About five or six years ago, I tracked down the SEE farm in Randolph Co., West Virginia, as it is the site of the KINNAN Massacre of May 1791. According to THE KINNAN MASSACRE by Boyd B. Stutler, McClain Printing Co., 1969, this farm is "on the west side of the Tygarts Valley River, about a mile above the mouth of Elkwater." I located the farm and spoke with the present day SEE family and was told that the SEE family had owned the property since the early 1800s. According to the Stutler book, the KINNAN property was later "known as the Adam SEE farm, and still later as the E. B. WARD place." The SEE family members that I spoke with were very helpful and knowledgeable about the history of the property. My interest in this event is as follows; my ancestor, George WARD, died Feb. 1791 in Randolph Co., (W) VA, leaving a young widow, Margaret SWISICK WARD and three young children, David, Mary and George. On the evening of the KINNAN MASSACRE, Margaret and the children were staying at the home of Joseph and Mary LEWIS KINNAN., which was near the WARD property. Some Shawnee Indians attacked, killing Joseph KINNAN, one or two of the KINNAN children, and little Mary WARD. Mary KINNAN was captured and taken to the Detroit area; eventually her brother was able to help her escape and she returned to her childhood home in New Jersey. One of Margaret WARD's sons, David, had a tomahawk wound to the head but Margaret was able to get her sons to a back room from which they escaped. Once outside, Margaret located one or both of the surviving KINNAN children who had escaped the house also, and she and the little boys made their way to the nearest neighbor, John Hamilton, at Becky's Creek, which was about 3-5 miles away. Two first person narratives of the Kinnan Massacre exist. Margaret WARD, many years after the massacre, testified about the event in the Darke County (Ohio) Court of Common Pleas in order to prove her identity and claim her husband's Revolutionary War pension. Mary KINNAN told her story to a printer in Elizabeth, New Jersey, who then published it as THE TRUE NARRATIVE OF THE SUFFERINGS OF MARY KINNAN.
Submission of Adele Corbin
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