Steve Miller

I had discovered a document called the “Examination of John Hocktattler”. I was excited. I quickly wrote to Daniel Hochstetler to tell him what I had found, only to find out that he had written about the same document here in the newsletter ten years ago, in 1990.[i] I was a little disappointed in learning that, but not much. After all, I’d had the thrill of discovering the document on my own. Here was an account of our forefather from his own mouth, albeit through a translator. The traditional story was great, but this account is from the man himself, and far better.[ii]

Then I noticed a problem or two. This document is reprinted in two different works. The first is the Wilderness Chronicles of Northwestern Pennsylvania.[iii] The second is Conscience in Crisis.[iv] Conscience in Crisis is missing part of a sentence and a couple of paragraphs that Wilderness Chronicles includes. Worse than that, the two works have different years for the year of Jacob Hochstetler’s capture. Conscience in Crisis puts it at 1757. Wilderness Chronicles puts it at 1755.

I resolved to find out which of the two were accurate. Conscience in Crisis notes that the original document is in the British Museum[v], in London, England. The British Museum has a web site on the internet, and I learned how to get a copy of the original from that.

Because “The Examination” is a manuscript rather than another document, such as a book, the museum will not make a direct photocopy of the manuscript. A copy must first be made from microfiche. Therefore the copy I received from London is a third generation copy, and it is difficult to read at best. It is nevertheless legible enough to ascertain that Conscience in Crisis has omitted some material. The omission comes at a page break in the book, and perhaps that is the cause of the error.

The year of capture in the original document is hard to read. It could be either 1757 or 1755, and it is easy to see how it could have been copied in error. However, I believe without question that the year of capture was 1757, based on other documents. Conscience in Crisis lists a number of newspaper articles and a military report that tell of the attack on the Hochstetlers. The day and the month vary, but the year is 1757 on all of them.[vi]

So Wilderness Chronicles is in error on the year of capture. Otherwise it is the more accurate of the two sources. It has only a couple of minor changes in spelling when compared against the original.

Jacob Hochstetler began his escape on April 20^th, 1758[vii]. He arrived in Shamokin (Ft. Augusta) on May 5^th, 1758, less than nine months after his capture. This is a correction to the traditional story, which holds that he was captive for three years.

This document also has numerous other corrections for the traditional story in DJH and DBH: 

• Jacob Hochstetler knew exactly where he went and where he was.

• After seeing Presque Isle, he said he was kept prisoner at Buckaloons “the entire time”. He says nothing of the fort at Detroit, despite giving detailed information of the other forts he had seen. This means that it is highly unlikely that he ever saw Detroit.

• He was told about the surrounding area of his captivity five days before he escaped by “an old Indian”. In my opinion this is far more plausible than the traditional story, which states that Jacob caught tidbits from a map drawn on the ground, while he pretended to pick up sticks.

• Jacob could communicate to at least one Native American. Since Jacob’s birthplace was probably in Alsace, and the Native Americans of the area were French allies, it is within reason to believe that the language used was French. This would also explain how Jacob knew where he was—the French may not have expected that a Swiss German could understand them in their native language.

• His escape started from Buckaloons, near where Irvine, Pennsylvania is today.

• The “examination” or interview was at Shamokin. Ft. Augusta was located at Shamokin. This gives strong evidence that Jacob was found there, rather than at Ft. Harris.

Other conclusions can be drawn from this information. For instance, weather patterns can be obtained from northwestern Pennsylvania. We can determine a range of temperature and the amount of precipitation that Jacob likely experienced during his escape. His escape route can also be established with a fair degree of accuracy. I am in the midst of compiling this information, and hope to publish it in the near future.

© S. A. Miller, March 2001. First printed in the Jacob Hochstetler Family Newsletter, Volume XV, No. 1, pp. 3, 8.