Eleanor Womer

From another branch of the family comes this version as told by Eleanor Womer, of Wichita, Kansas: This was submitted by Merry Flanagan and printed in the Clan Campbell Journal during the summer of 1986 “As you know stories not written down but told from generation to generation do not always agree. This is my branch’s version of the Mary Campbell Story:

Mary Campbell was taken as a captive by the Delaware Indians at or near Penn’s Creek in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1757 while accompanying her brother William in pursuit of her father’s cows. Little Willie died in captivity but Mary was with them for seven years (was seven years old when taken) somewhere along the Muskingum River until Colonel Bouquet with his little army made a peace treaty with the Delaware and Shawnee Indians at the Forks of the Muskingum River where she was given up to the commanding officer who returned her to her parents at Ft. Carlyle, Pennsylvania in November or December 1764.
Mary Campbell’s brother Dougal Campbell went with Colonel Bouquet when he made the peace treaty with the Indians. He stepped on a log or something that raised him so he could see over the crowd and called Mary Campbell and from his position saw a squaw clap her hand over a girl’s mouth and that was how she was recovered. In telling it she said as she watched her brother before she knew who he was she thought him the most handsome man she ever saw. So here is where we get the name Dougal Campbell in our branch of the Wilfords.
One time when Soloman Willford, a great grandson of Mary Campbell, was a boy he was bitten by a rattlesnake and the remedy used was one used by Indians that Mary Campbell knew.
Mary Campbell herself died about 1801 and her husband Joseph Willford about 1828. Their fifth son also called Joseph Willford, the one buried in Cedar County, Iowa, married Mary Ann Eniex (or Enochs) in 1805. Mary Ann Eniex Willford lived to be 84, dying in Minnesota in 1866, and she was the one who told her grandchildren these stories recounted to her by her father-in-law the immigrant Joseph Willford.
The names of Mary Campbell’s father and mother have not been found. However three brothers are known: (1) Daniel Campbell who served in the Revolutionary Was in the same outfit that Mary’s husband did. This Daniel Campbell is said to have been killed while serving with the army in the Northwest Territory shortly after the war. (2) Dougal Campbell as mentioned above who afterward owned land in Greene County, Pennsylvania close to where Joseph and Mary Campbell Wilford had their land. (3) William who was in the Revolution and who died in Ohio at the home of his Willford nephew, and is buried there. Some feel this second William Campbell is a drawback in believing the story of Little Willie killed by Indians, but when I learned that this Revolutionary War William Campbell was not born until 4 years after Willie was captured, I feel that the parents named another son after the one who was lost.
Some of the next versions have different dates and ages, but since these three previous stories are so much alike and both have her age as 7 when she was captured, we are certain this is correct. According to Sally M. Keehn in her book “I am Regina” (another fact based story about an eleven year old girl who was a captive from 1755 to 1764) there was a change in the English calendar during this time, which accounts for some discrepancy in years.

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