The Lost Grave of Mary Wallace

 

Somewhere in the historic Cross Creek Cemetery in Washington County, about thirty miles west of Pittsburgh, there is a lost grave that holds the dust of a frontier wife named Mary Wallace, whose death in 1782 led to one of the most famous, and horrific, massacres in American history.

Mary was the wife of Robert Wallace, one of the early pioneers of Washington County, during a period of time when western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio was the scene of frequent skirmishes between white settlers and the native Wyandot and Lenni Lenape, who had allied themselves with the British during the Revolutionary War. In September of that year, the Munsee band of the Lenape tribe, whose members had been converted to Christianity by the Moravian frontier preacher David Zeisberger, were driven from their villages by pro-British Indians and imprisoned at a settlement in Ohio known as "Captive Town" on the banks of the Sandusky River, where they faced disease and starvation.

In February of the following year, about a hundred of these starving Munsee escaped from Captive Town to return to their abandoned farms in order to harvest the crops they had been forced to leave behind. Not only did these escapees have to keep an eye out for the British soldiers patrolling the area, but they also had to be wary of the pro-British Shawnee, who were on the warpath, eager to destroy any white settlement they came upon.

On February 10, 1782, the Shawnee war party attacked the Robert Wallace's house on the banks of Raccoon Creek. Robert was away from his cabin at the time, having gone to the grain mill. The Shawnee slaughtered Robert's cattle and set fire to the home. With nowhere to run, Mary Wallace was kidnapped, along with her infant daughter and two young sons. Anticipating a prompt pursuit, the Indians fled as quickly as they could to the safety of Ohio.

When Robert returned that evening and saw the smoldering ruins of his cabin, and his slain cows and hogs, it became painfully obvious what had happened. He roused the neighbors and formed a posse, intending to pursue the Shawnee at sunrise. Unfortunately, it soon began to snow and the trail left by the fleeing savages was impossible to follow. Robert Wallace and his posse continued north to Fort Vance, where they learned that similar raids had been taking place all over Washington County.
John Carpenter, who lived on the Dutch Fork of Buffalo Creek, had been captured by Indians on the same day that Mary Wallace had been kidnapped, and when his captors weren't looking, Carpenter stole a horse and made his way from Ohio to Washington County, where he told of his capture to Colonel Gibson of the Pennsylvania militia. Carpenter reported that his captors were six in number, two of whom had spoken in Dutch. This, of course, led Robert and his posse to believe that Mary and the Wallace children had been abducted by the Munsee band of the Lenape, who had learned Dutch from the Moravians. The fact that other Munsee had been seen in the vicinity after fleeing Captive Town only strengthened this belief.

A vote was taken among the settlers, and it was decided that a raid would be made upon the Christian Lenape. A call was sent out for volunteers, but Col. James Marshel, who was the commander of the county militia, objected to this plan; he preferred battle-hardened men who had been trained in warfare over a rag-tag posse of pioneers, and so he called up 160 men from the ranks of the Washington County militia. The plan was to capture the perpetrators and deliver them to Fort Pitt. Robert Wallace, however, refused to stay behind. Believing his wife and children to be prisoners of the Dutch-speaking Lenape, he insisted on taking part in the raid.

On March 3, 1782, the militia was placed under the command of Col. David Williamson, who led his army on horseback across the Ohio River below Steubenville on a well-worn Indian trail. It was at this crossing the men made a horrific discovery. 

Apparently, Mary Wallace and her three young children had been an impediment to the Shawnee during their hasty retreat to Ohio. The militia found the naked body of Mary, who had been scalped and impaled on the sharpened trunk of a sapling which stood directly on the path to the Moravian village of Gnadenhutten, which was occupied by the Christian Lenape. Meanwhile, in Gnadenhutten, the Shawnee were causing all sorts of trouble with the Lenape, who responded by kicking them out of their village-- but not before offering to purchase all of the household utensils and other loot they had carried with them from Washington County. This included a blood-stained dress, which had belonged to Mary Wallace. This dress was purchased by a foolish young Lenape squaw, and this purchase ultimately led to the death of ninety-six innocent Indians.

When the militia reached Gnadenhutten on March 8, Robert Wallace immediately recognized the blood-stained dress and flew into a rage. The Christian Lenape attempted to explain that they had obtained the items from the Shawnee, but this explanation was in vain. Williamson's men ransacked the village, discovering a pewter teakettle and other household items which Wallace identified as belonging to him. This seemed to prove beyond a doubt that the Lenape had indeed been the ones who had set fire to the cabin on Raccoon Creek, and the militia exacted revenge upon the innocent inhabitants of Gnadenhatten by placing ropes around their necks and dragging them to the center of the village, where they were bludgeoned with mallets before being scalped with their own tomahawks.

One can only imagine the surreal spectacle that unfolded that grisly afternoon. As the white-skinned Christians carried out the executions, the red-skinned Christians comforted themselves by singing hymns and reciting prayers they had learned from the Moravian missionaries, and as they were being slaughtered they asked for God's forgiveness-- not for themselves, but for the white men, who obviously knew not what they were doing.

After the butchering was done, the dead of Gnadenhutten were piled into two huts-- one for the adults and the other for the 39 murdered children. The militia then set the huts on fire. As the flames consumed the bodies, one of the miltiamen, Nathan Rollins, sat down and cried. He had taken part in the massacre because his father had been killed by Indians, and he had personally tomahawked nineteen of the victims of Gnadenhutten. But he wept at the realization that his role in the slaughter brought him no satisfaction for the loss of his father.

Not long afterward, the remains of the Christian Lenape were gathered by Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, who buried them in a mound on the south side of the village, where, today, a monument marks the spot-- a sad reminder of the perils of mistaken identity and false accusation. As for Mary Wallace, whose three children were never found, her remains were also gathered and taken to Cross Creek Cemetery for burial, where a stone marker denoted her final resting place for several years, until it was either stolen or destroyed.

 

 

Sources:

The Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 17, 1956.
History of Washington County, Pennsylvania, With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Volume 1. Franklin Ellis, Austin N. Hungerford. 1882.