Frances Slocum - Early Life

Early Life

The Slocum family were Quakers who emigrated from Rhode Island to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania in 1777. Jonathan Slocum and his wife Ruth Tripp had ten children together, including Frances. The Slocum family remained in the settlement while many others had fled during the Battle of Wyoming in July of 1778. British forces along with Seneca warriors destroyed a fort near Wilkes-Barre and killed over 300 American settlers. The Slocum family believed their Quaker belief and friendly relations with natives would protect them. On November 2, 1778 Frances Slocum was taken captive at the family farm near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She was raised and married among the Delaware. Not much is known about Slocum's early life or her first marriage. She was married sometime in her late teens to a Delaware. Her second marriage was to a Miami Chief, Dead Man. She was wandering through the forest with her father in-law one day and encountered what they thought was a dead body (apparently left there after a tribal war). They investigated and found the man to be in fact alive, although barely. They took them back to their village and brought him back to health, eventually Frances married him. After the War of 1812 the Miami tribe, including Dead Man and Slocum (now Young Bear), moved to the Mississinewa River Valley in Indiana. Together they had four children, two sons who died at a young age and two girls who survived. The area in Pennsylvania where Francis was kidnapped from is Mocanaqua near Slocum township.