Mary Ingles

Rolland Flory in his book, Lest We Forget and Tales of Yesteryears, recounts the story of a farmer's wife captured by the Shawnee Indians. In July 1755 during the wheat harvest in a fertile valley near Blacksburg, Virginia, the Shawnee Indians captured Mary Ingles and took her with them to a Shawnee settlement in Ohio.


There Mary was purchased by Indian hunters who took her to Kentucky. Mary was able to escape into the forest and found her way back to Ohio and later in mid-winter she arrived home to be reunited with her family.


Although Mary Ingles likely was not Brethren, her family was closely associated with German Baptists, both from the Ephrata group and the Germantown group who lived on the frontier. Her story, based on records kept by early settlers, is the subject of a popular novel, Follow the River, by James Alexander Thom.

Source: Preaching in a Tavern, by Kenneth Morse