Crawford County PA

Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa’s

Immediately after the peace of 1763 all the French forts in the west as far as Green Bay were garrisoned with English troops; and the Indians now began to realize, but too late, what they had long apprehended the selfish designs of both French and English threatening destruction, if not utter annihilation, to their entire […]

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Crawford County, Pennsylvania Census Records

1790 Crawford County, Pennsylvania Census Records Free 1790 Census Form for your Research Hosted at Ancestry.com – Ancestry Free Trial  Hosted at A Genealogical Tour of Crawford County, Pennsylvania 1790 Crawford County as part of Allegheny County Combined index 1790, 1800, 1818, 1820 Hosted at Census Guide 1800 U.S. Census Guide 1800 Crawford County, Pennsylvania

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Biographical Sketch of James McCreary Gee

Gee, James McCreary; real estate broker; born, Kingsville, O., Dee. 24, 1875; son of Francis W. and Mary McCreary Gee; educated, common and high schools, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pa.; Western Reserve University, Law Dept.; married, Marysville, N. Y., June 6, 1900, Helen Mills; issue, Francis, born March 30, 1901, Daniel, born Dec. 7, 1904, Nicholas,

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Biographical Sketch of Frederick Augustine Sterling

Sterling, Frederick Augustine; merchant; born, Chapinville, Conn., May 26, 1831; son of Frederick Augustine and Caroline Mary (Dutcher) Sterling; educated, public and private schools, Geneva, N. Y.; married, Meadville, Pa., May 13, 1856, Emma Betts; issue, one son, living in Erie, Pa.; merchant in Cleveland since 1850; connected with T. S. Beckwith & Co., Beckwith,

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An Account of the Sufferings of Mercy Harbison – Indian Captivities

On the 4th of November, 1791, a force of Americans under General Arthur St. Clair was attacked, near the present Ohio-Indiana boundary line, by about the same number of Indians led by Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and the white renegade Simon Girty. Their defeat was the most disastrous that ever has been suffered by our arms when engaged against a savage foe on anything like even terms. Out of 86 officers and about 1400 regular and militia soldiers, St. Clair lost 70 officers killed or wounded, and 845 men killed, wounded, or missing. The survivors fled in panic, throwing away their weapons and accoutrements. Such was “St. Clair’s defeat.”

The utter incompetency of the officers commanding this expedition may be judged from the single fact that a great number of women were allowed to accompany the troops into a wilderness known to be infested with the worst kind of savages. There were about 250 of these women with the “army” on the day of the battle. Of these, 56 were killed on the spot, many being pinned to the earth by stakes driven through their bodies. Few of the others escaped captivity.

After this unprecedented victory, the Indians became more troublesome than ever along the frontier. No settler’s home was safe, and many were destroyed in the year of terror that followed. The awful fate of one of those households is told in the following touching narrative of Mercy Harbison, wife of one of the survivors of St. Clair’s defeat. How two of her little children were slaughtered before her eyes, how she was dragged through the wilderness with a babe at her breast, how cruelly maltreated, and how she finally escaped, barefooted and carrying her infant through days and nights of almost superhuman exertion, she has left record in a deposition before the magistrates at Pittsburgh and in the statement here reprinted.

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