LITTLE POLLY
TRUBY AND THE INDIANS
A Story for
Jennifer Marshall from her father, Kelly Marshall (1977)
Website: http://www.genealogy.com/users/m/a/r/Kelly-Marshall
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
The material on this site is under copyright by Gordon Kelly Marshall.
Researchers, family members, libraries, or genealogical and/or historical
societies are invited to use the information freely, for non-commercial
purposes only, with proper credit to me and to this site. Please email me if
you wish to reference it in any format: marshallfamily@zoominternet.net. You may not use it at all for commercial
purposes.
One day in the summer of 1782 there was a wedding near
Hannastown, Pennsylvania (1). The
pioneers all were very hopeful, because this was the first summer since 1776
when there was no war (2). Pennsylvania
had joined twelve other American colonies to fight the King’s soldiers for
freedom, and they had won! On this July
day, a wedding party was being held at the Miller farm. Most of the women and children of the area
were at the party. The men and older
boys were cutting hay in a nearby field.
Soon they would finish and join the fun.
Already the fiddle music was drifting across the hills.
Little Polly Truby, a seven year old,
was happy to be with her friends. She
and the other children were running around the cabin, trying to dance to the
music. Her real name was Mary Ann, but
her nickname was Polly. Polly’s daddy,
Christopher Truby, was one of the very first pioneers in Westmoreland
County. He built his log cabin near the
present Court House in Greensburg (3). Christopher Truby had been a soldier in
the war against King George’s Redcoats.
Today he and his neighbors were working hard to bundle the first hay
crop before the rain came. Polly’s
oldest brothers Michael and Stophel were working with him. Polly had come to the wedding party with her
older sisters Catharina and Elizabeth.
Her brothers John and Jacob were also there because they were too little
to help the men in the fields.
When noon came, the men stopped working to take a little rest
and to eat some food. All at once,
Michael Truby saw strangers moving in the forest. What was he seeing? Were they friends? Were they bad men? They were INDIANS! And their helpers were some pioneers called
“Tories.” The Tories wanted King George
to be the King of America! They were
angry because George Washington and the Continental soldiers had won the
war! Michael shouted for the others to
run!
The men and boys had to warn the
settlers to go quickly to the fort at Hannastown. They would be safe there. Captain Matthew Jack jumped on his horse and
rode as fast as he could for the Miller farm.
The Trubys and the other men headed for the cabins of all their
neighbors, to spread the alarm. They
would make a plan to defend themselves against the Indians once everyone was
safely in the fort.
Captain Jack did not get to the Miller
farm in time to help. The Indians,
screaming an awful war cry, already were running out of the woods. Sybilla Truby was near the other side of the
forest clearing from where the Indians appeared. She called her children to run into the
forest. A quick count showed Catharina
pulling Jacob along. Elizabeth had John. But where was little Polly? Sybilla glanced back at the farmhouse just in
time to see Mrs. Miller grab Polly and another child and sweep them into the
house.
But this was not a good idea! The Indians soon had all the people from the
house as their prisoners. They burned
that house and soon were killing all the cows and hogs. Only the people who ran for the forest got
away. Sybilla Truby wanted to scream for
Polly to run to her, but that would tell the Indians where she and the other
children were. So they quickly and
quietly ran through the forest toward the fort.
All five of them were crying for their little Polly.
When it was nearly dark, they arrived
at the Hannastown Fort. Sybilla told the
rest of the family the sad news. They
gathered in a little circle to pray for Polly and the others. Christopher and Sybilla asked all the
children to hold hands. They quietly
sang a psalm in German, as they always did at church. Then they gave their Polly to God. They thought they never would see her alive
again. Christopher Truby was being very
quiet, however, while the others were crying.
His mind was already working on a plan to get Polly back. He left quickly to find his good friend William
Jack.
Jennifer A. Marshall and her brother Adam
M. Marshall at the reconstructed Hannastown Fort, 1978.
While the settlers were preparing the fort for a grand attack,
the Indians marched their prisoners through the woods to Hannastown. The war party burned the whole town to the
ground, except for Robert Hanna’s house.
Then the pioneers played a trick on the Indians! After sunset, the people in the fort made a
lot of noise and stomped their feet hard on the wooden planks to make it sound
like marching soldiers had come. The
Indians became frightened and decided to leave before morning. Polly trudged along the forest trails with
the other captives--twenty in all. Most
were women and children. The settlers
did not dare follow them now, for they knew the Indians would kill all the
prisoners if they followed.
Early the next day Christopher Truby
put his plan into action. He and Matthew
Jack had been friends with many Indians before the war. They were afraid Polly would be killed
because she could not make the long trip to Canada--she was only seven years
old! So they went after her by
themselves. They followed the Indians
and Tories to the area around Lake Erie.
Then they found some friendly Indians who would help them. These friends visited the war party for
Christopher Truby. They paid money to
buy Polly back from the angry Indians and the Tories.
A few weeks later, who should come
running down the trail to the Trubys’ log house but Polly Truby herself! Her mother cried, “Mary Ann! My little girl is safe!” Her brothers and sisters came running, and
they hugged her for a whole hour. Her
father and Captain Jack told everyone the story of her rescue.
Do you think anyone was happy to see
that little girl running down the path?
I do! And I’m glad little Polly
Truby finally came home safely. Polly
Truby grew up and married a doctor named Simeon Hovey. They had a farm near Parker’s Landing,
Pennsylvania. She lived until she was 93
years old. All her little Marshall
nephews and nieces loved to hear “Aunt Hovey” tell again and again the story of
her adventures with the Indians.
Polly’s Signature---1837
2004 Notes
(1) In the last quarter century, I’ve heard or
read two distinct variations on this story.
The first is that Polly was kidnapped the very day of the
infamous raid on Hanna’s Town. In the
mid-1970s, I consulted Anne Warren, a member of the Westmoreland County
Historical Society and an archaeologist at the Hannastown site. She was documenting the Hannastown raid and
the fate of the captives. In her
words: “It could have happened that
way. You’ve touched all the traditional
accounts. At this late date, and with
our dearth of primary sources, who knows?”
The
second variation is merely that the child had been
kidnapped by the Indians and that her father secured her release in the area of
Lake Erie. This telling of the story
does not blend it with the Hannastown incident.
The latter version is that told to me on several occasions between 1978
and 2001 by Charles S. L. Robinson, heir of the Hovey/ Robinson lands
north of Parker. This “non-Hannastown
version” also was told by “the venerable James Truby, of Kittanning, Pa., aged
ninety-four years, a great-grandson of Col. Christopher Truby, commander of
Fort Allen . . . He furnished the author with the account of the capture
and rescue of Colonel Truby’s daughter, Mary Ann. She was captured by the Indians in 1779 and
rescued shortly thereafter near where the town of Clarion, Pa., now stands, by
her father and William Jack” (SOURCE:
C. Hale Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh: The Telegraph Press, 1929]. I hope in time to document both the written
and any remaining oral variations and to assess them, using sparse but
important primary sources available concerning the Hannastown raid.
(2) “There was no truce in the Northwest
following the surrender of the British at Yorktown in October, 1781 . . . The
frontier was wide open. Irvine at
Pittsburgh could do nothing. Hence on
July 13, 1782, there appeared before Hannastown, county seat of Westmoreland,
Guyasuta and his band of Seneca. The
town was burned to the ground, and much of the surrounding country was
devastated. Relatively few whites were
killed. Wheeling was then attacked but
without the success experienced at Hannastown” (SOURCE: Randolph C.
Downes, Council Fires on the Upper Ohio.
Pittsburgh: 1940; pages 271 and 274).
(3) We’ve learned since that Truby’s home was
near Fort Allen (the Truby Blockhouse), about three miles away from the Court
House. He sold some of the land on which
the Court House was built to those who were establishing the new county seat in
Greensburg, after the burning of Hannastown.
SUGGESTED
READING
Where the Rivers Meet, Clarence
Edward Macartney (Pittsburgh: The Gibson Press, 1946); chapter II is called
“The Hannastown Massacre” (pages 19-28).
Hassler, Edgar W. Old Westmoreland: A History of Western
Pennsylvania During the Revolution (Pittsburgh: J. R. Weldin & Co.,
1900); chapter 26 is called “The Destruction of Hannastown” (pages 176-181).
Locate copies
in your library or through the interlibrary loan system.
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
The material on this site is under copyright by Gordon Kelly Marshall.
Researchers, family members, libraries, or genealogical and/or historical
societies are invited to use the information freely, for non-commercial
purposes only, with proper credit to me and to this site. Please email me if you wish to reference it
in any format: marshallfamily@zoominternet.net. You may not use it at all for commercial
purposes.
Contact Information
Kelly Marshall
788 Wildwood Drive
Boardman OH 44512-3241
marshallfamily@zoominternet.net