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INDIAN INCURSIONS AND MASSACRES.

CHAPTER VIII.

INDIAN INCURSIONS AND MASSACRES.—Continued.

In a preceding chapter the erection {typo corrected} of several stone dwelling-houses was noticed.These houses had generally small stockade forts about them; and whenever an alarm took place, the neighboring people took shelter in them, as places of security against their savage foes.*

The men never went out of the forts without their guns. The enemy were frequently lurking about them, and at every opportunity would kill some of the people. At the residence of Major {typo corrected} Rob't D. Glass, on Opequon, five miles southwest of Winchester, part of his dwelling-house was erected in the time of the Indian war; the port-holes were plainly to be seen before the body was covered with weather-boarding. The people were closely forted for about three years. After the termination of hostilities between England and France, the incursions of the Indians were less frequent, and never in large parties; but they were continued at intervals until the year 1766 or 1767.

About the year 1758, a man by the name of John Stone, near what is called the White House, in the Hawksbill settlement, was killed by Indians. Stone's wife, with her infant child and a son about seven or eight years old, and George Grandstaff, a youth of sixteen years old, were taken off as prisoners. On the South Branch Mountain, the Indians murdered Mrs. Stone and her infant, and took the boy and Grandstaff to their towns. Grandstaff was about three years a prisoner, and then got home. The little boy, Stone, grew up with the Indians, came home, and after obtaining possession of his father's property, sold it, got the money, returned to the Indians, and was never heard of by his friends afterwards.

The same Indians killed Jacob Holtiman's wife and her children, Holtiman escaping. They plundered old Brewbecker's house, piled up the chairs and spinning wheel, and set them on fire. A young woman who lived with Brewbecker had concealed herself in the garret; and after the Indians left the house, extinguished the fire, and saved the house from burning. Brewbecker's wife got information that the Indians were coming, and ran {typo corrected} off with her children to where several men were at work, who conveyed her across