Mary Derwent

Monockonok Island lies in the stream of the Susquehanna, where the Valley of Wyoming presents its greenest fields and most level banks to the sunshine. It is a quiet little spot...

Grandmother Derwent had contrived to purchase implements for spinning and weaving the coarse cloth, which constituted the principal clothing of the settlers. The inhabitants gav...

“Come, my child,” he said, taking Mary by the hand, and leading her up from the ravine. “It is almost night, and you have wandered far from the island; see, the woods are alread...

The two sisters stood together under the willow trees that overhung the little cove from which Mary had landed with the missionary three years before. Both had grown into girlho...

Tahmeroo, the Indian girl, was sitting under the pine as Mary Derwent had left her. With the coral but half twisted in her hair, she had paused in her graceful task, and sinking...

The history of Wyoming is interwoven with that of the Indian missionary whose paternal care had so long protected the family on Monockonok Island. Like Zinzendorf, his life was...

“When I was fifteen, an old college associate died and left my father guardian to his son and heir. This young gentleman’s arrival at the parsonage was an epoch in my life. A ti...

“Varnham was absent when our confession was first looked, then breathed, and at last desperately uttered. He had been gone more than a week, making preparations for our return t...

“Varnham had watched me for one year as a mother guards her wayward child. But the sudden illness of a near relative forced him from his guardianship. In my wildest moments I ha...

“The Shawnee Indians had long been governed by a woman, whose name was both feared and respected through all the Six Nations. I need not dwell either upon her cruelty or her gre...

Toward sunset, on the same day that witnessed Catharine Montour’s interview with the missionary, Mary Derwent wandered alone into the forest, for her spirit more than ever felt...

Mary Derwent returned home with a mournful determination to seek the confidence of her sister—to inform her frankly of the knowledge she had obtained, and, if possible, to save...

In his hurry to reach the spring, Butler had dragged his canoe half-way up the bank, and it took a few moments to shove it into the water again. Frightened and weak, Jane had se...

But old Mother Derwent was not altogether disappointed. As if answering the blast of her horn a female appeared on the opposite shore, signalizing for a boat with great vigor. M...

Mary Derwent was restless and dreamy all day after Aunt Polly left the island. Spite of herself, she was sad—no cause existed now—Jane was safe at home, sorry for her indiscreti...

In the Mohawk Valley, about four miles north of Fonda, stands to this day the first baronial mansion ever erected in the state of New York. Its present proprietor, Mr. Eleazer W...

A thousand stars shone upon Seneca Lake; clear stars that smiled goldenly alike on scenes of strife, such as we have left, and pictures of thrifty peace, to which we now turn.

In a lonely, deserted spot, on the outskirts of the little village called the German Flats, stood a dreary-looking board house, inhabited by a man named Shoemaker, who enjoyed t...

Many months had elapsed since Walter Butler’s capture, and no tidings of him had reached his young Indian wife, left mourning in her home on the borders of Seneca Lake.

The brightness of a sunset in early May settled on Monockonok Island. It was now the spring of 1778—that year so eventful in the annals of Wyoming—but as yet there was no warnin...

An Indian girl—no uncommon thing in the streets of Albany in the days of the Revolution—stood patiently waiting before the entrance to the jail at Albany. She had remained in th...

The year of 1778 marked a terrible epoch in the annals of our Revolution. Sir John and Guy Johnson, with the Butlers and other native Tories of New York State, had vigorously co...

The vague rumors that had reached the inhabitants of Wyoming, no one could exactly tell how, filling each household with alarm, were not without foundation. A force of eleven hu...

For a full half-hour Queen Esther sat motionless in the chill of that appalling silence, her eyes fixed upon the weapons of death at her feet with a dull glare, more terrible th...

While these events were transpiring, the morning wore on at Mother Derwent’s cottage in the quiet which we have before described. But while Aunt Polly and the old lady held thei...

Fired with stern enthusiasm, three hundred men—a large proportion of them grey-haired and beyond their prime, the rest brave boys—had filed out from the fort and organized on th...

All that day Mary Derwent, her grandmother, and sister remained alone in the house. They heard the mustering battle, the sharp strife, and the scattering horrors of the rout tha...

The morning broke, with a quiet, holy light, through the thicket of crab-apple and wild-cherry trees which overlaced the spring in the centre of the island; and there, upon the...

In a few hours after Aunt Polly’s return home, the missionary came to the tavern, looking more haggard than he had ever appeared before. He inquired in a tremulous voice after M...

An Indian war-trail lay along the southern bank of Seneca Lake, scarcely discernible now that the snow was deep, and the trees shivering in the wind; but a man accustomed to the...

Tahmeroo leaned out of the carriage, and looked around with a glow of proud delight. How different this scene from the broad forests of her native land—how calm and beautiful la...

After a few weeks of desperate struggle, Butler gave up all hopes of maintaining the rights he had so haughtily assumed, and departed abruptly for America, leaving his wife at A...