The Jacob Seybert family, Part 2: Fort Seybert

[Continued from The Jacob Seybert family: Coming to America]

Part 2: From the events at Fort Seybert to the defeat of the NW Indian Confederation.

 Wednesday, 28 April 1758:  On this fateful morning, a fog lay upon the land shrouding South Fork Valley.  The immediate presence of the approaching Shawnee war party was unsuspected.
Eastward from the stockade, the ground fell rapidly to the level of the river bottom.  At the foot of the slope was a damp swale through which flowed a stream that was crossed by a log bridge.  A few yards beyond this was a spring which supplied water for the fort[1]. In the early morning hours a woman walked there for water and was unaware that an Indian, supposedly Killbuck himself, was hiding under the log bridge.

About this time, Sarah Dyer-Hawes,  the wife of Peter Hawes (deceased), went out with a servant boy named Wallace to milk some cows.  While following a path which today leads toward the circa 1910 Post Office (south of the fort), they were surprised by two Indians and captured.  Mrs. Hawes was said to have had a pair of sheep shears in her hand and to have attempted to stab one of the Indians.

William Dyer[2] had gone out to hunt earlier that morning and was waylaid by the Indians near the fort.  He had time to fire his weapon, but his flintlock refused to prime.  As he drew back the hammer for a second trial he was pierced by several musket balls fired by the Indians. William fell dead and the cocked flintlock dropped from his grasp, where it lay on the forest floor until decay of the stock separated lock and barrel.  Mr. J. Clem Miller, (son of William C. Miller), has in his possession a rusty flintlock with its hammer cocked that was found west of the fort. He believes it may have been in the hands of William Dyer when he was killed.

The gunfire alerted the fog shrouded settlement.[3] With the presence of the enemy now known, Nicholas, the 15 year old son of Captain Jacob Seybert, took station in the upper floor of the blockhouse.  From his elevated position, he mortally wounded an Indian, who raised his head from behind the ledge of rocks under the brow of a hill, one hundred yards eastward, in the direction of the spring.[4]

At this time a horseman was riding toward the fort, but hearing the gunfire and knowing something was wrong, he spread the alarm among the more distant settlers.

Presently, Chief Killbuck, who was leading the war party, walked into a clearing by the fort and called for a truce.  He called on the defenders to surrender the fort, threatening no mercy if they did not, but good treatment if they did. Killbuck had good reason for using deceit in an attempt to take the fort.  It was not a great distance from Fort Seybert to the more heavily populated regions of the Shenandoah Valley.  White reinforcements would certainly be coming, so time was an important element.

Jacob listened to the deceitful parley.

Although there were about forty persons in the fort, there were very few men amongst them.  Most of the men from Dyer Settlement had gone across the Shenandoah Mountain on business a day or so before, among them Matthew Patton, Michael Mallow and Andrew Trumbo.  Also, several families had fled the valley in fear that very morning.
Regardless, it is doubtful that Fort Seybert ever had a strong garrison.  Whether the fewness of adult men or a shortage of supplies, especially ammunition, had anything to do with Jacob’s decision is not known, but Jacob yielded to the demands of the enemy, which also included turning over what money and other valuables the defenders had.[5]

Just before the gate was opened, Nicholas Seybert took aim at Killbuck and was squeezing the trigger when the gun muzzle was knocked downward; the ball only raised the dust at Killbuck’s feet.
(Accounts differ as to whether Jacob or another man, Robertson, deflected the gun.)  In finding that
surrender had been decided upon, Nicholas was so enraged he attempted to use violence on his father, Jacob.
The gate was opened, and the savages rushed in.
Killbuck dealt Jacob a blow in the mouth with the pipe side of his tomahawk, knocking out several of his teeth.  Instantly the whites realized the horror of their situation and saw the inevitable doom which awaited them.  In a false moment of security, they had trusted the promise of savages and now were about to pay for the folly with their lives.  Nicholas did not surrender, but was taken prisoner by being overpowered.
When the settlers were secured and led outside, the fort was burned.  A woman named, Hannah Hinkle, bedfast at the time, perished in the flames.
The man, Robertson, had hid himself and as soon as the Indians withdrew, he hurried to the river, followed a bluff to conceal his tracks and made his way over the Shenandoah Mountain.[6]

According to Keister family tradition: When the Indians poured into the fort and the settlers found they were to be massacred, they broke and ran.  During the confusion, Hannah Dyer Keister hid with two small children and one infant among large rocks about 200 yards from the fort and remained there during the slaughter.  The boulders being huge, could hide several people amongst them easily.  Today the place where she hid is called Galloping Run.

The war party took their prisoners up the slope toward South Fork Mountain, where they stopped on a hillside about a quarter mile to the west of the burning fort.  After some discussion, the Indians separated their captives into two groups and seated them in rows on two logs.  The row on one log was for captivity; the other was for slaughter.  Those to be killed were tied hand and foot.  On a signal, the doomed persons were tomahawked and scalped.  Their bleeding bodies left where they fell.  Sarah Dyer-Hawes fainted when she saw her father sink below the blow of his executioner.[7]

Tomahawks continued to fall killing the already wounded Jacob Seybert, age 41 years; his wife Mary Elizabeth Theiss, age 37 ; Jacob’s mother Johanna (about 65 years old); and others.[8]

Suddenly, James Dyer, a tall 14 year old boy, broke away and ran ahead of several pursuing warriors to a thicket on the river a half mile to the east.  He was recaptured.
Of the thirty settlers captured within the fort, only eleven were spared.

Among the remaining captives were the children of Jacob and Mary Seybert:  Nicholas, age 15 years; ancestor Margaret, age 12; Catherine, 10; Elizabeth, 9; Henry, 7; and  George, 5.
The other surviving captives included James Dyer, Mrs. Sarah Dyer Hawes, Mrs. Jacob Peterson, pregnant Mrs. Mallow, and Miss Henever.

The Indians’ reason to spare the captives was to adopt them and, thereby, strengthen the tribe.  They wanted young men who would make valiant warriors and strong young women who could help the squaws do work.  They did not want old people, weaklings or cowards.  They preferred brunettes to blondes because they  more closely resembled the Indian complexion.
The Wallace boy’s blonde scalp was later seen by Sarah Hawes at the Indian village.

By now, it was past noon.
The war party, with their eleven remaining captives and their wounded comrade on a improvised litter, began climbing South Fork Mountain.  (Their route can be followed on the Pendleton County Map.)  The settler’s surrendered valuables, which included a half bushel of silver and gold coins[9],  had been collected in an iron kettle that carried on a pole between two braves.  As the trudging up the east slope of the South Fork Mountain became more burdensome and fear of pursuit made faster travel more advisable, the two Indians fell behind the group and hid the valuables.  It is doubtful that they returned to claim the treasure, as this was their last known visit to the area.  One of the women, Mrs. Mallow, had a crying baby.  To quiet it, an Indian seized the child and stuck its neck into the forks of a dogwood sapling and let the tree fly back.  The baby died.
The war party followed a pathway, still known as Indian Trail, which crosses South Fork Mountain through Dean’s Gap and the Deer Run area.  By nightfall they had reached Greenawalt Gap, having come about nine miles north of the smoldering Fort Seybert.
It was here that the Indian, which Nicholas Seybert had shot in the head, died of his wound.  He was buried 500 feet up the steep mountain side in a cavern.  Until 1850 or so, portions of the skeleton were still to be seen in the cave.
The next morning the group continued past the site of the burned Fort Upper Tract and through Germany Valley.[10]  Their second night’s encampment was at the mouth of Seneca River.
The party traveled without pursuit or mishap.  After a journey of nine days the band of Shawnee and their captives reached the Indian villages near Chillicothe, Ohio.[11]

The next day after the massacre at Fort Seybert, a relief party led by Captain Brock, undoubtedly notified by Robertson, arrived at the smoldering ruins.  It was too late to do anything, except bury the slaughtered victims.[12]  Their ghastly corpses were interred in one common grave, undoubtedly, very near the spot where the tragedy occurred.  A stone wall was erected around the grave, where it stood for nearly a century.  The wall was removed by a Road Overseer, who was willing to overlook common decency and respect for the resting place of the dead, inorder to fill a mud hole.

Three weeks after the massacre, Daniel Smith was named administrator for the Jacob “Sivers” estate.  The estate was appraised on November 8th, 1758, recorded on November 15th and consisted of:
Horses – 4 mares, 3 colts, 2 yearlings
Cattle – 1 bull, 7 cows, 6 calves, 2 steers, and 6 young cattle
Parcel of old iron, parcel of copper
Colter and shears, Kettle and Basin
The estate, valued at 54 pounds, 4 shillings and 3 pence, was subsequently sold to pay for provisioning the militia.[13]  (See: Appraisal of the Seybert Estate, included in this document.)

George Washington estimated the total loss of life at Fort Upper Tract and Fort Seybert at sixty persons.  The burning of the forts and general havoc wrought in the foray delivered a severe blow to the infant settlements, but the land was not abandoned.

The captive pioneer children lived in a Shawnee Indian village near Chillicothe, Ohio.
“After a year or more with the Indians, Nicholas Seybert arranged for the escape of his brothers and sisters.  He had become a trustee with the Indians, and was allowed to carry on fur trading with the French.  One evening when a wagon load of furs was taken out of camp he put his brothers and sisters in the bottom of the wagon, piling furs on top of them.  As the wagon was driven away Nicholas
remained at camp, manifesting surprise when the Indians discovered their disappearance.  He pretended to be as disturbed as the Indians.  That same night he made his escape.”[14]

Several years after his return, Nicholas Seybert sold his father’s farm to John Blizzard and made a new home on Straight Creek.  Some of his descendants still live in that vicinity.
From 1768 to the early years of the Revolutionary War, he owned a Tavern or Inn at Fredericktown, Maryland.
Nicholas went into the Revolutionary War from Maryland and became a Lieutenant.  He later dropped out of the Maryland regiment to join a Virginian regiment. After the war, he spent the rest of his life on Straight Creek, in present day Highland County, Virginia, where he and his brothers owned land.[15]  (See: Pendleton County Map.)

James Dyer remained among the Indians for about two years, occasionally accompanying trading parties to Fort Pitt, now Pittsburgh, Ohio.  On his last trip, he was sent with an Indian to buy bread.  Eluding his companion, he entered a cabin and sought protection.  A French trader’s wife hid him behind a trunk and stacked furs over him.  In searching for James, the Indians came into the hut and removed a few furs, but stopped before he was discovered.

About a year and a half after making his escape, James accompanied his brother-in-law, Matthew Patton, to Fort Pitt to sell cattle.  A cattle dealer told them that a tribe near there had a red headed woman among them. Matthew arranged for a store dealer to have the woman come to the store.  The woman was his sister, Sarah Dyer Hawes.  She was  hidden behind and under the store’s counter and covered with hides.[16]

Sarah’s captivity made some changes in her appearance and manner, so that when she returned, her young daughter did not recognize her.  In time the child accepted her identity. Sarah’s husband, Henry, had died in 1755, before the massacre.  In 1764, a couple years after escaping from the Indians, she was remarried  to a Robert Davis.  Sarah died circa 1818, at about 80 years of age, leaving behind at least 25 grandchildren.

The pregnant Mrs. Mallow gave birth to a son, Henry, in captivity.  She eventually returned to her husband Michael, just before he was to be remarried.

As cruel and unmerciful as the Shawnee were in war, when a captive was saved and adopted into an Indian family the captive was treated the same as any other member of that family.  Every effort was made to make adopted whites content and create in them a willingness to stay.  Returned captives stated that they were treated with great hospitality and kindness, according to the Indian’s ideas of these virtues.  When the colonial militias and later the United States army forced the surrender of white captives, there was often great sorrow at the parting.  The Indians delivered their beloved captives with utmost reluctance, and shed torrents of tears over them.  As long as the army remained in camp, the Indian families would visit their adoptee daily, bringing them corn, skins, horses and other materials they had bestowed on them while in their families.[17]

This first stage of the Pioneer Period was brief. It marks little more than the gaining of a foothold on the new soil. It was the story of a weak settlement in the remote corner of a huge country.

With the collapse of French power in America in 1760, the Indian peril became less acute; however, the Indians carried on a war of their own account.

Meanwhile, a renewed wave of immigration swept into Highland County, into that part which became Pendleton County, West Virginia.  Land values rose, and highways were extended.  Church and school houses made their appearance.

In 1764 the Indians were forced to give up some thirty two men and fifty eight women and children as captives.[18]

During 1770, about 10 years after her escape from the Indians, 25 year old Margaret Seybert married 24 year old William Janes IV.[19]  William and Margaret developed a plantation on Straight Creek about 25 miles southwest of old Fort Seybert and the Dyer Settlement.  Their property was possibly either adjoining a part of or very near William’s parents’ plantation, which had been purchased in 1751.
The William Janes IV and Margaret Seybert plantation (ca 1770-1801) included properties located between 3 to 4 miles north of Monterey, on both the north side and within the forks of Straight Creek and West Straight Creek.  In this location the plantation was about 2.5 miles south of  the confluence of Straight Creek and the South Branch of the Potomac.  Nicholas Seybert and his brothers also bought property and lived in this area.

From 1764 to 1774 there was a period of relative peace on the “west” Virginia frontier.  During this time the Pendleton County Deed Book showed the conveyance of 200,000 acres of land to the “Whites” from the Shawnee, Delaware and Iroquois  Indians.  The payment was to be made in  blankets, shirts, stockings, ribbon, calico, serge[20], thread, gartering, strouds, and callimancoe; also in knives, needles, tobacco, tongs, brass kettles, powder, lead, gunflints, vermilion and ten dozen
jewsharps.[21]  The Indian Tribes were being pushed west and northwest by colonial expansion.

Meanwhile on Straight Creek, William and Margaret started a family with the births of son, Henry, born 1771 and daughter, Eleanor, born 1773.

1774 to 1779 was a time when great change swept through the American colonies:
1)  There was a successful revolution against England.
2) The French, who had been our enemies during the French and Indian War, were now celebrated allies in our fight for freedom.
3)  A fledgling, post Revolutionary War colonial government formed and signed the Constitution of the United States.

During 1774: Beyond the Shenandoah Mountains, a ten year period of peace with the Indians came to an end.  In a band stretching from the Indian Territories of Ohio into ‘west’ Virginia, there developed a long period of hostilities.  Beginning in 1774 and lasting twenty years, a renewed state of guerrilla warfare existed between the settlers and Indians.  During this long period there was always the chance that some war party might pass through the broadening zone of settlement and once more bring the tomahawk and torch to the realization of people who knew from experience what these things meant.

At their plantation on Straight Creek, a tributary of the South Branch of the Potomac, the William Janes IV and Margaret Seybert family continued to grow with the births of John, born in 1777, Samuel in 1779, my ancestor ♥ William V in 1780, Edward in 1783, Elizabeth in 1785, and Margaret in 1787.[22]

In 1789, George Washington, who in his younger years directed that Fort Upper Tract and other frontier forts be built on the western Virginia frontier during the French and Indian Wars, and who went on to command the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution, was overwhelmingly elected first President of the American Republic.

Records for 1793 show 47 years old William Janes was a company officer with the rank of Captain and commanded 67+ men in the First Battalion of the 46th Regiment.[23]  One can imagine the 48 year old Margaret Seybert backing her husband’s periodic duties as Captain of the local militia over the years.  Most of her life was spent in a tense and hostile relationship with the Savages.  About 35 years earlier the Indians killed her mother and father, grandmother, step-grandpa, and others she knew and loved and took her and her siblings into captivity. Then, for the last 19 years there existed a state of guerrilla warfare between the Indians and settlers.

1794: During the second term of his Presidency, George Washington appointed Revolutionary War hero, General Anthony Wayne, to command the U.S. Army against the Northwest Indian Confederation.

On 20 August 1794, General Wayne, with a force of one thousand seasoned soldiers, met and routed two thousand warriors who had gathered for the final confrontation near Fort Miami on the Maumee River in the Ohio Territory.  The decisive defeat of the Indians at The Battle of Fallen Timbers, lead to the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.  By terms of the treaty, the Indians were forced to cede to the United States most of Ohio and a large area which later became Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.

During September 1832, as per the treaty, the Shawnee were removed from Ohio and sent across the Mississippi River to Indian Territory on the Kansas River.

The next time our family line encountered the Shawnee was by Pulaski Easton: during the California Gold Rush of ’49 (see associated article). By this time, they were a peaceful, impoverished tribe, living on the Great Plains in ‘Indian Territory’, west of Independence, Missouri.[24]

As listed in Grave Register II, Pendleton County, West Virginia, Jacob Seybert and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Theiss Seybert, were killed in the massacre.  In 1936, the descendants of Roger Dyer had the grave site enclosed with a wall of native stone.  In 1986, Roger Dyer Family Association installed a bronze plate on the stone wall stating:

“Grave site of the 17 victims of the Fort Seybert Massacre, April 28, 1758.
Known names: Capt. Jacob Seybert and wife, Roger Dyer, Wallace boy,
William Dyer, Henry Haus, John Regger and wife.”[25]

The ground, on which Fort Seybert stood and upon which now stands a mortar and stone wall surrounding the grave of those slaughtered at Fort Seybert, belonged to Jacob Seybert.  In 1768, Nicholas Seybert, son of Jacob, sold the 210 acre tract to John Blizzard.  One of John Blizzard’s heirs sold the land to a minister named, Ferdinand Lair, in about 1800.[26]  Ferdinand Lair willed the land to his grandson, John Miller.  The land was willed down the Miller family to William C. Miller (alive in 1916)  and his sons, J. Clem Miller (alive in 1936) and Ed T. Miller.  In the late 1980s the property belonged to elderly Paul Conrad, a widower, who married a Miller daughter.

Footnotes below:
[1]  In later years, a willow cutting was planted near the spring which grew into a tree measuring four and a half feet in diameter.  It is thought that the tree subsequently dried up the spring.
[2] William was the eldest son of Roger Dyer. William had a wife and two sons.  His brother, James Dyer, and sister, Sarah Dyer-Hawes, survived the attack as captives.
[3] Talbot, The Dyer Settlement
[4] The ledge where the Indian was shot is, in the 20th Century, in front of the main entrance of the William C.  Miller house, at a distance of about 100 yards.
[5] Morton, A History of Pendleton County
[6] Talbot, The Dyer Settlement
[7] Morton, A History of Pendleton County
[8] Pendleton County Historical Grave Register, (Pendleton County: West Virginia, 1977), 52.
[9] Talbot, The Dyer Settlement
[10] “Origin of the Treasure Mountain Festival,” Treasure Mountain Festival Newspaper, 14-17 Sept 1989,    (Franklin:Pendleton County,West Virginia)
[11] Talbot, The Dyer Settlement
[12] From correspondance with my cousin, Doris Grubb, and husband, John Hughes, who visited the historic Fort Seybert site in December 1988 and spoke with Paul Conrad (related to the deceased Miller family by marriage.) John quoted Paul as saying of the massacre victims, “I always heard
they were killed up there on the hill where they’re buried.”
[13] Morton, History of Highland County, equivalent to $180.71 in 1910.
[14] Talbot, The Dyer Settlement
[15]  Correspondence with Doris Grubb Hughes. While looking for literature regarding Seybert descendants  at the Monterey, Virginia, public library, Doris and John Hughes were approached by the Head Librarian who while speaking with them claimed to be  a descendant of Nicholas Seybert. She said that Nicholas had owned 3000 acres in the vicinity of Monterey.
[16]  Talbot, The Dyer Settlement
[17]  Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. I and II, (Cincinnati: C.J. Krehbiel & Co. Publishers and Binders, 1904)
[18] It is estimated there were approximately 2,000 incidents of kidnapping of white settlers during the French and Indian War.
[19] Evelyn Halkyard Vohland, Betebenner – Horney and Allied Families,  (Shelton: Clipper Publishers, 1981)
[20] A twill weaved fabric made of silk or wool and often used for  military uniforms.
[21] Morton, A History of Pendleton County
[22] Bell, The Seiberts
[23] Morton, A History of Pendleton County
[24] Article, Pulaski Easton – California ’49er, mentions the Shawnee briefly, Line C: Midwestern Migration.
[25] “Marker Placed at Grave of 17 Victims of Fort Seybert Massacre”, The Pendleton Times newspaper
[27] October 1988, (Franklin: Pendleton County , West Virginia)
[26] Deed recorded in Pendleton County, West Virginia.