Mary Ingles

During the War for Empire in the 1750s, conflict among France, England, and several American Indian Nations over control of eastern North America reached Draper’s Meadow in 1755 and transformed the lives of the Draper and Ingles families. On or about July 30, 1755, a French-allied Shawnee war party attacked the settlement, killing Mary Ingles’s mother-in-law and her sister-in-law’s baby, wounding her sister-in-law Betty Draper, and taking Mary, her two boys, and Henry Lenard captive. The captors drove them down New River to Bluestone River, then up that stream and over Flat Top Mountain, past the Great Glade and the Painted Trees war camps on Paint Creek, where painted trees recorded exploits from earlier wars and perhaps even the capture of two women, two boys, and one man. The party then followed the difficult Paint Creek Trail toward the Kanawha Valley, gathering food and medicine along the way as they hurried to avoid pursuit from Virginia militia. After reaching Sonhioto, Mary’s sons were taken from her and adopted into Shawnee families, while Betty and Henry were sent to other communities, and Mary was put to work for a French trader making shirts. With help from an elderly woman who befriended her, Mary escaped while they were rendering salt at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky, and after a life-threatening journey of around 500 miles the two women returned to the New River settlements in the fall, where Mary rejoined what remained of her family and helped plan efforts to ransom her children and sister-in-law. Two-year-old Georgie was never found, but Tommy and Betty were eventually returned.

West Virginia · United States