Mary Ingles

July 8, 1755 began as an ordinary day for Mary Draper Ingles, frontier wife and mother. Her husband, William, was toiling in a faraway field while she worked in the cabin. Their dwelling, one of a small group of log houses in Draper’s Meadows, was west of the Allegheny divide in the mountains of Virginia.

The peaceful morning was shattered by warring Shawnee. Many in the settlement were killed. Mary, her two young sons; Tommy and Georgie, her sister in law Bettie Draper and a neighbor; Henry Lenard were taken captive.

The Indians headed west with these prisoners. Mary, unfamiliar with the country they were traveling through, memorized landmarks. She realized that most of the journey followed rivers.

A month later the group arrived at a Shawnee village on the banks of the Ohio and Scioto Rivers, the location of Portsmouth, Ohio today. A few weeks after their arrival the captives were split up. Tommy and Georgie were sent to Shawnee villages deeper into the Ohio country while Mary was purchased by two French traders. Bettie Draper was adopted by a middle aged chief who had recently lost his daughter. She was taken to the region of Chillicothe. It is unclear what happened to Henry Lenard.

Mary was shattered when separated from her children but strengthened in her resolve to return home.

About the middle of September the French traders took Mary and another captive, the “Old Dutch Woman”, to Big Bone Salt Lick to make salt. It is near present day Cincinnati.

The women conspired to escape, slipped away from the camp, and headed home. They followed the Ohio, the Kanawha, and the New Rivers. The journey took forty three days and by its completion they had walked over 800 miles. They arrived weak and skeletal.

Some of the history of Mary’s ordeal is hazy and lost to time. Two primary accounts were written about it. One was written by her great-grandson, John P. Hale. It says that Mary was nine months pregnant when captured and gave birth a few days afterward. The other account, written by Mary’s grandson, John Ingles, Sr., makes no mention of a baby.

Little is known of the “Old Dutch Woman”. Her given name is even unknown. She returned to Pennsylvania after the incident.

Bettie Draper was ransomed from the Shawnee in 1761 and lived the rest of her days with her husband at Draper’s Meadows.

Georgie died in Indian captivity but Thomas was bought back at the age of 17. He had a difficult adjustment, however and preferred to live on the edge of the frontier. Ironically, his own family was attacked by Indians. Two of his children were killed and his wife severely wounded.

William and Mary had four children; three daughters and one son, in the years following her return. William died in 1782 at the age of 53. Mary died in 1815 at 83.

Alexander Thom wrote a best-selling novel, Follow the River, about Mary’s experience.

Esther Doster

ON A SNOWY SATURDAY in January, I talked with Esther Doster, 96, and her son, Howard, a Purdue University professor. They recounted a rich family history. Esther was born and raised on the family farm on Brimstone Road near Harveysburg. Her parents, Daniel and Wilhelmina Underwood, were known throughout the area for their acres of fine apples. The farm land is on the north side of Ohio 73 and surrounds Jonah's Run Church. The boundary separating Warren and Clinton counties runs through the farm. "Most of Mom's life and her parents' life has been spent on the Clinton/Warren County line," Howard said. Education has played a major part in the family history. About 1900, Wilhelmina Hahn was hired to teach at a one-room school east of Jonah's Run Church. She met Daniel Underwood at church and they soon married. Esther was the oldest of their four daughters. As a child, Esther attended Haines School, a one-room school located about one-half mile north of her home. She attended Haines from the first grade through the sixth grade. The schools were then centralized and Esther attended Kingman School in Clinton County from the seventh grade through her senior year. She was transported to school each day in a horse-drawn school wagon. During high school, she played basketball and was on the debate team. She graduated from Kingman as valedictorian in 1921. "I won a scholarship of $25 to Wilmington College and thought I'd go to college for a long time," Esther said. "I planned to take science courses. Papa talked to the president of Wilmington College. I saw Papa's hand shake and I realized he didn't have as much money as I thought. I decided to make the best of it and not take the higher-cost science courses. I went one year to Normal School (teacher training at Wilmington)." After Normal School, Esther taught for one year at White Chapel, a one-room school north of Wilmington near Xenia. "I walked to school every day. Well, actually, I ran," she said. "There were three country schools within hearing distance of the bell and it was a matter of pride that your bell wasn't the last one to ring." She lived with a family in the "nice community." "I think I was paid $90 a month," she said. She hired a boy to make the fire in the classroom stove, sweep the floor, and wash the chalkboard. He was paid $3 a month. "When they trained us to teach in the country, they said you don't want to use anything to hit the students that will leave marks. Some teachers had used boards. We were told to use a rubber hose," Esther said. "I think they meant like a garden hose size but I got one about the size of your little finger. I only used it once. "I had a sore foot with a corn on it. I'd hung the hose up on the wall. We were getting ready to go on a field trip. I always felt the children should be marched out in some order - not fly out like geese. One student sitting close to the hose got out of line and stepped on my sore toe. I grabbed that hose and gave him a lick. We were all shocked." As a student in a one-room school, Esther said she had a wonderful teacher, Inez Ridgeway Wilson, who taught her health practices that she used when she taught at White Chapel. One was to have the students make their own paper cups to drink water from the bucket. It was common practice at that time for everyone to drink out of the same tin cup from the well or the same dipper from the bucket. She also had the children brush their teeth each day. Once a man from the county office came to observe her teaching. "He told me that he could see I understood the problems," Esther said. She also adopted from Wilson the practice of hanging the temperance motto, "Not too much of anything and some things none at all," on her classroom wall. She had 25 or 30 students. "I had all eight grades," she said. "Some came that were 4 years old. The oldest was 16. It was a busy time." After teaching a year at White Chapel, Esther returned to Wilmington College. While at Wilmington she played basketball, helped found a sorority and a dramatics honorary. She graduated with honors in 1926. Next followed three years of teaching high school English at Highland. She also coached the basketball team and the class plays. In 1929 Esther received a high school life certificate for teaching English, history and home economics. Although she had dated William Doster off and on since 1922, she postponed marriage because at the time most school boards didn't hire married women. Teaching jobs were scarce and boards chose to hire men or single women. In 1930 Esther quit her teaching job and married William. They set up housekeeping in the house on Brimstone Road. They had four children: three boys and one girl. William was elected to the Harveysburg school board and served for "perhaps 26 years," Howard said. He was president of the school board for many of those years. When her children were in grade school, Esther and a friend, Helen Wall, taught monthly temperance classes in fifth through eighth grades. Her son, Howard, remembers learning the same temperance motto that used to hang on her classroom wall at White Chapel. In 1960 Esther returned to teaching. She taught high school English at Harveysburg and then at Clinton-Massie when Harveysburg, Kingman, Adams Township and Clarksville schools consolidated. Esther has retired from teaching and now lives in Wilmington. She has often returned to her birthplace on Brimstone Road where she has been heard to say, "This is the one place in the world where everything is in its right place."

James Galloway Family

James Galloway, Sr. and Family By Rosalie Yoakam James Galloway Sr. was an early pioneer of Greene County who, along with his children, contributed to its early development. Galloway was born in 1750 in Pennsylvania. He served in the Revolutionary War for eighteen months as a hunter, providing game for the soldiers. While in Pennsylvania he married Rebecca Junkin. The Galloway family moved to Kentucky and James is described in Robinson's History of Greene County as having "many of the traits of Daniel Boone". Once Galloway was in the woods, alone and unarmed, when he encountered Simon Girty. Girty was one of the most hated men on the frontier, a renegade white man who fought along side the Indians. Girty shot Galloway believing he had killed him. Galloway, however, managed to turn his horse and rushed to his camp, a mile away. He arrived safely but fainting. The ball had passed through his shoulder and lodged near the back of his neck. It was decided to leave the ball and it remained for many years. It stayed painful and was influenced by the weather, behaving somewhat like a barometer. Sometimes, when an important event was planned in the community which required good weather, Galloway was consulted for a forecast. The ball was finally removed; some say by Dr. Joshua Martin and others claim it was a cobbler. In 1782 Galloway was with General Roger Clarke on his second expedition against the Indians at Old Chillicothe. This village was located near present day Oldtown, north of Xenia. Clarke burned Old Chillicothe along with several other Indian villages. Perhaps this service impressed Galloway with the area as he returned in the spring of 1798 with his family: his wife, four sons and one daughter. Another son and daughter were born in later years. The family built a log house near what is now Goes Station on US 68. The house has been moved several times and is now located on the grounds of the Greene County Historical Society in Xenia. The original house location was near the destroyed Old Chillicothe. Tecumseh, the famous Shawnee chief had been born there and often visited in the area. He became friends with James Galloway and through his association with the family developed a relationship with Rebecca. She taught Tecumseh the English language, how to read it, and she read the Bible to him. The book Women of Greene County credits Rebecca for having "improved his attitude toward women" and says she "advanced the cause of social justice for all the women of Greene County". Legend says that Tecumseh proposed marriage to Rebecca but she refused. She later married a cousin, George Galloway. James Galloway Sr. served as the first county treasurer and held the position for sixteen years. His son, James Jr. was the first County Surveyor. At the age of eight-eight James Sr. died and was buried in the church yard at old Massies creek.