Heroines of the Frontier, Part 5, Women Who Escaped Captivity / Anna Rouse Philbrick

 

In the course of American history, we've heard many frontier stories of capture by Indians as settlers moved across the land. Some captives survived and remained for their lifetimes with their Native American captors, even forming familial bonds. Others' lives ended violently, and still some others escaped. There were also those who were released and returned to their homes. 

Some names that come to the forefront of these stories, and whose names I've linked to further articles or video for more in-depth looks at their stories, include:

• Fanny Kelly, captured by Sioux and freed five months later. Her story has been written about previously, here on the HHH blog, by Janalyn Voight. Find it at the link. 
• Olive Oatman, the famous eleven-year-old girl abducted in the desert southwest and widely recognized by the blue tattoos she received from her captors. Years later, she was ransomed by the U.S. army in a story both complex and tragic.
• Mary Draper Ingles the renowned Virginian woman taken by the Shawnee after the Draper's Meadows Massacre in 1755 escaped her captors and walked five or six hundred miles across rivers and over mountains to get home. Her story has been immortalized in books and movies.
• Jenny Wiley (born Jean "Jenny" Sellards), in a very sad and tragic story, attempted to fend off an attack by eleven Indians from four different tribes, while at her cabin in Kentucky, but she was eventually captured along with two of her children who did not survive capture. She was held for eleven months until she escaped to Harmon's Blockhouse in another county. 
• Amanda "Anna" Bell Brewster was violently attacked and carried away by a raiding band of Sioux while working in a field at her Kansas home. On the journey, she was traded for horses to a passing group of Cheyenne. After Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's 7th US Calvary attacked Chief Black Kettle's village, she was released by them.  
• Hannah Dustin was a Puritan woman from Massachusetts who is famously depicted in this painting, not only for her escape from her Abenaki captors during King William's War, but for killing and scalping her captors in the process. 

There are many other women who suffered captivity, some famous and some who merely line the annals of our nation's strange and often tragic history.

One such name you might not have heard of is that of Anna Rouse Philbrick, a young bride who went missing on her wedding day, when her home in the Michigan wilderness was attacked during Pontiac's War.

Here is her story as told in Woman on the Frontier, by William W. Fowler (Please note that this story is in the Public Domain, and it is written with some language we would not deem tasteful or would be considered biased today. I chose to leave it unedited or unredacted, in it's original form as the author intended.)

Anna Rouse Philbrick:

A STOLEN BRIDE

In the year 1762 the Great Pontiac, the Indian Napoleon of the Northwest, had his headquarters in a small secluded island at the opening of Lake St. Clair. Here he organized, with wonderful ability and secrecy, a wide-reaching conspiracy, having for its object the destruction of every English garrison and settlement in Michigan. His envoys, with blood-stained hatchets, had been despatched to the various Indian tribes of the region, and wherever these emblems of butchery had been accepted the savage hordes were gathering, and around their bale-fires in the midnight pantomimes of murder were concentrating their excitable natures into a burning focus which would light their path to carnage and rapine.

While these lurid clouds, charged with death and destruction, were gathering, unseen, about the heads of the adventurous pioneers, who had penetrated that beautiful region, a family of eastern settlers, named Rouse, arrived in the territory, and, disregarding the admonitions of the officers in the fort at Detroit, pushed on twenty miles farther west and planted themselves in the heart of one of those magnificent oak-openings which the Almighty seems to have designed as parks and pleasure-grounds for the sons and daughters of the forest.

Miss Anna Rouse, the only daughter of the family, had been betrothed before her departure from New York State to a young man named James Philbrick, who had afterward gone to fight the French and Indians. It was understood that upon his return he was to follow the Rouse family to Michigan, where, upon his arrival, the marriage was to take place.

In a few months young Philbrick reached the appointed place, and in the following week married Miss Rouse in the presence of a numerous assemblage of soldiers and settlers, who had come from the military posts and the nearest plantations to join in the festivities.

All was gladness and hilarity; the hospitality was bounteous, the company joyous, the bridegroom brave and manly, and the bride lovely as a wild rose. When the banquet was ready the guests trooped into the room where it was spread, and even the sentinels who had been posted beside the muskets in the door-yard, seeing no signs of prowling savages, had entered the house and were enjoying the feast. Scarcely had they abandoned their post when an ear-piercing war-whoop silenced in a moment the joyous sound of the revelers. The soldiers rushed to the door only to be shot down. A few succeeded in recovering their arms, and made a desperate fight. Meanwhile the savages battered down the doors, and leaped in at the windows. The bridegroom was shot, and left for dead, as he was assisting to conceal his bride, and a gigantic warrior, seizing the latter, bore her away into the darkness. After a short but terrific struggle, the savages were driven out of the house, but the defenders were so crippled by their losses and by the want of arms which the enemy had carried away, that it was judged best not to attempt to pursue the Indians, who had disappeared as suddenly as they came.

When the body of the bridegroom was lifted up it was discovered that his heart still beat, though but faintly. Restoratives were administered, and he slowly came back to life, and to the sad consciousness that all that could make life happy to him was gone forever.

The family soon after abandoned their new home and moved to Detroit, owing to the danger of fresh attacks from Pontiac and his confederates. Years rolled away; young Philbrick, as soon as he recovered from his wounds, took part in the stirring scenes of the war, and strove to forget, in turmoil and excitement, the loss of his fair young bride. But in vain. Her remembrance in the fray nerved his arm to strike, and steadied his eye to launch the bullet at the heart of the hated foes who had bereft him of his dearest treasure; and in the stillness of the night his imagination pictured her, the cruel victim of her barbarous captors.

Peace came in 1763, and he then learned that she had been carried to Canada. He hastened down the St. Lawrence and passed from settlement to settlement, but could gain no tidings of her. After two years, spent in unavailing search, he came back a sad and almost broken-hearted man.

Her image, as she appeared when last he saw her, all radiant in youth and beauty, haunted his waking hours, and in his dreams she was with him as a visible presence. Months, years rolled away; he gave her up as dead, but he did not forget his long-lost bride.

One summer's day, while sitting in his cabin in Michigan, in one of those beautiful natural parks, where he had chosen his abode, he heard a light step, and, looking up, saw his bride standing before him, beautiful still, but with a chastened beauty which told of years of separation and grief.

Her story was a long one. When she was borne away from the marriage feast by her savage captor, she was seen by an old squaw, the wife of a famous chief who had just lost her own daughter, and being attracted by the beauty of Miss Rouse, she protected her from violence, and finally adopted her. Twice she escaped, but was recaptured. The old squaw afterwards took her a thousand miles into the wilderness, and watched her with the ferocious tenderness that the tigress shows for her young. At length, after nearly six years, her Indian mother died. She succeeded then in making her escape, traveled four hundred miles on foot, reached the St. Lawrence, and after passing through great perils and hardships, arrived at Detroit. There she soon found friends, who relieved her wants and conveyed her to her husband, whom she had remembered with fondness and loved with constancy during all the weary years of her captivity. 

William Worthington Fowler. Woman on the American Frontier / A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic" (Kindle Location 2959). Kindle Edition.

 

Coming November 1st, from Barbour Fiction!

Courting the Country Preacher:

Four Stories of Faith, Hope. . .and Falling in Love

About the Collection

Being a preacher in the countryside is not for the faint of heart nor faith. Four inexperienced preachers face a myriad of challenges including those who figure a man of the cloth needs a wife. Can they meet the expectations of "helpful" congregants and be true to their hearts? 

Convincing the Circuit Preacher by Carolyn Miller, Australia, 1863

Mail Order Minister by Kari Trumbo, South Dakota, 1889

The Mountie's Rival by Angela K. Couch, Canada, 1907

The Angel and the Sky Pilot by Naomi Musch, Minnesota, 1910

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