Priscilla Stone married Amos Kuykendall in 1850 in Conway, Arkansas. Their third child was my great grandfather Adam Franklin "Frank" Kuykendall. The Kuykendall's had been in Arkansas since 1808; migrating out of Kentucky about that time. Priscilla and Amos were the products of classic American frontier families. Their people picked up and broke out for the west in the early days when it was considerably dangerous and risky to do so.
Priscilla was born in Pennsylvania. Her Stone family lived on Whitely Creek just off the Monongahela River about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh. I've traced the Stone family back to the 1685 birth of 7th great grandfather, James Stone, of Herefordshire, England, a county just north of London. James is one of my immigrant ancestors. Coming to the colonies as a married young man around 1705, he landed in Pennsylvania, raised children and passed away there some time after 1712. No records exist of his death or specific burial location.
James Stone's son, James Jr., who was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1710, was baptized on August 24, 1712 at the Reformed Church of Bensalem and Sammeny at Churchville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. That record is found in the U.S. Presbyterian Church Records 1701-1970 of the Presbyterian Historical Society.
James Jr. later married and had several children. The family then acquired property on Whitely Creek in Greene County where Priscilla was born four generations later. We don't know the name of James Jr's first wife but she bore him at least one child, Elias Stone, my 5th great grandfather. A second wife (name also unknown) produced five or six children. Much of what we know of this family is mostly thanks to a newspaper article that appeared in the July 23rd, 1819 edition of the Susquehanna Democrat out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
This really interesting article depicts the story of one of James Jr's youngest daughters. She would have been about about 47 at the time she had the article published. It was an effort to locate and reunite with her Stone family relations. She had been separated from them for almost 30 years. So she enlisted the help of the newspaper to find them.
Her name was Sally Stone and she was born about 1772. Her father, James. passed away while she was still young. As she was Elias Stone's sister (actually half sister), she is my 5th great aunt. Now widowed, her mother buried her husband James (likely) on Whitely Creek and subsequently married a man named Peter Walden.
The new couple and the younger children (including Sally) moved west to Post St. Vincent (or Vincennes) on the Wabash River in what later became Indiana. Elias Stone, who was much older than his sister Sally, did not move west but stayed in Pennsylvania. He is documented as founding and laying out the town of Greensboro, Pennsylvania on property his wife had acquired during this time frame. But that's another blog post.
Back on the Wabash, things didn't go so well. Peter, the newspaper indicates, was "killed by the natives" in the territory and Sally's mother married again to a man named Lewis Surveyor.
No specific dates are provided for their time in Vincennes but we know that General George Rogers Clark, accompanied by other family-- 5th great grandfather, Tobias Brashear and his brother Richard, took the town from the British in February of 1779. I assume, Sally and family came along shortly after the Revolution had ended in 1782.
Sally would have been of marrying age by about 1789. She did marry at Vincennes to a local man named James Fullen. I don't believe they were married long but it is noted by another source she had two small children by him.
The newspaper article says at the time of St. Clair's Defeat (Nov 1791) Fullen was dead and Sally was taken captive by the Indians. The other source, a book called Heroines of Methodism published in 1857 states on page 192 that Fullen fell at St. Clair's Defeat and Sally as a young wife and camp follower, present at the battle, was captured by the Indians. The book implies that Fullen may have been a civilian camp follower as well but I imagine he would have served the militia during that time. On the day of the battle, however, they were all (men, women, and children) unwitting combatants.
The battle was an unmitigated slaughter. St. Clair's Defeat or The Battle of the Wabash, is characterized as the most decisive loss in all of US Army history. The casualty rate was 97.4%.
The following paragraph is taken from an article called "The Battle of the Wabash: The Forgotten Disaster of the Indian Wars" by Patrick Feng found here... https://armyhistory.org/.
The battle raged on for four hours. Women who accompanied the army fought desperately alongside the men and were also among the slaughtered. St. Clair finally ordered the camp abandoned, leaving behind the badly wounded and supplies, and led a breakout charge. Those who survived headed for Fort Jefferson. The rest were scalped, tortured, and murdered, including women and children. Of the 1,400 regulars, levies, and militia, 918 were killed and 276 wounded. Almost half of the entire U.S. Army was either dead or wounded in the aftermath of St. Clair’s Defeat.
The Indian combatants at the Wabash were a confederation of nations including Miami, Shawnee, Delaware and Potawatomi. Descriptions of this battle stress an extreme level of callous brutality. Custer's last stand did not happen for another 85 years and did not account for a 1/3 of the lopsided losses experienced at The Battle of the Wabash.
Sally was quoted by the newspaper saying she "believed her husband was dead." This speaks to the chaos of the battle. She never saw his body. Or if she did, she didn't have time to confirm if he was alive or not. No doubt all her efforts were focused on protecting her infants and herself. She and one child survived the battle. It is not known what tribe took her but she would spend many anxious months in captivity. Her only remaining child did not survive the ordeal in the wilderness.
After wandering the back woods with her Indian captors for 11 months, the party crossed paths with a French trader named Te Bo who paid a ransom for Sally and brought her to his home in Detroit where the Heroines book says she was "kindly treated." Eventually she was carried East to the State of New York.
In New York she apparently was able to pick up life as usual. She married again on the 13th of November, 1793 to a man named John Jay AcMoody. They had three boys and one daughter before his death in 1806.
When she reached out to the newspaper in 1819 about finding the family of her childhood she was still living in Elmira, New York with a third husband named Tobias Gearhart and three additional children by him-- a girl and two boys aged 11, 9 and 6. All her living children were born in Elmira. She had 7 children between the ages of 25 and 6; not counting the two she lost in the west.
I don't know if she found any of her Stone family as a result of her inquiries. It's not clear if any of her full siblings were alive in 1819. Her half brother Elias Stone was alive and still in Greene County, Pennsylvania according to the 1820 US Census. I hope she was able to reconnect. He passed away in 1823 at the age of 83.
Sarah died in Elmira ten years later at 60 years 9 months and 21 days according to her tombstone. It's nearly unimaginable the things she experienced in her lifetime. What a difficult world she knew, yet she persevered and was able to raise two families. The Heroines book says this about her...
It is simply stated that for a number of years she was a believer in Christ; knew the power of the Gospel; loved the house of God; loved devotion, and died in the triumphs of faith.
Those words are reminiscent of the syrupy platitudes often found in older obituaries and books like this, but certainly there is truth in them. This lady endured unspeakable horror and no doubt lived with it the rest of her life. I'd say she had super-human inner strength. In my mind it could only have been divinely appropriated.
Here is the newspaper article as it appeared in the July 23rd, 1819 edition of the Susquehanna Democrat:
Here is Sally Stone in my Tree at Ancestry...
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/47397879/person/192346095959/facts
