A year after his return home, the final treaty for the delivery of prisoners was held in the Miami Valley. Again Captain Simonton undertook the journey—then a more formidable undertaking than traversing half the Union would be now.
But he was again doomed to bitter disappointment. The children were brought forward, but none bore the slightest resemblance to his lost boy. So the captain returned to his home, bereft of all hope. The last feeble prop was gone, and Simonton was as near being a broken-hearted man as any one could well be without giving way entirely to despair.
When the late war with Great Britain broke out, Huntingdon county, notwithstanding it had more than its proportion of tories in the time of the Revolution, furnished three companies to go to the Canadian frontier. In Captain Moses Canan's company were two, probably three, of Captain Simonton's sons. They knew they had a brother abducted by the Indians, but it never occurred to either of them that they should ever see him.
The companies of Captains Allison, Canan, and Vandevender, encamped in Cattaraugus, New York,—a country then occupied by the Seneca Indians.
These Indians were neutral at that time, although they favored the American cause and readily furnished supplies to the soldiers. Among them was a white man, who appeared to hold a very prominent position. He owned lands, cattle, horses, lived in a well-constructed house, and was married to a squaw, by whom he had several children. This was the long-lost John Simonton. After Captain Canan's company had left, two men belonging to Vandevender's company, originally from Water Street, commenced talking about this white man among the Indians; and both of them agreed that he bore a most striking resemblance to the Simonton boys.
Next day, happening to meet him in front of his own house, one of them accosted him with the somewhat abrupt question of "What is your name?"
He answered, in broken English, "John Sims."
"Are you from the Juniata?" continued the man.
"I think I am," was Simonton's reply.
"Do you remember any thing of the country?"