Pictured is the statue of Mary Draper Ingles that is part of the Virginia Women’s Monument that is located on the grounds of the State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia. The subjects of the seven statues currently completed represent varying achievements by women from different regions in the state of Virginia. Mary Draper Ingles represents frontier women.
MARY DRAPER INGLES was taken hostage on July 30, 1755 by a band of Shawnee Indians who had descended on a frontier settlement called Draper’s Meadow in what is now Blacksburg, Virginia. Four were killed and several others were captured. 23-year-old Mary’s two young sons, Thomas, age 4, and 2-year-old George, were among the captured.
Mary’s husband, William, had been in a field, harvesting wheat, and avoided capture. The Shawnee headed northwest, forcing their captives over the Appalachian Mountains. Kidnapping and the burning of settlements was part of the warfare tactics during the French and Indian War. The Shawnee were an ally of the French. The common interest was to push back the British settlements.
Well, getting back to Mary... the Shawnee led their captives to a village on the Ohio River. There Mary was separated from her sons. George died in captivity, but Thomas, who was 4 when taken captive, was ransomed
and finally returned to Virginia in 1768 at the age of 17.
George Draper, Mary’s father, had moved southwest from Pennsylvania in 1750 to the top of the great Allegheny Ridge, in the present bounds of Montgomery County, Virginia. He called his new home Draper's Meadows. His son John and his wife, and daughter Mary and her husband William Inglis also made the move.
Shawnee parties frequently passed Draper’s Meadow on their expeditions against the Catawbas. The Draper settlement was in the direct line of one of their great war paths, but never had there been any molestation or signs of displeasure until July, 1756.
The men were in the fields, as it was harvest season when the women and children were attacked. Mary’s father George had died, but his widow was among those killed that day. Others were seriously wounded and Mary, her two young sons and her sister-in-law were taken hostage. Ransoms were common during that time.
According to the account of Mary’s capture recorded in William Henry Foote’s “Sketches of Virginia: Historical and Biographical” published in 1855 based on Mary's son John’s manuscript...
“The captors were partial to Mrs. Inglis, and having several horses permitted her to ride most of the way and carry her two children. Mrs. Draper, who was wounded in the back and had her arm broken in the attack upon the settlement, was less kindly cared for. As usual all the prisoners suffered from exposure, and privations, and confinement on their march. Mrs. Inglis had more liberty granted her than Mrs. Draper.
The Indians permitted her to go into the woods to search for the herbs and roots necessary to bind up the broken arm and the wounded back of her fellow captive, trusting probably to her love for her children for her speedy return.
They kept the little boy of four years, and his little brother of two, as her hostages ; and were not mistaken. She stated afterwards that she had frequent opportunities of escaping while gathering roots and herbs, but could never get her own consent to leave her children in the hands of the savages, and was always cheered by the hope of recapture or ransom.”
Mary and another captive described as “the Old Dutch Woman” were soon taken farther north to Big Bone Lick, near present-day Cincinnati, where they were put to work making salt. The separation from her children motivated Mary in her decision to escape. One October afternoon, the two women slipped into the forest and set off on an 800-mile-long escape.They took only a blanket, tomahawk and knife. To prevent suspicion, they took neither additional clothing nor provisions when they departed for the salt lick that day.
The women came upon an abandoned cabin and cornfield. They gathered corn and spend the night at the cabin before heading on their way towards home which was hundreds of miles away. Their calm demeanor when they came in contact with others kept them from being discovered as escapees. Years later, the Shawnee were surprised to learn that Mary was alive, they had never searched extensively for the two women because they believed they were most likely mauled by wild animals.
The women travelled alongside the Ohio river which directed them towards home. The corn was exhausted long before they reached the Kenawha. They ate grapes, black walnuts, pawpaws, and sometimes roots they were unfamiliar with. On one occasion it is said that they were able to obtain deer meat from a kill abandoned by an Indian hunter.
Before they reached the Big Kenawha, the old Dutch woman, most likely near madness due to hunger and exposure to the elements, threatened Mary’s life. Mary decided it was no longer safe to travel with the women and escaped her travel companion.
Mary found a canoe used by the Indians and crossed the river. Finally, about six long treacherous weeks after escaping the Indians, a bone thin, ragged Mary Draper Ingles found herself in a cornfield near her old home. She was found by former neighbors and soon reunited with her husband, who had gone to Tennessee and Georgia looking for her.
Mary and her husband resumed their pioneer lives and went on to have four more children. They continued to try to get their sons back and their sister-in-law. The youngest son had died in captivity, but they were reunited with their older son, thirteen years later. Mary’s sister-in-law was ransomed back in 1761. Mary lived to the age of 84.
(As for the “Old Dutch” women that Mary escaped with...well, Mary had asked the neighbors who found her to cross the river and try to find the women, but they refused. The neighbor, Mr.Harman, did say that the women would be found, as there were hunting cabins nearby. That was true, and the woman was later seen by hunters making her way presumably to her home.)
Source: Facebook - Statues: The People They Salute
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