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Part of the American
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Mary Moore
The early history of West Virginia is
filled with the same stories of privation, suffering, and
horrors experienced by the settlers in Tennessee, Kentucky, and
North Carolina. The privations of that time necessitated women
taking upon themselves the hardest labors. They worked with
their husbands clearing the land, and the rude provisions for
domestic comfort were largely those acquired by their own
efforts. The tableware of those days consisted of a few pewter
plates and kettles which had survived long journeys from the
East. They wove the cloth of which their own and their
children's garments were made, spun the flax which made the
linen and in fact, the entire furnishings of their homes were
the work of their own hands.
It is said that the first settlers came into West Virginia in
1749, and in 1751 two settlers were sent in by the Green Brier
Company to open up the lands, and the first settlement was made
near Wheeling. As soon as the outposts were established, others
followed in the train of these first venture some pioneers.
In 1761, Mrs. Dennis was taken
captive from the James' settlement and taken to the Indian
settlement near Chillicothe, Ohio. She became famous among the
Indians as a nurse, and her medicines, prepared from herbs, were
sought far and near, and through this medium she ultimately made
her escape. In 1763, while gathering herbs she reached the Ohio
River. Wandering alone through the woods and the forests, and
rafting herself down the great Kanawha, she ultimately reached
the Green Brier, but was so exhausted and worn by her long tramp
and the exposure that she finally gave up and lay down expecting
to die, but was discovered by some of the settlers and nursed
and cared for. But for this act of kindness the settlers were
made to pay dearly. They were attacked by the Indians, and all
the men were killed and the women and children taken captives.
In this attack a Mrs. Clendennin showed such courage that her
name has been enrolled among the women heroes of that time.
Early in 1778, an attack was made on one of the blockhouses on
the upper Monongahela.
In this hand to hand conflict, Mrs.
Cunningham, the wife of Edward Cunningham, seeing her husband's
strength almost spent, grabbed the tomahawk and finished the
Indian who would have taken her husband's life.
In an attack by the Indians on the house
of William Morgan, in Dunker's Bottom, Mrs. Morgan was bound to
a tree. She succeeded in untying herself with her teeth and
escaping with her child. In March, 1 781, an attack was made by
the Indians on the house of Captain John Thomas, situated on one
of the little streams tributary to the Monongahela. Captain
Thomas was killed and Mrs. Thomas and her six children butchered
by the savages, only one little boy escaping. While this bloody
orgy was going on, a woman named Elizabeth Juggins, who had been
attracted by the cries of the helpless victims, had come to
their aid. On reaching the house, she realized her absolute
helplessness and hid under one of the beds. When the Indians had
lefty supposing that they had completed their murderous work,
Miss Juggins found that Mrs. Thomas was still alive, and
succeeded in ultimately reaching other settlers and spreading
the alarm.
On the 29th of June, 1785, the house of
Mr. Scott was attacked. Mrs. Scott witnessed the savages cutting
the throats of three of her children and the murder of her
husband, and then was carried into captivity by the Indians. The
old chief seemed to have at least a drop of the milk of human
kindness in his veins, and Mrs. Scott through the care of the
old man succeeded in gaining her liberty. She wandered from the
10th of July to the 11th of August through the woods with
nothing on which to sustain life but the juices of plants. Among
this long list of names of the women who suffered Indian
captivity and its attendant horrors were the names of Mrs.
Glass, Mary Moore, Martha Evans, and other splendid women.
James Moore, Mary Moore's brother, was
taken captive by the Indians in 1784, and in 1786, a party of
Indians made a hasty attack on the settlement before they were
able to realize their danger, the settlers having been lulled
into a feeling of security by the absence of any trouble for
some time. Her father was killed in this attack, and her mother
and three children, two brothers and a sister, were made
prisoners. They were taken into the Scioto Valley, and here Mary
Moore and her friend, Martha Evans, spent some time in
captivity. They were ultimately sold to men in the neighborhood
of Detroit, where they were employed as servants. In the
invasion of Logan from Kentucky three years later, a young
French trader took a great fancy to young James Moore, who was
living among the Indians of the Pow Wow Society, and through
this trader, James obtained information of his sister Mary, who
was then near Detroit.
Young Moore went to Stogwell's
place, where he found his sister had been very cruelly treated
and was then in the most frightful condition of poverty and
suffering. James applied to the commanding officer of Detroit,
who sent him to Colonel McKee, then superintendent for the
Indians, and Stogwell was brought to trial through the complaint
made against him by James Moore. It was decided that Mary Moore
could be returned to her home when proper remuneration was made,
and through the efforts of Thomas Evans, the brother of Martha
who had accompanied Mary Moore into captivity, she obtained her
liberty in 1789, after having suffered three years of captivity.
Shortly after her return to Rockridge, Mary Moore went to live
with her uncle, Joseph Walker, whose home was near Lexington,
and she later became the wife of Rev. Samuel Brown, pastor of
New Providence. She was the mother of eleven children, nine of
whom survived her. Martha Evans married a man by the name of
Hummer and resided in Indiana, rearing a large family of
children.
During the attack of Cornwallis and his approach near Charlotte,
a Mr. Brown sought protection in the home of James Haines, and
while here the British plundered the house and made the owner a
prisoner. Mrs. Haines' maiden name was Annie Huggins. She was
the daughter of John Huggins, a Scotch Presbyterian, who had
immigrated to America from the north of Ireland, in 1730. She
had married, in 1788, James Haines, and in 1792, he with his two
brothers had immigrated to a colony in North Carolina, and here
they were neighbors to the hostile Cherokees and Kanawhas who
gave the settlers of those days constant alarm and terror. Later
Colonel Bird, of the British army, established Fort Chissel as a
protection to these settlers, and still later Governor Dobbs, of
North Carolina, established Fort Loudon in the very heart of the
Cherokee Nation. These settlements grew rapidly, notwithstanding
the dose proximity of these savage Indians. One of the striking
characteristics of almost all these settlers of that time was
their strong religious faith, particularly the women, and
certainly nothing else could have supported and sustained them
through the daily horrors of their lives. Mrs. Haines died in
1790, having survived her husband only a few years,
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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