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THE LITTLE WAR of 1812 -
A Personal Reflection
Milestones Vol 11 No 1--Winter 1986

 

"When the little war was going on, we lived in Millerstown, and a man wanted my husband to go to fight in his place, and I said my father had fought for liberty and I was treading on liberty ground, and if I had ten men they shouldn't fight in no second revolution on free liberty ground. The man went off and told a storekeeper in the town what I said, and the next time I went there he pitched into me and called me a tory (here the old lady laughed heartily,) but I explained to him, and he said I did right. We used to lay in the fields and watch hundreds of Indians coming from Philadelphia after a victory, with soldiers' clothes on them, and big brass plates and cocked hats. We went to the ferry one evening to see the sea robbers that were captured; they were all blacks with long, black hair, and were to be put away in prison at Harrisburg."

Her first husband had seven children, being a widower, and by him she had ten children, five of who were dead and five living when she came west of the mountains. She does not know where any of her children reside, or whether any of them are living, excepting her daughter, Mrs. Kelly. She was married twice after her first husband's death - to Jacob Stout and Francis Black. She says they were both back woodsmen, and her first husband was not, and regrets that she never paid any attention to dates, stating that while living in a little town called Washington, on the Susquehanna river, the house in which she lived was burned, and all papers and books which could throw any light upon the matter of day and date were destroyed. Her daughter, Mrs. Mary Kelly, will be 68 years that she says she was acquainted with her grandmother when first married, and remembers all the circumstances very clearly. According to this we are certainly within our bounds in putting her age at 102.

We asked her whether she would like to go to the Centennial. Of course and she remarked with a laugh, "If they could only have some cannon balls fall among them they's know what it was for," and then added, "I would like to see all my old friends, they are all out there but perhaps all dead."

Her eyesight is pretty good, especially looking afar off; she can plainly distinguish cows upon a hillside a quarter of a mile distance from her window. She is the sprightliest old lady we have ever met, her intellect being clear as a bell, and her memory remarkable. Before we left she said, "Well, you're going to put me in the papers, and you may tell them to send me a hundred or two dollars; they're giving pensions to the last soldiers, and my father never got anything; and as for these last fellows, I wouldn't walk from here to the coal house to see a lot of them - they couldn't fight." When we promised to write to the LEADER about her, she seemed much pleased, and with a hearty shake of the hand we departed.

Cousin Jed