Mary Campbell (colonial Settler) - Family Traditions

Family Traditions

Although there are some biographical facts about Campbell that are solidly documented, most of the details of her life, including incidents about her capture and adoption by the Lenape tribe, have come down to the present day through oral family traditions and written records of those traditions. Although the following contain examples of conflicting information some of which must obviously be incorrect, we may safely assume that some true information is preserved in the individual family traditions. A stemmatic analysis of this, and other, traditional material, by cataloging different lines of familial descent and their accompanying traditions could possibly bring to light or clarify many incidents in Mary Campbell's life which are now unknown or not well understood by interested researchers.

• Some sources give Campbell's birth year as 1750.
• Various sources give her year of abduction as 1757 or 1759.
• According to information from Minnie Myrtle Wiley, a great great granddaughter of Campbell, she was taken by Delaware Indians (i.e. the Lenape) from or near a stockade in Penn's Creek, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania where she and others had come for safety.
• Some sources claim that Campbell was abducted in 1759 at the age of twelve years. If so, her birth would have been in 1747, and her repatriation would have occurred at around 17 years of age.
• Many modern sources report that Campbell was abducted along with a person identified as Mrs. Stuart or Stewart. A Mary Stewart is listed in the Pennsylvania Gazette list of January 17, 1765, but is not present on Captain Lewis' list.
• Some sources say Campbell was returned in 1765, even though Campbell's return in 1764 is well documented by primary sources. In May, 1765, a second group of captives were turned over to Colonel Bouquet, perhaps principally by the Shawnee. This group included an unrelated couple named "James and Mary Campbell". It is possible that these sources confuse this event for the earlier one that involved Mary Campbell. Some stories say Campbell was reunited with her family in 1765, so it could also be that the date of her reunion with her family is being confused with the date of her repatriation to British forces.
• According to Rebecca Xavier, members of the Willford family, and others, there is a strong family tradition amongst Campbell's descendants that she was very well treated by the Lenape, that she was sad to be separated from them, and that the Lenape were sad to see her go.
• Campbell is said to have been turned over to Bouquet at one of several places, depending on the source. It is plausible that Campbell could have moved through several or all of these locations in the course of leaving her Lenape home on the Cuyahoga and returning to her family in Pennsylvania. The locations indicated as the site of her return to Bouquet include:
  • the confluence of the Tuscarawas River and White Woman's River (now known as the Walhonding River) near present-day Coshocton, Ohio;
  • Chillicothe, Ohio;
  • Newcomerstown, Ohio;
  • the banks of the Muskingum River in Ohio (her presence there is supported by Captain Lewis' list);
  • Fort Carlyle, Pennsylvania.
• Some stories indicate that Campbell was reunited with her family when they attended a return of prisoners between Native Americans and settlers on July 25, 1766. These sources sometimes state that Campbell recognised a lullaby that her mother was humming, and that thereby the "little girl" (as the sixteen to eighteen year old woman is invariably called in such accounts) was reunited with her family. The earliest publication of this story is probably in Akron and Summit County History by Grismer, who identifies it only as a possibility. It seems certain the story does not reference Campbell.
• The Willford History contains an account that differs from the usual in several important respects. It gives her year of abduction as 1757 (and says it happened while she was tending cows with her brother William), was held in captivity for seven years near the Muskingum River, until Bouquet's officers returned her to her parents at Fort Carlyle, Pennsylvania, in November or December 1764. This account also says that Campbell hoed corn on the Muskingum floodplain, using a hoe made from a deer scapula attached to a stick with tendon. There is also a family tradition that Mary's brother William was also abducted but died in captivity.
• According to Eleanor Womer, Dugal Campbell (Mary's brother) accompanied Colonel Bouquet to the Muskingum. He stood on a log and yelled out Mary Campbell's name, and saw that a Native woman clapped her hand over a girl's mouth in response. The girl was Mary Campbell, and that is how she was recovered. While this is uncertain, it is known that relatives of a number of known captives traveled with Bouquet in October 1764.
• In addition to brothers Dougal and William, Mary Campbell also had a brother Daniel. Daniel and William are said to have served in the Revolution; Daniel in the same outfit with Campbell's husband, Joseph Willford. The William who served in the revolution is known from his pension record, and is documented to have been born in 1761, so cannot be the same William described in the Willford History.