Andrew McFarlane Captured by Indians at
Kittanning February 25, 1777
The Indian depredations along the Ohio River in the fall of 1776 began along its eastern shore, when small parties of the Mingo tribe made incursions among the settlements, inflicting only slight damage. But in the spring of 1777, the outrages became general and more destructive. The first outrage was on the frontier of Westmoreland County when Andrew McFarlane was captured at an outpost of Kittanning.
McFarlane soon after the close of the French and Indian War, made his way west to Fort Pitt, where he engaged in the Indian trade with his brother James. When the territorial dispute with Virginia became acute, in January, 1774, Andrew McFarlane was appointed a justice of the peace by Governor Penn and he vigorously upheld the Pennsylvania authority.
Captain John Connolly, at the head of his Virginia militia, interrupted the sessions of the Pennsylvania court at Hannastown, April, 1774, and arrested three Pennsylvania justices, who resided in Pittsburgh; Andrew McFarlane, Devereux Smith and Captain Aeneas Mackay. They were taken as prisoners to Staunton, Va., and there detained four weeks, until released by order of Governor Dunmore.
On the evening of his arrest in Pittsburgh, McFarlane managed to send a letter to Governor Penn, in which he said: “I am taken at a great inconvenience, as my business is suffering much on account of my absence, but I am willing to suffer a great deal more rather than bring a disgrace upon the commission which I bear under your honor.” One result of his arrest indicates that McFarlane did not really suffer much during his captivity at Staunton for there he met and married Margaret Lynn Lewis, daughter of William Lewis, famed in the military history of Virginia.
Andrew and James McFarlane, to escape exactions and persecutions of Virginia military authority, removed their store, in the autumn of 1774, to Kittanning, at that time the extreme limit of white settlements toward the North. Here they prospered.
When the Iroquois tribe began to give concern to the settlers on the western frontier, after the Revolution opened, the Continental Congress in July 1776, ordered the raising of a regiment consisting of seven companies from Westmoreland and one from Bedford, to build and garrison forts at Kittanning, Le Boeuf and Erie and protect that region from British and Iroquois.
These troops were promptly raised under command of Colonel Aeneas Mackay, with George Wilson, lieutenant colonel, and Richard Butler, as major. This regiment rendezvoused at Kittanning preparatory to an advance up the Allegheny, to build two other forts.