Description

By Mary Rodd Furbee. In 1745, Mary Draper moved with her parents to Drapers Meadow in the Shenandoah Valley. Mary and her family were industrious and strong, quickly learning skills to survive on the frontier. In 1750, at the age of seventeen, Mary Draper Married twenty-year-old Will Ingles, the first wedding of two white settlers in the region. As more Europeans moved into the area, tension between the settlers and the Native Americans increased. Raids and killings by both sides became common. One day a band of Shawnee warriors stormed Drapers Meadow, killing some settlers and burning the settlement to the ground. Taken captive were Mary, pregnant with her third child, her two young sons, and her sister-in-law. Through intuition and courage Mary impressed her kidnappers almost immediately. The captives were marched 800 miles over mountains to a Shawnee village on the Ohio River, presumably to spend the rest of their lives among the Shawnee tribe. But Mary vowed to escape and return to her husband and her people. The story of this remarkable woman’s harrowing and courageous trip home places Mary Ingles at the pinnacle of American frontier heroes. 112 pages, paperback.