Heroine's of the Frontier, Part 5 - Women Who Were Parted Forever / Frances Slocum, Wyoming's Missing Child

I remember when my teacher read Little House in the Big Woods to my third grade class. Of course, we were gripped by Laura Ingalls Wilder's enthralling story of life in Wisconsin's big woods. It was one of the first stories in which I was caused to consider what it meant for pioneers to leave their homes and families and likely never see them again. Letters might be sent once or twice a year, if possible, but in all actuality, ties might be forever cut when a man decided to move his family to a new property or across the ocean of prairie, whether in search of land, freedom, or an elusive wealth.

I even wonder about the people who first settled the farm where I live. They were immigrants from Czechoslovakia. Their newspapers from home were stuffed in the walls of our porch for insulation. Did they see some of their relatives again before they passed on, or were newspapers and letters their only connection to their old country? And where did their children go, those who were raised here on this ground? We only know of one, the youngest, who eventually moved to Maine.

Then there were those pioneers who had to survive against starvation, fires, raids, illness--entirely alone. They had to do the best they could, whether covering themselves with dirt in a tilled field to escape a prairie fire, hiding in a well to escape raiders, walking for miles to find their way out of the wilderness, or treating their own illnesses with whatever they had on hand. I can't even imagine the trials.

And there were those whose foray into the wilderness brought them to their journey's end in ways they never could have anticipated. Here is one such story.

Wyoming's Missing Child - Frances Slocum 

The Capture of Frances Slocum (Internet Archives Book Image)

The Slocum family were Quakers who emigrated from Rhode Island to the Wyoming Valley in eastern Pennsylvania in 1777. They settled on the edge of the wilderness near Wilkes-Barre with their four children ages 13, 9, 5, and a, trusting that the Quakers' peaceable relations with the natives would keep them safe. However, on November 2nd in 1778, while Mr. Jonathan Slocum was away, three Delaware Indians attacked the family farm and carried off Frances Slocum, age five, her younger brother Ebenezer, and Wareham Kingsley, a young boy whose family was living with the Slocums at the time. Ebenezer was released, but both Frances and Wareham were carried away, while Frances's mother begged for her release. The last Mrs. Slocum saw of her child was likely a tearful glance as she cried out, arms outstretched. After that, Mrs. Slocum never saw Frances again, although she never gave up hoping for her return.

Over the following years, her family continued the search for their missing sister. Her brothers traversed the forests from the Susquehanna to the Great Lakes and even into the wilds of Canada hoping for some shred of evidence that their sister was still alive, but to no avail. Even when, by treaty, the Indians were made to return their captives, Frances was never numbered among them. Eventually, they began to believe that she had not survived her captors or their harsh lifestyle in the wilderness.

It turned out they were wrong. The Delaware had given young Frances to a childless Delaware chief and his wife, who raised her as their own child and named her Weletasash. Frances grew and assimilated into her adoptive family. She was married for a brief period to a Delaware man, but when she suffered domestic violence at his hand, she returned to her Delaware parents. 

At some point she encountered a wounded Miami man while traveling through the forest. With her parents' assistance, she brought him to their village, where he remained with them and regained his health. His name was She-pan-can-ah, known as Deaf Man to the white men because of his deafness. Frances eventually married him, and the couple had two boys, who died young, and two girls. They also moved to the Mississinewa Valley of north-central Indiana.

Nearly six decades passed, when one day Colonel George Ewing, an Indian trader fluent in Miami, stopped for the night at the double cabin of an elderly Miami woman and her extended family in Deaf Man's Village. During Ewing's stay, the woman revealed that she born a white woman who was abducted as a child. She no longer spoke English but remembered a few things. One was that she'd come from a Quaker family somewhere near the Susquehanna River, and she recalled that their last name was Slocum. 

There were theories about why she chose to reveal her identity to Ewing. Ewing believed it was because she was old, and that she wished the truth to be known before she should die.

Ewing went away purposing to find the woman's white relation. After some time, with a letter the postmaster in Lancaster which was misplaced for a spell, a notice was published that finally found its way to a minister in the Wyoming Valley and eventually to Frances's brother Joseph. 

After making a number of arrangements, the siblings of Frances traveled to Indiana near present-day Peru to meet their long-lost sister. They were shocked at the sight of her, so changed. One brother cried out, "Oh! Is that my sister?"

Certain bits of information were exchanged through an interpreter, as Francine answered questions stoically, her two grown daughters beside her:

"What was your name when a child?"

"I do not recollect."

"What do you remember?"

"My father, my mother, the long river, the staircase under which I hid when they came."

"How cam you to lose your thumb-nail?"

"My brother hammered it off a long time ago, when I was a very little girl at my father's house."

"Do you know how many brothers and sisters you had?"

She then mentioned them, and in the order of their ages.

"Would you know your name if you should hear it repeated?"

"It is a long time since, and perhaps I should not."

"Was it Frances?"

At once a smile played upon her features, and for the moment there seemed to pass over the face what might be called the shadow of an emotion, as she answered, "Yes."

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 Locations 3050-3058). Kindle Edition.

Despite her siblings urging her, however, Frances rejected their with to return with them, leaving her Miami family behind. She no longer had any desire to go back to that long-forgotten life, but preferred to remain with her adopted people. 

Joseph Slocum and his two daughters returned a second time to try and convince her to come with them, but even so, Frances would not be moved. "I would feel like a fish out of water," she told the interpreter.

Frances did agree to allow her Slocum family's request to have her portrait painted however. 

Although Frances Slocum never returned to the home or family to whom she was born, she did leave a legacy. A short time after their reunion, the Miami tribes began to be forcibly removed to Kansas. Frances appealed for help from her white brothers, Joseph and Isaac Slocum, who with the aid of a lawyer in Peru, found sympathetic ears in Congress for an exemption for an old woman who had suffered much hardship and hoped to remain near both her families, native and white. So, three years after Frances's identity was revealed, Congress signed a treaty providing some of the Miami with land grants allowing them to remain in Indiana. While Frances herself was not allowed a land grant, the two daughters with whom she was living were, so she and her family were able to remain in Indiana. The members of her Miami village formed the nucleus of today's Miami Nation of Indiana.

Frances Slocum was parted from her family for nearly the whole of her life, but she was not forgotten. She died of pneumonia in 1847 in Deaf Man's village at 74 years of age and was buried beside She-pan-can-ah and their two sons. In 1965, during construction of a dam that would soon be used to flood the area, their graves were moved to Wabash, Indiana, and a monument was raised there in her honor.

___________________

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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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Mound Builders of Indiana

by Ramona K. Cecil

If you’ve read any of my past posts on this blog, you’ll know that I’m a proud Hoosier with a passion for the history of my state of Indiana. The first known people to inhabit my state—whom I like to think of as the first Hoosiers—were paleo Indians we now call “mound builders.”                  

Large burial mound in southwestern Indiana

Mound Builders

                                                                                                                          

Evidence of mound builders can be found in several Midwestern and southern U.S. states with a sizeable number scattered over Indiana. The two main locations of prehistoric mounds in Indiana are preserved at Mounds State Park in Grant County in the east-central part of the state and Angel Mound State Historic site that spans modern-day Vanderburg and Warrick counties in the southwest corner of the state near Evansville, Indiana.

                 

The mounds found at Mounds State Park in the east-central region of the state are thought to have been constructed by the prehistoric Adena people and used centuries later used by the Hopewell Indians. Archeologists believe the mounds were used by the Adena/Hopewell cultures between 250 B.C. and A.D. 200 for religious and burial purposes. Over three hundred of these earthworks have been recorded in central Indiana alone. The park contains several impressive mounds including the Great Mound and Circular Earthworks and the Circle Mound and Rectangular Earthworks. Like structures found from the Mayan culture, the Indiana mounds seem aligned to mark the summer and winter solstice.   

Mounds State Park, Anderson, Indiana

Angel Mounds located at the southern tip of the state near Evansville, Indiana is the work of the Mississippian people, who inhabited the site from 1000 to 1450 AD. The site, which encompasses over 100 acres is named for the Angel family who owned the land from the mid-19th century until 1938. The farm was purchased for the state by the pharmaceutical baron, Eli Lilly. Angel Mounds is considered one of the best pre-historic Native American sites in the United States.

View of Central Mound at Angel Mounds Historic Site

                                                                                        

The first white settlers of southern Indiana were both surprised and flummoxed by these mounds that could reach as high as seventy feet, or so low as to be indistinguishable from the natural rolling landscape. When the white settlers inquired of the local Native Americans about the mounds, the local tribes shared stories passed down to them by their elders about an ancient people who’d built the mounds and how their own people had made war on the ancients and wiped them out. That, however, may have been bravado on the part of the more modern tribes as archeologists have determined that the Mississippians were long gone when tribes like the Shawnee and Miami moved into the area around 1650 A.D.

So who were these ancient people? Both the Adena/Hopewell and Mississippians were agrarian people who must have found the rich soil of the Ohio Valley perfect for growing their maize. The Mississippians built their town on the third terrace of the mound above the area flooded by the waters of the Ohio river by carrying 67,785 cubic yards of dirt in their baskets.

Diorama of Angel Mounds people

Mound builders at work making mounds

So, if the Shawnee and Miami didn’t do the Mississippians in, what happened to them? Scholars speculate that droughts and overhunting may have lead to the collapse of the chiefdom which, in turn, lead to the demise of the Mississippians.

As for this modern-day Hoosier, I’m just glad our first Hoosiers left such impressive monuments to their cultures for us to enjoy.

Have you visited any sites left around the U.S. by the mound builders? If so, I’d love to hear about it.

Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com  

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Caskets ~ An Indiana Industry

by Ramona K. Cecil

                                                                        

“Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote is often repeated during the month of April. While taxes are at the forefront of many people’s minds this month, the focus of this post is on the former subject of Franklin’s quote rather than the latter.

Sadly, over the past several months, I’ve had to say an earthly goodbye to three loved ones; close friends and extended family members. In the throes of grief and loss, we often experience a loved one’s funeral through a virtual blur, paying scant attention to details of the event including the casket. In my book Everlasting Promise, four-year-old Georgiana asks the hero, Thad, why they bury people in boxes. Thad tells her that the boxes are called “caskets,” and that burying people we love in them is a way of showing respect.

The history of burying people in “boxes” goes back thousands of years. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, burial receptacles were constructed of wood, cloth, and paper. Later, they were made of stone and those Sarcophaguses (or sarcophagi), can still be found worldwide. Coffins and caskets are generally made of wood, cloth, steel, and other materials. A distinction must be made between the terms “coffin” and “casket.” Any box used to bury the dead is considered a “coffin.” The word “casket,”  originally used to describe a small jewelry box, came into use as the description of a funerary box in the 1830s. The word “coffin” is generally used to describe a six-sided burial container with one solid lid, while a casket is a four-sided coffin with a divided top.

Plain bespoke stone coffin c. 7th Century

Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus

Roman sarcophagus

Constantinople Christian sarcophagus c. 400

Six-sided coffin with solid top

    

Four-sided casket with divided top

Steel began being used in caskets in the 1840s when Dr. Almond Fisk received a U.S. patent for a cast-iron casket with a sheet-glass lid for viewing the deceased. Until the Civil War, coffins/caskets were not mass produced, but generally part of furniture manufacturing. With the war, thousands of caskets were needed at once and the era of the mass-produced casket was launched.

Ad for Fisk casket

Since the late 1800s, my home state of Indiana—specifically southeastern Indiana—has come to dominate the casket manufacturing business. Some of the German furniture makers and artisans who settled there began making caskets in the 1880s.  Wherever you live in the United States there is a good chance that most, if not all, of the caskets at your local mortuary were manufactured in Indiana.

Two of the state's largest casket manufacturers are located in Batesville, Indiana and Aurora, Indiana.

Helping families honor

           the lives of those they love

In 1884, the Batesville Coffin Company began when local German craftsmen began making ornate wooden caskets there. John Hillenbrand, a lumber merchant and entrepreneur bought the failing company in 1906 and renamed it the Batesville Casket Company. In 1918 Batesville retooled and began making metal caskets, but 
when WW II began, the company went back to 
making wooden caskets to help in the war effort. The railroad that ran along Batesville city limits
enabled the company to supply the military with
caskets and the company grew. After the war, in 
1948, Batesville went back to making metal caskets.
Today, Batesville Casket Company is the leading manufacturer of caskets in the United States with three factories in the U.S. and one in Mexico. 

                                                                                                                               

















The Aurora Casket Company began in 1890 with John Backman and his twenty-nine employees making caskets by hand. Acquired in 2015 by Matthews International, Aurora Casket is still based in Indiana, with factories throughout the U.S. and worldwide.

Aurora Casket Company employees 1891

                                             











There is actually a National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, Texas! Who knew? There, many examples of Indiana caskets can be found alongside exotic and fantasy coffins from all over the world.

So, if you should find yourself in the market for a casket and the mortician shows you a lovely example and informs you that it’s an “Indiana” casket, know that it springs from a long heritage of Heartland artisans whose foremost goal has always been to honor the life of the recipient and to show the utmost respect. Or, as Georgiana might say, “Wespect.”

Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com  

Francis Vigo ~ Fur Trader and Spy

by Ramona K. Cecil

The word “spy” most often evokes images of glamour and sophistication personified by the suave leading man of the James Bond movies. While Francis Vigo may have possessed a measure of eighteenth century sophistication, his 

Statue of Francis Vigo at the
George Rogers Clark National
Historical Park, Vincennes, Indiana



stern, fur-swathed visage would fit better in the new movie Revenant than the aforementioned flicks.

That said, Francis Vigo’s foray into espionage proved invaluable to the Patriot cause during the American Revolution.

So who was Francis Vigo, and how did he help the Patriot cause? Born in Italy, Vigo came to the New World as a soldier in the Spanish regiment stationed in Havana Cuba. There, he became acquainted with fur traders from the upper Mississippi River. Beguiled by their tales of adventure and wealth, Vigo decided to become a fur trader. By the time the American Revolution broke out, he was operating a lucrative fur trading business out of St. Louis along the Mississippi River. A devout Roman Catholic, he was a member of the congregation shepherded by Father Pierre Gibault, an ardent supporter of the American Patriot cause. Having served as a soldier in the Spanish army, Vigo had no particular love for the English. That, along with Gibault’s influence, combined to persuade Vigo to become a patriot. Now a man of considerable means, Francis Vigo helped to finance General George Rogers Clark’s army to the tune of over $10,000.00.

Both a patriot and a savvy business man, he made regular trips between St. Louis and what is now Vincennes, Indiana, to trade furs and to make sure that Clark’s army, who’d taken control of Fort Sackville at Vincennes in July of 1778, was well supplied. The following December, during one of these trips, Vigo arrived at Vincennes unaware that the day before, the British, under the command of Henry (Hair-buyer) Hamilton, had retaken the fort.

Six miles from the fort, Vigo was captured by a band of Native Americans allied with the British and taken to Hamilton. Suspecting Vigo was friendly with the Americans, Hamilton held him prisoner at the fort for several days. Unable to prove the trader’s allegiance to the Americans, Hamilton agreed to release him on condition that Vigo promise he would do nothing on his way back to St. Louis that might hurt the British cause. Being an honorable man who prided himself in his honesty, Vigo agreed and kept his promise. However being a cunning man and a patriot, the moment he reached St. Louis, he set out for Kaskaskia, Illinois, to report to George Rogers Clark.

Surrender of Fort Sackville to Americans under George Rogers Clark

Vigo was able to give Clark vital information about the strength of Hamilton’s forces and that the British commander didn’t expect any attack from the Americans until spring. A few weeks later, with that information, Clark and his forces were able to sneak up on Hamilton at Vincennes and take Fort Sackville there without suffering any casualties.

Throughout the remainder of the war, Francis Vigo continued to help the Patriot cause with financial support, supplies, organizing Native American tribes friendly to the Americans, and by continuing to gather useful information for the Patriot forces. Sometime after 1780, Vigo moved to Vincennes where he continued his fur trading business, married, and became the largest land-owner in the area. In 1784, he did pay a price for his foray into espionage. During one of his trading trips to Detroit he was arrested by Captain Bird, a British officer there for the help he’d given Clark in retaking Vincennes. Vigo was able to obtain his release by paying the captain five thousand pounds Sterling.

Between 1790 and 1810, Vigo served as a colonel in the Knox County Militia. In 1801, he donated land to establish the Jefferson Academy in Vincennes and was named an original trustee of the school, which is the present-day Vincennes University; my husband’s alma mater. In 1818, two years after Indiana earned statehood, Vigo County, Indiana was established and named for him. In his will, Vigo provided money for a large bell for the Vigo County Courthouse.

Vigo County Courthouse

So when the word “spy” brings to mind images of a tuxedo-clad James Bond driving an Aspen-Martin or in some casino holding a martini glass, remember Francis Vigo in his buckskins and furs.  

Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com 

Eli Lilly ~ A Prescription for Better Health

by Ramona K. Cecil

                                                                                                                               

 

Have you ever taken medicine in the form of a gelatin capsule, or do you or anyone in your family use insulin to treat diabetes? If so, you can thank Col. Eli Lilly and the company he founded in my home state of Indiana.

Colonel Eli Lilly

 

Born in 1838 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Gustavus and Esther Lilly, Eli moved with his family to Indiana at the age of fourteen. Two years later, after an inspirational trip to an apothecary, he served an apprenticeship under a pharmacist in Lafayette, Indiana, then went on to graduate from Indiana Asbury University (later DePauw University) with a degree in pharmacology.

 

 

Lilly's war recruitment poster

 

By 1861 he had married, opened a drug store in Greencastle, Indiana, fathered a son, and, at the outbreak of the Civil War, enlisted in the Union Army. There he formed the 18th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery, which distinguished itself during several important battles in the war. Taken prisoner in 1864, he served the rest of the war in a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. At war’s end, he was awarded the rank of Colonel for his heroism before mustering out.

 

Lilly's first laboratory building

After the war he attempted an ill-fated cotton plantation venture, but lost interest in it when his wife and unborn son died of malaria. By 1873 he’d remarried and returned to the Midwest. In 1876 he opened a laboratory to manufacture medicines in Indianapolis. With only three employees, including his fourteen-year-old son Josiah, Colonel Lilly committed himself to producing high quality prescription drugs in an era rife with ineffective patent medicines. Among his first innovations were gelatin-coated pills and capsules, fruit-flavoring and sugar-coated pills to make taking medicine easier and more pleasant.



Assortment of Lilly throat lozenges from 1906

                                                                                               

 

One of the first medicines he produced was quinine to treat malaria, the disease that took his first wife and second son. His business boomed, and as it grew, other family members including a brother, cousin, and grandsons Eli and Josiah joined the business. By the 1880s Lilly had expanded to a complex of manufacturing buildings on the south side of Indianapolis with over a hundred employees and annual sales of $200,000., nearly five million dollars in today’s currency.

                                                                     

Lilly's plant on McCarty Street, Indianapolis, 1886

Colonel Eli Lilly on the right, his son Josiah
on the left, and his grandson Eli in the center.

 

                                                                                       





About this time Colonel Lilly handed control of the business to his son and grandsons and focused his energy on philanthropy. He sponsored the forerunner of the United Way, helped to create the Indianapolis Water Company and the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. The old soldier also helped raise funds to build the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, the iconic statuary that towers over Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis.

Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument,
Indianapolis, Indiana

 



Advertisement for Lilly insulin

At the turn of the 20th Century, the Eli Lilly Company continued to expand and innovate under Josiah Lilly and his son and Colonel Lilly’s namesake, Eli Lilly. In the 1920s Josiah worked with Toronto scientists J.J.R. Macleod, Frederick G. Banting, and Charles H. Best to develop and mass produce insulin. In 1923 insulin sold under the Lilly trade name Lletin became the first commercially available insulin product for the treatment of diabetes in the U.S. The development of Lletin won Banting and Macleod a Nobel Prize and made Lilly one of the major pharmaceutical manufacturers in the world.

 

Since then, Eli Lilly has remained on the forefront of groundbreaking drug innovations with mass production of penicillin and Merthiolate, an antiseptic and germicide that became standard issue during WII. In the 1950 Lilly introduced new antibiotics and was heavily involved in production and distribution of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine.

Lilly penicillin



Lilly Merthiolate

 

In recent decades Lilly has continued to provide a vast array of innovative new drugs to treat a myriad of ills, keeping the company on the cutting edge of pharmaceutical research.

 

So when you open up that new prescription, check to see if the word Lilly is printed on the pill or medicine bottle. If it is, you might want to say, before downing your dose, “Here’s to you, Colonel Lilly!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com

Coming in 2016