Person:Joseph Barnett (18)

Information on Joseph Barnett

?According to Egle, he was "b. 1726 , in County Derry, Ireland. He married in 1749, Elizabeth Graham. Concerning him and his family, we have these incidents of pioneer life in 1757 communicated in a letter by the late Samuel Barnett, of Springfield, Oh.: ‘Mr. Barnett 's son William, with a son of Mr. Mackey, a neighbo, of Hanover were taken prisoners by a band of prowling Indians. The parents of the boys tried in vain to raise a party to pursue the savages, and rescue the captives, but could obtain no assistance. Mr. Barnett and Mr. Mackey, however, armed with rifles, mounted their horses and went in pursuit. They came up to the Indians, several in numbe, between Hugh Grimes ' (Graham 's) farm and Beaver creek, likely not more than three-fourths of a mile from Hugh Grimes immediately in the neighborhood of where Thomas Bell, Squire Wilson, and grandfather Allen lived. They fired on the Indians, who returned it briskly. Mr. Barnett and Mr. Mackey were near together. Mackey in putting down the bullet in his rifle observed that he run down the bullet hard to kill dead. By this time the savages were close on them, and just as Mackey presented his gun a bullet passed through his arm, and his rifle fell to the ground. At this moment an Indian near by picked up his gun and shot Mackey dead. By this time Mr. Barnett had received a shot in his arm and one in the shoulder. This bullet he carried with him to the grave. So Mr. Barnett retreated. ‘By this time he reached a little east of where Mr. Grimes lived, and between his house and Robert Elder's, he got faint from loss of blood, when he dismounted and hid himself in a field of buckwheat. I give the names of Grimes and Elder, as they occupied these farms in my day. Grandfather Barnett resided east of these farms. His horse ran home, and the neighborhood turned out. As they passed along the road Mr. Barnett got out of his hiding and resting place. He had but little use of his arm the rest of his days. ‘I will continue the history of the captive boys. The Indians had left their encampment before they were sighted by the party who went in pursuit. They passed up Beaver creek toward the mountain, then through an orchard once owned by Andrew Kerr, afterwards Samuel Finney. The Indians told the boys to take plenty of apples as they were the last they would get for a length of time. They then took to the mountain, and this was the last of the boys. Tedious days, nights, and years passed away. For nearly seven years a kind Providence, who hears and answers the prayers of his children, watched over the boys. It appears the Indians had their cabins on or near the head waters of the Allegheny river on a branch called something like Miskelitas. At length an Indian trader discovered the party who held William Barnett and Mackey. They, with the boys, had been several times across what is now the State of Ohio to Detroit. This Indian trader was employed by Grandfather Barnett to procure William , for which he was to give the trader an elegant horse. * * * * ‘It was with some difficulty the traders got him away, William not being very willing to leave at first, and the squaw who had him to part with him. At last he succeeded, and was returning with him. Mr. Barnett went to Carlisle, on his way to meet them, and stopped at the same tavern which his son had reached the early part of the evening. The boy was tired traveling, and had retired. When this became known Mr. Barnett desired to see him, but the landlord at first objected; but a fond father, who had not beheld his son for seven years, who had been the subject of anxious thoughts and prayers, now answered, could not be put off until the morrow. The son awakened from his sleep knew his father and embraced him. As may be readily supposed there was great rejoicing in Hanover, not only in the houses of the Barnetts, but all through the country, at the return of the captive. Young Mackey was sold to a Frenchman at Detroit, afterwards taken to England, and at the outset of the war of the Revolution came over with the British troops, and subsequently reached his home in old Hanover. His mother was yet living; but she insisted that her son was killed by the Indians, and would not own him. He assured her that he was her boy; when, at length, she told him that if he was her son he had a scar on his leg from a cut, that she would know. This was shown her, when she acknowledged that he was her long-lost child.' There is extant an extended account of this thrilling episode in frontier life; but Mr. Barnett 's simple story differs little in detail thereof. Joseph Barnett d. November, 1808 , in Allegheny county, Pa. , and was buried in Lebanon churchyard, ten miles from Pittsburgh . His wife, Elizabeth , d. a few years subsequent and was interred in old Hanover graveyard. "

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