“Our case is Really deplorable and alarming, and our County on ye Eve of breaking up, as I am informed at the time I am writing this by two or three expresses that there is nothing to be seen but Desolation, fire & smoke, as the inhabitants is collected at particular places, the Enemy burns all their Houses that they have evacuated.” The bearer of this important letter was James Hepburn.
It is a matter of interest that the James McKnight captured at Fort Freeland had secured 300 acres of land, April 3, 1769, in what is now Union County, where he brought his family. In 1774 they purchased three tracts of land “contiguous to and bounded on each other,” on Limestone Run, in Turbut Township, Northumberland County.
In 1776 William McKnight was chosen a member of the Committee of Safety, and was a most zealous and active patriot.
Both he and his wife perished at the hands of the Indians, when they attempted to make a trip from Fort Freeland, where they had sought refuge from the savages. Their only son, James, carried their bodies from Fort Freeland to the graveyard now known as Chillisquaque, and there buried them himself.
James McKnight had three sisters. He married Elizabeth Gillen, and was regarded as a man of great courage and rectitude. In 1778 he was elected to the General Assembly, but did not long survive to enjoy the honor.
The McKnight family had frequent and terrible experiences with the Indians. In the autumn of 1778 Mrs. James McKnight and Mrs. Margaret Wilson Durham, each with an infant in her arms, started on horseback from Fort Freeland to go to Northumberland. Near the mouth of Warrior Run, about two miles from the fort, they were fired upon by a band of Indians, lying in ambush. Mrs. Durham’s child was killed in her arms, and she fell from her horse. An Indian rushed out of the bushes, scalped her and fled.
Alexander Guffy and two companions named Peter and Ellis Williams rushed to the scene of the shooting and when they approached Mrs. Durham, whom they supposed dead, they were greatly surprised to see her rise up and piteously call for water. With the loss of her scalp she presented a horrible appearance. Guffy ran to the river and brought water in his hat. They then bound up her head, as best they could, and placed her in a canoe and hastily paddled down stream fifteen miles to Sunbury, where Colonel William Plunket, also a distinguished physician, dressed her wounded head, and she recovered. She died in 1829, aged seventy-four years.
Mrs. McKnight escaped unhurt from the surprise attack. The shots frightened the horse she was riding, it turned and ran back to the fort. Mrs. McKnight came near losing her child, when the horse wheeled and the child fell from her arms, but she caught it by the foot and held to it until the fort was reached.
Two sons of Mrs. McKnight, who were accompanying the party on foot, attempted to escape by hiding under the bank of the river, but were taken by the Indians.
James Durham, husband of Margaret, was taken at the same time. The three prisoners survived their captivity in Canada, and returned to their homes at the close of the Revolution in 1783.