Feb. 19, 2021
Dear Patricia Harris,
Loved your story in ‘Historically Speaking’ and I keep all your articles as I love the old history and your story on the Indian attacks reminded me of another attack which happened around the bloody year of 1777, here where Richard and I live, in the area that years ago was known as ‘Nina,’ and ‘Zinnia’ was just down the road, near Indian Fork. Now we are called, ‘Miletus.’
Around the year 2002, I was a member of the Salem Garden Club, and had met Karen Bowers and her husband, James Bowers in Salem.
When James heard where we were living, in the abandoned house that Barry and Louanne Williams built in 1972 in ‘Nina,’ now Miletus, he told me about an Indian attack that Clark Teahouse, who was 80 years old at the time, had told him and he revealed this story to me, and Harry Meek did as well. Here is what they told us.
The Indians (don’t know which ones) came up Middle Island in their canoe from Ohio to our Buckeye Creek, which was not full of sediment and was wider and deeper, and here they traveled through virgin timber to reach the cabin which was here, and some huge stones can still be seen where the cabin most likely was.
They came up to the cabin and was massacring the settlers (don’t know who they were) who were living there.
Some were taken down along a rock ledge (no roads then, just trails), across from Harry Meek’s house, where the Indians had burnt these settlers alive.
There appears to be a headstone which our clean-up crew we had in 1982, when we bought this place, found and left here where my Long Border is now, under an old green piper apple tree, sinking in the ground, and I do not allow any digging near it.
Would anyone know of this story besides Harry Meek, Bowers, and us?
I would love to hear from anyone who might know about this and what Indians did this horrible attack.
I would also like to know who the settlers were as I had a John Mackey who I found in West Union and saw a Mackey and a Lantz on a gas & oil map, and these names are also my Miller family in Warren County, New Jersey.
Any info would be great.
Keep up your old history – it is wonderful. Our Millers went to Preston Co. and some went to Clarksburg and Lumberport, I am told.
Arlain
782-1497