The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1899-12-08

what is now Taunton, Mass. His son,
Giles, was a member of the Society OF
Friends of Portsmouth, r. l., in 1888.
Giles had q great-grandson, Joseph,
who lived in the Wyoming valley,
PENNSYLVANIA, in the latter half OF the
eighteenth century. 1t was July 8,
177S that the Indians, melted by the
British, scattered death and destruc-
ton throughout the valley, shooting,
scalping and burning Most of the sur
viving members fed toward the Della
ware river. Joseph Slocum and his
family remained to face the danger.
On Nov. 2 of the same year four In
dams from the Delaware tribe came
toward the house. Two boys named
Kingsley, who had escaped from In
dian captivity, were standing near the
door. One of these was shot and
scalped. Mrs. Slocum was the only
grown person in the house, as Jona-
than Slocum and his father-in-law,
Isaac Trip, were absent from home.
She seized her baby and rushed to the
woods. Little Mary, her 12-year~eld
daughter, picked up Joseph, aged 2
years, and ran after her mother. Little
Frances, aged 5, hid under the stair
way. but the Indians spied her feet
sticking out and dragged her from her
hiding place. Ebenezer Slocum and
the other Kingsley boy were also
seized.
Then the mother ran from her re-
treat with tears pouring down her
cheeks and besought the Indians to
spare her children. Ebenezer, she said,
could do them no good, as he was
cripple. So they dropped the boys and
kept Frances only. A searching party
was at once organized and it secured
the country for the lost child, but with
no success. So the weary weeks passed
into months and no tidings came of the
little girl. The frantic mother lived in
uncertainty as to her fate. Six weeks
afterward Jonathan Slocum and Isaac
Tripp were shot and scalped by the In
dams and the little home was left in
mourning.
The search for little Frances, the
''lost child of Wyoming" was taken up
by the brothers of the poor girl. In
1884 they went as far as Niagara in the
hope of finding some trace of her and
again in 1888 as far west as the wilder
ness of Ohio. The next year council
of all the Indians was called at Tioga
point and the mother walked the entire
distance thither to try to find her child.
In 1897 the four brothers started again
in search of their sister, driving cattle
to cover up the purpose of their expe-
dition. One of them, Isaac, came
through the wilds of Canada as far as
Detroit, where he arrived, nearly dead
for want of food and exhausted with
his long journey. In 1898 the broth
ers made another trip, but like the
former one it was unavailing. In 1907
the mother died, leaving as heritage
the charge to her sons that The search
be kept up. For twenty years they
kept it up finally locating her near
here. When little girl Frances had
accidentally had one of her fingers
smashed by a hammer in the hands of
one Of her brothers. The brothers
and their sister, Mrs. Towne, noticed
that the aged Indian woman had an in
jured finger and asked her how 1t had
been hurt. Then she told them that
her little brother had let hammer fall
on her finger when she was a little
girl in the home Of her father. So
they knew that this was their long
lost sister.
She told them that on the day when