y became deeply involved in the Indian wars which the Shawnees
kept up on the frontiers of Virginia. In this struggle they took an
active part, and were visited with the severest retribution by the
marauding Indians. It is stated by Withers that, between 1770 and 1779,
not less than fifteen of this family, men, women, and children, were
killed or taken prisoners, and carried into captivity.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Chronicles of the Border Warfare in North-western
Virginia_. By Alex Withers, Clarksbury, Virginia, 1831. 1 vol. 12mo.
page 319.]

Of the other children of the original progenitor, James, the eldest son,
died a bachelor. Lawrence was the ancestor of the persons of this name
in Schoharie County. Elizabeth and Helen married, in that county, in the
families of Rose and Haines, and, Margaret, the eldest daughter, married
Col. Green Brush, of the British army, at the house of Gen. Bradstreet,
Albany. Her daughter, Miss Francis Brush, married the celebrated Col.
Ethan Allen, after his return from the Tower of London.

JOHN, the third son, settled in Watervleit, in the valley of the
Norman's Kill--or, as the Indians called it, Towasentha--Albany County.
He served in a winter's campaign against Oswego, in 1757, and took part
also in the successful siege and storming of Fort Niagara, under Gen.
Prideaux [3] and Sir William Johnson, in the summer of 1759. He married
a Miss Anna Barbara Boss, by whom he had three children, namely, Anne,
Lawrence, and John. He had the local reputation of great intrepidity,
strong muscular power, and unyielding decision of character. He died at
the age of 64. LAWRENCE, his eldest son, had entered his seventeenth
year when the American Revolution broke out. He embraced the patriotic
sentiments of that era with great ardor, and was in the first
revolutionary procession that marched through and canvassed the
settlement with martial music, and the Committee of Safety at its head,
to determine who was Whig or Tory.

[Footnote 3: This officer was shot in the trenches, which devolved the
command on Sir William.]

The military element had always commanded great respect in the family,
and he did not wait to be older, but enrolled himself among the
defenders of his country.

He was present, in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was read
to the troops drawn up in hollow square at Ticonderoga. He marched under
Gen. Schuyler to the relief of Montgomery, at Quebec, and continued to
be an indomi