From Detroit to her parental home near Piqua, Ohio, the journey was comparatively easy. The first stage took her to Fort Meigs, then in command of General Harrison, where she arrived late in March, 1813. Here she learned that a supply train which had recently come from Cincinnati was about to return, and that it would pass within a few miles of her father's home. She accordingly secured passage in one of the government wagons. She still had over a hundred miles to travel over wet and swampy roads in early spring time; but in comparison with her earlier travels this stage of the journey must have seemed luxurious enough. About the middle of April she left the train at a point within four miles of her home, walked to the blockhouse where her parents had taken refuge from marauding Indians, and rejoined the family circle which had long mourned her as dead. Three years before, with husband and baby son, she had set out for her new home at Fort Dearborn. Both husband and son were dead and she now returned a widow, but with another child, who had been born at Fort Dearborn in February, 1812. Safe among her former friends, the brave woman at last broke down; to use her own language she "did nothing but weep for months."
There were still other dangers and trials, however, for Mrs. Simmons to pass through. In August a murderous attack was made by some marauding Indians upon the family of Henry Dilbone, who had married the sister of Mrs. Simmons. Mr. and Mrs. Dilbone were working together in the flax field, with their four young children close at hand. Near the close of the day's work their dog raised an alarm, and at almost the same instant the husband fell shot through the breast. The savage sprang forward from his place of concealment to take his victim's scalp. But the latter though mortally wounded was not dead, and gathering his remaining strength he rose, ran to the edge of the field, and leaped the fence which separated it from an adjoining swamp, where he fell among the bushes. The Indian abandoned the pursuit and turned back after Mrs. Dilbone, who had fled for concealment into the neighboring corn. Her flight was vain, however, for she was soon overcome, tomahawked, and scalped. The slayer now turned his attention to the four children, the eldest of whom was ten years of age and the youngest seven months. They, meanwhile, had been making what progress they could toward the house. Instead of pursuing them the warrior made off into the forest, fearing probably that the noise caused by the discharge of his gun and the screams of Mrs. Dilbone would attract rescuers to the spot.
The neighbors were quickly aroused and a company went in search of Mr. and Mrs. Dilbone. The corpse of the latter was found and carried together with the children to the blockhouse of the Simmons family. The search for Mr. Dilbone was given over for that night, through fear of an ambuscade. In the morning it was resumed and he was soon found, too weak to move or even to cry out. He, too, was borne to the blockhouse, where he expired the following day. Thus after her own escape from captivity and death at the hands of the savages, Mrs. Simmons found herself once more in the midst of bloodshed and slaughter—her sister and brother-in-law slain, her nephews orphaned. To such perils were the people on the northwestern frontier exposed during these troublesome and bloody years.
The story of the later career of Mrs. Simmons and her daughter can quickly be told. The latter in due course of time grew to womanhood and became the wife of Moses Winans. The couple first settled in Shelby County, Ohio, but in 1853 they removed to Springville, Iowa. Mrs. Simmons, who had previously taken up her abode in her daughter's family, removed with them to Iowa, and died at Springville in 1857.[637] Mrs. Winans' husband died in 1871, and seventeen years later she went to Santa Ana, California, to make her home with her younger daughter. She lived to become the last survivor of the Fort Dearborn massacre, dying at Santa Ana, April 27, 1900.[638]
[637] For this and the following facts concerning Mrs. Winans see the letters and affidavits pertaining to the securing of a pension for Susan Simmons Winans in the Chicago Historical Society library.
[638] Gale, Reminiscences of Early Chicago, 133.
An interesting although necessarily incomplete narrative of the fortunes of the surviving members of the Burns family may be constructed by assembling the facts contained in several widely scattered sources of information. The killing of the husband, Thomas Burns, an hour after the surrender has already been described.[639] A son of Mrs. Burns by a former marriage, Joseph or James Cooper, was also a member of the slaughtered militia.[640] To complete the tale of the mother's bereavement, her two children next in age perished in the massacre. The mother with two children, one of them an infant, alone survived to undergo the horrors of captivity among the Indians.[641] Concerning this captivity we have two accounts, both of them brief and unsatisfactory. Mrs. Kinzie relates in Wau Bun that Mrs. Burns and her infant became the prisoners of a chief, who carried them to his village. His wife, jealous of the favor shown by her lord and master to the white woman and her child, treated them with the greatest hostility, and on one occasion sought unsuccessfully to brain the infant with a tomahawk. Soon after this demonstration the prisoners were removed to a place of safety. The author further relates that twenty-two years after the massacre she encountered a young woman on a steamer, who, hearing her name, introduced herself and raising the hair from her forehead displayed the mark of the tomahawk, which so nearly had been fatal to her.[642]
[639] Supra, pp. 227, 234.
[640] Letter of Griffith to Heald, January 13, 1820, Draper Collection, U, VIII, 88.
[641] Griffith speaks of three children of Mrs. Burns. Helm's account of the massacre and the letter of Abraham Edwards to John Wentworth, which will be considered presently, mention only two, and this harmonizes with Heald's list of the survivors.