The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1949-10-20

when a small band of Indians sur
prised them. Mrs. Bilderback hid in
the weeds on the river bank. Jacob
fled to the river but was shot in the
shoulder. Charles was captured be-
fore he could run. The wounded
brother however, swan the river to
the Bilderback cabin on the West
Virginia side and escaped,
Charles Bilderback was a huge,
strapping fellow, usually called Gap
tain,' very noisy and bold talking;
but when taken by the Indians he
coaxed his wife out of the weeds,
pleading with her to come out and
talk to the savages. Maybe she could
talk them out of injuring him.
Ruhama came out of the bushes and
the sayages took her along too.
Husband Killed
That evening, in a camp miles
away, the Indians threw Bilderback's s
CORY scalp into his wife's lap and
told her she was a widow. Mrs.
Bilderback was kept captive by the
Indians for several months but never
mistreated. A rowing band finally
took her with them into Kentucky.
Seven Indians had been in the
party capturing the Bilderbacks and
before taking Bilderback had asked
him if he was not Captain Charles
Bilderback. 1--WE recognize you," an
Indian told him.
Seven Indians-an Indian for each
year since March 5, 1882, when Will
liamson's and Crawford's Pennsyl-
vania militia, in drunken frenzy when
hunting two savages who had muir
dered white man, found the peace
full Moravian village, Gnedenhutton,
Tuscarawas County, and had ruth
lessly slain its SO unarmed and un-
resisting Christian Indian inhabitants,
Bilderback had been a captain in
that militia and had shed the first
| Moravian blood in the massacre when
he shot, then tomahawked and scalp
| ed Shehosh, the aged Moravian chief.
Bilderback was with the militia
months later when the Indians de-
feated the soldiers near Carey, Wy
andotte County, captured Crawford
and John Slower, a scout, and burned
! Crawford at the stake. Slower was
taken to Pickaway County and was
saved only by superstition when, tied
to a stake and the fire about to be
lighted, heavy thundershower came
and the Indians cut him loose. They
thought the Great Spirit disapproved
of what they were about to do. And
so the Indians had gotten Bilderback
too. The savages did not forget.
| Indian Vengeance
Bilderback was a native Virginian
When Crawford and half the militia
were killed or captured, Williamson
and the other half had escaped
among them Captain Bilderback. Ir
1856 he brought his wife and brother
to the Wheeling country and put ur
their cabin on the east side of the
Ohio River. The savages had tracked
and hunted him for seven years.
| 1t was Ruhama Bilderback fol
whom the Cincinnatians at Gordon's
tavern traded the keg of whisky anc
later routed the savages with sticks
and stones. She was sent to Penn.
sylvania and later to the Bilderback
cabin on the Ohio.
There Ruhama met a wandering
hunter and trapper, John Greene
from Fairfield County and in the
1905 was married to him, moving
three miles west of Lancaster. There
| their son was born-the first white
child born in Fairfield County. Rub
| anna Green died in 1912, ten years
| after the death of her second
husband, John Greene.
So goes the story behind the Gin
cinnati tradition of the fight at Battle
Row, where most of the men who
routed the Indians were Irishmen.