Mary Draper Ingles - pioneering woman of Kentucky

by Billy Kennedy

MARY Ingles was arguably the first white woman to reach Kentucky (or Kentucke), long before it was settled by Daniel Boone and his adventurous long hunters in the 1770s and 1780s.  Indeed, Mary is claimed to be the first white bride west of the Allegheny Mountains.

  Her nightmarish journey into Kentucky, then known as "the dark and bloody land" is one of the truly epic stories of the 18th century American frontier, and, remarkably, Mary lived to tell the tale.

  Mary, daughter of Donegal-born George and Elenor Draper who emigrated in 1729, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and had lived with her farmer husband William (they married in 1750) in the essentially Scots-Irish community at Augusta County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

  Her terrible ordeal began in July, 1755 when she was taken captive by Shawnee Indians from north of the Ohio River, along with her two young sons Thomas and George during a raid on settlers at Draper's Meadows in south western Virginia, close to Roanoke, and later to be known as Blacksburg.

  William Ingles was working in his wheat field at the time and Mary's brother John Draper, who also lived at Draper's Meadow with his wife Bettie Robertson Draper, was away from home.

  Bettie Draper spotted Shawnee warriors first and, realising the danger, she frantically ran into the house, grabbed her sleeping infant and tried to escape through the back.  But an Indian grappled with her and broke her right arm, causing her to drop the child.  She again picked up the child, and attempted another escape, but  was captured and the infant was killed.

  The Ingles and Draper homes and barns were destroyed and both Mary and Bettie Draper were taken captive, with their children, to the Shawnee village of Chillicothe in Ohio.

  Bettie Draper, with her wounded arm, suffered a lot of torture from her captors, who killed two men, but at Chillicothe she was adopted into the family of an old Indian chief and treated with kindness until she tried to escape.

  She was instantly apprehended and sentenced to burn at the stake, but the Indian chief ordered compassion and Bettie was forced to remain in the village, where she taught the women to cook and sew, and she nursed the sick so well that the Indians regarded her with special affection.

  Six years later, her husband John Draper discovered her location, after a long and exhaustive search and he had to pay a large ransom for her release.  The couple returned to Draper's Meadows and Bettie mothered seven children.

  The plight of Mary Ingles, however, was somewhat different, for on the third night of her captivity by the Indians, she gave birth to a daughter.  Mary was 23 at the time and so strong and robust  that the day after the birth she was able to mount a horse and, with the baby in her arms, head off with her captors.

  A number of other settlers were brutally massacred in the Draper's Meadow attack which came at the start of the nine-year French-Indian War.  The settlers included Colonel James Patton,  a pioneer Scots-Irish frontiersman from Co Londonderry.

  Mary was separated from her sister-in-law and, along with five others, she was taken by the Indians to the Big Bone Lick area on the south side of the Ohio River in Boone County, Eastern Kentucky.

  Her two little boys were taken from her.  George, the younger one who was only two when captured, died, but Thomas, who was four, stayed with the Indians for thirteen years until he was finally ransomed by his father and brought home.

  Mary somehow managed to escape along with an elderly Dutch woman who had been captured by the Indians near Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) in Pennsylvania.  She left her baby daughter behind on the settlement, in a bark cradle, realising there was no chance of a successful escape if the child was brought with them.

  The pair carried only a blanket and tomahawk each and desperately they began wandering in the forests, in the forlorn but not impossible hope (as it turned out!) of making it back home.

  The hardships they encountered were extreme, with the night frost penetrating through their limbs in the dark and dank wilderness.  They were forced to sleep on the ground, in hollow logs and sometimes in deserted cabins.  For food, they ate wild grapes, roots, black walnuts, and, turnips and corn located on abandoned cabin plots.  The pangs of hunger were almost unbearable.

  They headed in a north-westerly direction towards the Kanawha River in present-day West Virginia and they were the first white women to enter what is now the state of Kentucky.

  It was a lonely trek over 43 days, and an estimated 700 miles, and during the ordeal Mary's elderly Dutch companion became totally worn-out through the lack of food and her mind went.

(Above) Mary Draper's journey: the thiick lines show her movement west as a captive of Shawnee indians and her return east. The entire trip took place in the summer and fall of 1755.

  The extreme deprivation brought acute tensions between the two women and the elderly Dutch woman became so crazed with hunger that she tried to kill Mary.  It was a frightening and alarming experience for Mary, who decided that her best means of survival was to try and make it home on her own.

  She found an old canoe, and with an improvised paddle, she managed after nightfall to cross the Ohio River.

  There was still a considerable way to travel, through the bleak mountain and forest wilderness, but, eventually, after more days of trekking, Mary reached the Adam Harmon farm, about 15 miles from her home at Draper's Meadow.

  Mary's safe return home had taken a lot of good luck, and sheer guts and perseverance, but she managed to locate the search party that was sent to find her and they in turn also rescued her delirious companion who was just aimlessly wandering in the woods.  Their clothes were reduced to rags and their moccasins completely worn out.  They were in a pitiful condition.

  It took many months to return Mary to full health, but when she was fully restored her faithful husband William Ingles moved the family to New River Bottom near the present-day city of Radford in south western Virginia.  Incredibly, Mary had four more children and she lived until she was 83, dying in 1815.

  It had been a perilous adventure, but Mary and her husband and friends were able to make good use of the experience, after she related some of the pathways in the mountains and forests of the still largely unexplored and uninhabited Kentucky and West Virginia territories.

  Interestingly, Mary Draper Ingles and Bettie Draper when they were first captured by the Shawnee Indians in 1755 were the first white persons to have reached the present site of Charleston in West Virginia.

  A bronze monument erected to the memory of Mary Draper Ingles in a Radford, Virginia cemetery carries the words: "No greater exhibition of female heroism, courage and endurance are recorded in the annals of frontier history."

  Mary Ingles, and indeed her sister-in-law Bettie Draper were true pioneers of the American frontier.

Women of the Frontier by Billy Kennedy. Published by Ambassador International, Ardenlee Street, Belfast BT6 8QJ and 427 Wadehampton Boulevard, Greenville, South Carolina 29609. £9.99 and $15. Website: www.emeraldhouse.com.