on, supposing her hus- band to have been killed. Overcome with fatigue and want her infant died. There was no way to dig a grave, and to leave it to be devoured by wolves seemed worse than death, so she took the dead babe in her arms and carried it twenty miles, when she came to a German settlement. Though poor they gave her food, decently buried the child and bade her welcome till she should be rested.
Mrs. Ebenezer Marcy was taken in labor in the wilder- ness and dragged herself along on foot until overtaken by a neighbor with a horse.
Mrs. Rogers, an aged woman from Plymouth, flying with her family, died in the mountains and was given burial there.
Mrs. Courtright related that she, a young girl, flying with her father's family, saw sitting by the roadside a widow who had learned of the death of her husband. Six children were on the ground near her. They were without food until she was seen by Matthias Hollenback, who had loaded his horse with bread at the settlement and was hastening toward Wyoming on one of the paths that the fugitives would be apt to take.
Among those who sought safety in flight was Mrs. Anderson Dana and her daughter, Mrs. Stephen Whiton, a bride of but a few days, who did not learn of the deaths of their husbands until they had arrived at Bullock's, where now stands the road-house known as Searfoss's, or Seven- Mile Jake's. It was there that many heard the dreadful de- tails of the day's disaster, and learned for the first time as to who had fallen in the bloody battle. Mrs. Dana, not only had provided food for her flying family, but she carried with
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her many of her husband's valuable papers, he being er- gaged in the public business.
Among the fugitives was the family of Elisha Black- man. A daughter of the latter had lost her husband, Darius Spofford, to whom she had but recently been married. Spofford, mortally wounded, fell into the arms of his brother, Phineas. "Brother," he said, "I am mortally hurt. Take care of Lavina."
Picture if you can the dreadful anguish that wrung the heart of Mrs. Jonathan Weeks. Seven members of her household perished in the fight. Her sons, Philip,. John, Bartholomew, Silas Benedict, husband of her grand-daugh- ter, two relatives named Jabez Beers and Josiah Carman, and Robert Bates, a boarder, that night all lay dead on the field of battle. Mr. and Mrs. Weeks were allowed by the Indians to depart, but all their buildings were burned.
At Jenkins Fort the prisoners were searched and all val- uables taken from them. Mrs. Richart says that Elizabeth, wife of John Gardner, had some silver spoons in her pocket. During the search she adroitly slipped them into the waist- band of one of the men who had been searched. They are still kept as precious heirlooms by her descendants, the Polen family of Pittston.
We must not forget Mrs. Obadiah Gore, who had five sons and two sons-in-law in the battle. Her husband, too old to bear arms, was in the fort. At night five of the seven lay dead on the fatal field. Three of hier sons were slain and two of her daughters were widows. One of the latter had an infant born soon after she reached Connecticut.
Mrs. Elihu Williams lost two sons in the battle and when a few weeks later her husband ventured back from Connecticut in the hope of saving a part of his harvest, he was killed by Indians. The widow was left with five chil- dren.
Mrs. John Abbott was similarly widowed at the same time by her husband falling by the side of Elihu Williams, a short distance above Mill Creek. She and her nine little
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children subsequently returned and occupied the farm where her husband fell.
'Mention should be made of Sarah, daughter of Dr. William Hooker Smith. She became the wife of James Sutton and it was to her vivid recollection of events that Miner was so much indebted for materials for his history of Wyoming. She was in the fort at the time of the battle. Her sister Susannah married Dr. Lemuel Gustin, who, like Dr. Smith, was one of the earliest physicians in the settle- ment, and she died a few days previous to the battle. You can see her epitaph in Forty Fort Cemetery.
Twelve women and children were accompanied through the wilderness by William Searle, whose wife and nine children comprised most of the party. They had been de- tained after the capitulation on the fourth until the seventh, and then given liberty to leave the settlement. They were a week getting to the Delaware, a distance of about sixty miles, and eighteen days passed before they reached their former homes in Stonington, Conn.
It is related that Mrs. Stephen Harding, whose two sons had been killed by the approaching savage horde the day before the battle, with her own hands prepared her dead sons for burial. The interment was witnessed by the British and Indians.
What a honey-moon was that of Bethia Harris, wife of Colonel Jenkins, whom she had married ten days before the massacre. She was left in Jenkins Fort when her husband hastened away to join the brave defenders at Forty Fort. Like all the other women the Indians robbed her of all her garments except chemise and petticoat. Under a flag of truce she went over the battle-field the day after the battle and found the dead body of her cousin Jonathan Otis, and also the husband of her cousin, Mercy Otis. The latter and her six children were among the fugitives to Connecti- cut. Mrs. Bethia Jenkins was a true patriot. She assisted the cause of liberty by molding bullets and helping to make powder for the use of the soldiers.
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A story is told by Mrs. Richart which is too marvelous for ordinary belief. It is to the effect that Captain Stephen Gardner's wife had a vision in which their daughter in Connecticut, who had married just as they left for Wyoming, appeared to her with a babe in her arms. She said she her- self was dead and she desired the baby to be given to the grandmother. As a sign of the reality of the vision she touched the wrist of the grandmother and left a mark there- on which could never be effaced. The grandmother went to Connecticut and found that every thing had happened as told in the vision. The child was gently reared by its pious grandmother and became the wife of a Methodist clergy- man. Mrs. Richart informs us that this story of the super- natural is universally believed among all the numerous fami- lies descending from this godly grandmother.
After the surrender the Indians began to plunder, and the British colonel, John Butler, was unable to restrain them. A young woman at this juncture helped to save what little remained of the public funds. Growing more insolent, the savages seized Col. Denison's hat and then demanded his frock. In the pocket were what remained of the military funds of the settlement. Obliged to give it up under threat of being tomahawked, he slipped it over his head in such a way as to give a young woman of his family, who was present, an opportunity of adroitly taking out the purse and saving it from the insolent savage.
It was deemed best for Col. Zebulon Butler and the few surviving Revolutionary soldiers to hastily retire from the valley. The soldiers, who numbered only fourteen, with- drew down the river, while Col. Zebulon Butler took his wife on horseback behind him, and they made their escape across the mountains to the Lehigh by way of the Conyngham Valley. This was the wife of his second marriage, Lydia, daughter of Rev. Jacob Johnson. Not all the settlers suc- ceeded in getting away at once and it is recorded that one hundred and eighty women and children with thirteen men, having been detained by the Indians and plundered, were sent off in one company a few days after the battle, suffer-
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ing for shoes, clothing and food. In the meantime the In- dians desolated the valley with the torch.
A farewell that wrung a woman's heart was that be- tween John Gardner and his wife. He was to be carried into captivity and his wife and children were permitted to take leave of him. He was then led away, the Indians com- pelling him to carry a heavy load of plunder, which after- wards proved too great for his strength. As if to punish him for his bodily weakness, and perhaps afraid that he would be a hindrance, he was turned over to the squaws, wlio tortured him to death with fire. This is vouched for by a fellow-captive, Daniel Carr.
As the savages withdrew from the valley, they left a trail of fire and blood. At Capouse, now Scranton, Mr. Hickman, his wife and child were slain.
Six miles up the Lackawanna lived two families, Leach and St. John. The men were killed. One of them was carrying a child, which, with strange inconsistency, the In- dian took up and handed to the mother, all covered with the father's blood. Scalping the men the Indians departed, leav- ing the agonized widows to make their way through the wilderness as best they could.
It was autumn before the dead could be buried. In- dians continued to sweep down from the mountains and murder individual settlers, who had made so bold as to return in the hope of saving some of the crops. Among the atrocities was the butchery of the Utley family near Nesco- peck, Nov. 19. Not only were the three men killed, but the savages murdered and scalped the aged mother.
The capture of Frances Slocum, the lost sister of Wyo- ming, properly belongs to this paper, but as it is such a familiar story, I will not go into details. Suffice it to say that three Indians, Nov. 2, 1778, came stealthily into the valley and approached the house occupied by the family of Jonathan Slocum, the site now being occupied by Lee's planing mill, corner of North and Canal streets. Having killed a young man of the household, named Nathan Kingsley, the Indians carried off little Frances, then a child of five years, whom
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the mother was never to see again, and who was not to be found by her family until she was old and wrinkled, and so completely transformed into an Indian that she could not be persuaded to return to her brothers in civilization. In a little more than a month Mrs. Slocum lost her beloved child, her doorway had been drenched in blood by the murder of an inmate of the family, Nathan Kingsley, Jr., two others of the household had been taken away prisoners, and now her cup of bitterness was not only filled but made to overflow by the cruel killing of her father and father-in-law, (Isaac Tripp). Verily, says Miner, the annals of Indian atrocities written in blood, record few instances of desolation and woe equal to this.
Mrs. Thaddeus Williams, a Connecticut woman, whose family lived near the fort, had a narrow escape. Indians attacked the house and wounded her sick husband, but her sons made a gallant defense and repelled the savages.
With reference to the presence of Sullivan's army the following summer, there is little mention of women. The diaries of Sullivan's officers record that on July 13, 1779, the encampment was visited by Col. Butler, Capt. Spalding and several ladies. When Sullivan's army passed through Wyo- ming several widows applied to the commander for bread.
One September day (1779), when Sullivan's army was up in the Genesee region crushing the Six Nations, there came into his camp a white woman who had been captured by the Indians at Wyoming the previous year. She carried her babe with her. Her name has not come down to us. It was near there and at that time that Luke Swetland, an- other Wyoming captive, escaped from the Indians and made his way to Sullivan's camp.
Mrs. Mehitable Bidlack, who had lost a son, Capt. James Bidlack, in the Wyoming battle, applied to the war office to release from service her son Benjamin, then in the army, he being needed at home for her protection and support. The petition was refused on the ground that the public service required every available man.
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In 1780 the Indians were again making incursions into Wyoming, bent on murder and pillage. Among the captives was Abram Pike, the famous Indian killer, who was taken while he and his wife were in the woods making sugar. Pike was carried off, but his wife and child were allowed to go to the settlements. It was her husband and Moses Van Campen who rose on their captors one night, killed several and made their escape.
One of the most distressing of our Wyoming tragedies is that in which the wife of Lieut. Rosewell Franklin of Hanover Township figures as a central victim. It was in the spring of 1782. The Indians, who several months before had carried two of her sons into captivity, again made a raid on Hanover Township and carried off Mrs. Franklin and her four remaining children, first burning the house to ashes. The marauding Indians were pursued as quickly as a party could be formed and they were overtaken about sixty miles up the river. In the encounter which ensued the Indians shot Mrs. Franklin to death and made off with the baby, the three other children escaping to their rescuers Mrs. Frank- lin was buried in the woods and the baby was never heard of after.
In October, 1780, the settlement witnessed an event that caused great joy and festivity. It was the marriage of Naomi Sill (sister of Mrs. Col. Denison), to Capt. John Paul Schott, who was stationed at Wyoming with his rifle corps. In accordance with the custom, the bans had previously been published. A few months later, January, 1781, the bans were again published, this time for Joseph Kinney and Sarah Spalding. The bride was the daughter of Simon Spalding, captain of the Connecticut Independent Company. It may be said of the groom that he was wont to controvert the idea that the sun was a ball of fire, whose heat could be radiated to give warmth to the distant planets. It is worthy of note that his view has its defenders to-day.
It is interesting to note that in the assessment for 1781 only two owners of watches are returned, and one of these is
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a woman, Sarah Durkee. The other fortunate possessor of a time-piece was Capt. John Franklin. Each watch was valued at one and a half pounds.
The summer of 1781 was made memorable by an out- break of typhus fever, which, added to the commonly preva- lent malarial fevers, made many a housewife's heart ache. Among the pioneer women who fell victims to the dreaded typhus was Lydia, the second wife of Col. Zebulon Butler.
June 9, 1781, a party of twelve Indians made an attack on a blockhouse at Buttonwood in Hanover Township, three miles below the Wilkes-Barre Fort. In the gallant defense the women aided the men with alacrity and spirit.
That domestic life was even in those carly days not always blissful is shown by the fact that one pioneer woman in 1781 obtained a divorce from her husband.
Women had to insist on their rights. One Susannah Reynolds (whose husband Christopher, is said by Miner, to have been killed in the battle of 1778) had an action brought against her by Jabez Sill to recover a property upon which it was alleged she was a trespasser, but the court, whether from considerations of justice or gallantry we do not know, decided that the property was hers.
In July, 1781, Mrs. George Larned was carried into captivity from her home, on what was afterwards the Easton turnpike, leading from Wilkes-Barre to the Delaware. The agonized woman had seen the savages kill and scalp her hus- band, George Larned and his father, and her own baby, an infant of four months, had been torn from her arms and killed before her very eyes.
Throughout the entire Revolutionary war Indians de- '.astated Wyoming Valley with fire and hatchet, but the close of that great struggle witnessed no cessation of suffering for the Connecticut settlers. The Proprietary Government, which no longer had to fight a foreign enemy, now turned with ferocity upon the Connecticut settlers, who were already impoverished by war. But instead of pitying them in their
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