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Mary
Draper Ingles
In 1750, in Draper's Meadow, a small settlement west
of the Allegheny Mountains (then considered the outer
limits of colonial civilization), Mary Draper joined
hands in marriage with William Ingles. Will and Mary
Ingles parented two sons, Thomas and Georgie. On a
fateful July morning in 1755, Mary was just days away
from giving birth to the third Ingles child. Will
and Mary's brother, Johnny, were tending the fields
when a band of Shawnee attacked the settlement and
carried away Mary, her two sons, and Johnny Draper's
wife, Betty.
At the Shawnee camp along the Ohio River (close to
modern-day Portsmouth, Ohio), Mary was separated from
her sons and Betty. Accompanied by French traders
and Shawnee braves, Mary was sent westward down the
Ohio River on a salt-making expedition to the land
of the big bones, Big Bone Lick. It was there among
the skeletons of the extinct giant beasts that Mary
toiled from sunup to sundown. She boiled hundreds
of gallons of salt lick water to scoop out handfuls
of salt brine, as precious a commodity as gold.
Mary escaped from her captors in late September,
1755, and made her way back home to western Virginia
by following the Ohio, Kanawha, and New Rivers. Tradition
says that Mary, knowing that the infant daughter she
birthed in the first days of captivity would never
survive the journey through the wilderness, left her
baby with a Shawnee maiden. In roughly six weeks,
Mary "followed the river" back home to what
was left of Draper's Meadow and was reunited with
Will.
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George
Croghan
Croghan was sent by the British to gain the support
of the local American Indians. Croghan collected bones
at Big Bone Lick. He was later captured by Indians,
and his collection was lost. Croghan returned to the
Lick for more fossils. He shipped the collection to
Lord Shelburne who lived in London, England, and to
Benjamin Franklin.
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Lewis
& Clark
The Lewis & Clark expedition started with Meriwether
Lewis when he set out for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
where he was having built a 55 foot keelboat for the
trip. He was to bring the boat, supplies, arms and
crew down the Ohio River to The Falls of the Ohio
to rendezvous with William Clark.
On his way down river, Lewis spent more than a week
in Cincinnati. Following instructions from President
Thomas Jefferson, Lewis examined a collection of fossil
bones owned Dr. Casper Wistar of Cincinnati. Wistar
had collected these fossils from the famous Ohio River
salt lick. Lewis was also to visit Big Bone Lick.
President Jefferson gave Lewis and Clark specific
instructions to watch for huge mammals during their
exploration of the West. The theory of extinction
was not widely accepted in Jefferson's time and Jefferson
was sure these large mammals had immigrated to the
Western Territory.
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