When, by permission of the British authorities, the wife of Daniel Hall was once going to John's island, near Charleston, to see her mother, one of the king's officers stopped her and ordered her to surrender the key of her trunk. On her asking him what he wished to look for, he replied, "For treason, madam." "Then," said she, "you may be saved the trouble of search, for you may find enough of it at my tongue's end."[94]
When a party of Revolutionary patriots left Pleasant River settlement, in Maine, on an expedition, one of the number forgot his powder horn, and his wife, knowing he would greatly need it, ran twenty miles through the woods before she overtook him.
When the village of Buffalo was burnt during the last war, only one dwelling-house was suffered to stand. Its owner, Mrs. St. John, was a woman of wonderful courage and self-possession; and when the Indians came to fire it, and destroy its inmates, she ordered them away in such a dignified, resolute and commanding, yet conciliatory, manner, that they seemed to be awed in her presence, and were kept at bay until some British officers rode up and ordered them to desist from the work of destruction. Saved by her presence of mind and heroic bravery, she who saw her neighbors butchered at their doors and the young village laid in ashes, lived to see a new village spring up, phoenix-like, and expand into a city of thirty-five thousand inhabitants.
Mrs. Beckham, who resided in the neighborhood of Pacolet river, South Carolina, was a true friend of freedom, and a great sufferer on that account. Tarleton, after sharing in her hospitality, pillaged her house, and then ordered its destruction. Her eloquent remonstrance, however, caused him to recall the order. Concealing a guinea in her braided hair, she once went eighty miles to Granby, purchased a bag of salt, and safely returned with it on the saddle under her.[95]
The house of Captain Charles Sims, who resided on Tyger river, South Carolina, was often plundered by tories; and on one of these occasions, when his wife was alone and all the robbers had departed but one, she ordered him away, and he disobeying, she broke his arm with a stick, and drove him from the house.
Several years ago, a family, residing on the Colorado, in Texas, were attacked by a party of Camanche Indians, who first fell upon two workmen in the fields and slew them. Seeing one of them fall, the proprietor of the establishment, who was standing near his house, caught two guns and ran towards the field. A daughter hastily put on her brother's hat and surtout, and followed her father. She soon overtook him, and persuaded him to return to the house. She bravely assisted in guarding it until the Indians, tired of the assault, departed.