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  Taken from the Holland Purchase Book MARY JEMISON. The interesting and instructive narrative of the captivity and life of MARY JEMISON, written as she herself related the story to her biographer before the faculties of her mind were impaired, though more than three quarters of a century afterwards, has made most readers familiar with her strange fortunes. In the summer of 1755, during the French and Indian wars, her father's house, situated on the western frontier of Pennsylvania, was surrounded by a band, consisting of six Indians and four Frenchmen. They plundered and carried away whatever they could that was valuable, and took the whole family captive, with two or three others, who were staying with it, at the time. They were all immediately hastened away into the wilderness, murdered and scalped, with the exception of MARY and a small boy, who were carried to Fort Du Quesne. Little MARY was there given to two Indian sisters, who came to that place to get a captive to supply the place of a brother that had been slain in battle. They took her down the Ohio to their home, adopted her as their sister, under the name of DEHHEWAMIS�a word signifying "a beautiful girl." The sorrow and regret which so sudden and fearful a change in her condition produced, gradually yielded under the Norn - The prominent position of Capt. Parrish at an early period of the settlement of Western New York, would suggest a more extended biography than the author could obtain materials to make. He found himself in possession of no data beyond a brief obituary notice In the Ontario Repository. THE influence of time; and she began to feel quite reconciled to her fate, when an incident occurred, which once more revived her hopes of being redeemed from captivity and restored to her friends. When Fort Pitt fell into the possession of the British, MARY was taken with a party who went there to conclude a treaty of peace with the English. She immediately attracted the notice of the white people, who showed great anxiety to know how one so young and so delicate came among the savages. Her Indian sisters became alarmed, and fearing that they might lose her, suddenly fled away with her, and carried her back to their forest home. Her disappointment was painful and she brooded over it for many days, but at length regained her usual cheerfulness, and contentment. As soon as she was of sufficient age, she was married to a young Delaware Indian, named SHEIINJEE. Notwith�standing her reluctance at first to become the wife of an Indian, her husband's uniform kind treatment and gentleness, soon won her esteem and affection, and she says:�" Strange as it may seem, 1 loved him I "�and she often spoke of him as her "kind husband." About 1759, she concluded to change her residence. With a little child, on foot, she traveled to the Genesee river, through the pathless wilderness, a distance of near six hundred miles, and fixed her home at Little Beard's Town. When she came there, she found the Senecas in alliance with the French; they were making preparations for an attack on Fort Schlosser; and not a great while after, enacted the tragedy at the Devil's Hole. Some�time after her arrival, she received intelligence of the death of her husband, SHENINJEE, who was to have come to her in the succeed�ing spring. They had lived happily together, and she sincerely lamented his death.
  When the war between England and France ended, she might have returned to the English, but she did not. She married another Indian, named HIAKAT00, two or three years after the death of SHENINJEE. When Gen. SULLIVAN invaded the Genesee country, her house and fields shared a common fate with the rest. When she saw them in ruins�with great energy and perseve�rance, she immediately went to making preparation for the coming winter. Taking her two youngest children on her back, and bidding the other three follow, she sought employment. She found an opportunity to husk corn, and secured in that way twenty-five bushels of shelled corn, which kept them through the winter. After the close of the Revolution, she obtained the grant of a large tract of land, called the "Gardeau Reservation," which was about six miles in length and five in breadth. With the exception of some deeply afflicting domestic calamities, and the uneasiness and discontent which she felt as the white people gathered around, and her old Indian associates departed, but little occurred in her after life which need be noticed here. In 1831, preferring to pass the remainder of her days in the midst of those with whom her youth and middle age had been spent, she sold the rest of her land at Gardeau Flatts, purchased a farm on the Buffalo Reservation, where the Senecas, among whom she had long lived, had settled some five years previous. She passed the remainder of her days in peace and quietness, embraced the Christian religion, and on the 19th of September, 1838, ended a life that had been marked by vicissitudes, such as it is the lot of but few to experience.
  The story of her family, of her son JOHN, especially,�his mur�der of his brothers, &c., has been well narrated in the small work originally written by JAMES E. SEAVER, and afterwards enlarged and improved by EBENEZER Mix. The author in his boyhood, has often seen the "White Woman," as she was uniformly called by the early settlers; and remembers well the general esteem in which she was held. Notwithstanding she had one son who was a terror to Indians, as well as the early white settlers, she has left many descendants who are not unworthy of her good name. JACOB JEMISON, a grandson of hers, received a liberal education,passed through a course of medical studies, and was appointed an assistant surgeon in the U. S. Navy. He died on board of his ship, in the Mediterranean.
  Soon after the war of 1812, an altercation occurred between DAVID REESE, of Buffalo�(who was at the time the government blacksmith for the Senecas upon the Reservation near Buffalo)�and a Seneca Indian called YOUNG KING, which resulted in a severe blow with a scythe, inflicted by REESE, which nearly severed one of the Indian's arms; so near in fact, that amputation was immediately resorted to. The circumstance created consid-erable excitement among the Indians, which extended to Gardeau, the then home of the JEMISON family. JOHN JEMIS0N, headed a party from there, and went to Buffalo, giving out as he traveled along the road, that he was going to "kill REESE." The author saw him on his way, and recollects how well he personated the ideal "angel of death." His weapons were the war club and tomahawk; red paint was daubed upon his swarthy face, and long bunches of horse hair, colored red, were dangling from each arm; his warlike appearance was well calculated to give an earnest to his threats. REESE was kept secreted, and thus in all probability, avoided the fate that even kindred had met at the hands of JOHN JEMISON.
  Mrs. BLACKMAN, a surviving daughter of PETER PITT�S, the early pioneer upon the Honeoye Flatts, says:�"Mrs. JEMIS0N used to be at our house frequently, on her journeys from Gardeau to Canandaigua and back. BILL ANTIS at Canandaigua used to do her blacksmithing. She was a smart intelligent woman. She used often to sit down and tell my father stories of her captivity; but always avoided doing it in the hearing of her Indian husband, HIAKATOO."
 
 
 
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