On July 26, 1756, the Indians killed Joseph Martin, and took captive two brothers, named John and James McCullough, all residents of the Conococheague settlement. This was followed, August 27, with a great slaughter, wherein the Indians killed thirty-nine persons, near the mouth of the Conococheague Creek.
Early in November following, the Indians discovered some soldiers of the garrison at Fort McDowell, a few miles distant, ambushed them and killed and scalped Privates James McDonald, William McDonald, Bartholemew McCafferty, and Anthony McQuoid; and carried off Captain James Corken and Private William Cornwall. The following inhabitants were killed: John Culbertson, Samuel Perry, Hugh Kerrel, John Woods and his mother-in-law, and Elizabeth Archer; and carried off four children belonging to John Archer; and two lads named Samuel Neily and James McQuoid.
To return to the first atrocity. James McCullough had but a few years before removed from Delaware to what is now Montgomery Township, Franklin County, where he immediately began to clear the land and till the soil.
The McCullough family had been temporarily living in a cabin three miles distant from their home, and the parents and their daughter, Mary, went home to pull flax. A neighbor, John Allen, who had business at Fort Loudon accompanied them, and promised to come that way in the evening and go along back to the cabin.
Allen had proceeded about two miles when he learned that the Indians had that morning killed a man, a short distance from the McCullough home. Allen failed to keep his promise and returned by a circuitous route.
When he reached the McCulloughs he told the lads to hide, that Indians were near at hand, and added, at the same time, that he supposed they had killed their parents.
John McCullough was eight years old and James but five. They alarmed their neighbors, but all hurried to make preparations to go to the fort, a mile distant. None would volunteer to warn Mr. and Mrs. McCullough of their danger, so the lads determined to do it themselves. They left their little sister, Elizabeth, aged two years sleeping in bed.
The brave lads reached a point where they could see their house and began to halloo. They were happy to reach their parents in safety. When about sixty yards from the house, five Indians and one Frenchman came rushing out of the thicket and took the lads captive. The Indians missed capturing the parents by the mere accident that the father had heard the lads and left his work to meet them and thus the Indians missed him, and failed to notice the mother and daughter in a field at work.
The lads were taken to the forks of the Ohio, whence James, the younger, was carried into Canada and all trace of him lost. John remained with the Indians for nine years, when he and hundreds of other captives were released. They eventually were able to find their way back to their homes in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
John lived in the community from which he had been taken for nearly sixty years and left a written record of what he suffered during this long captivity.