ces which led to the discovery of
Matthew Brayton by his relatives requires us to go back a little from
the point to which his account has brought the reader. The intervening
years between the loss of Matthew Brayton by his relatives and the
present time have caused many changes in the neighborhood once so
excited in consequence of that loss. The red men clung for many years
to their last foothold in Ohio. Four years after the loss of the boy,
the Delawares left their village below Upper Sandusky, and set out for
their new homes farther west. Two years afterwards the Senecas
extinguished their council fires and sought a resting place nearer the
Rocky Mountains. But the Wyandots held tenaciously to their homes, and
eighteen years passed away before they finally consented to abandon
Ohio to the exclusive occupation of the white race.

Fine farms now cover the site of the waste land and woods over and
through which the weary hunt for the missing boy was conducted day
after day. Towns and villages have sprung up where humble log cabins
here and there stood in the incipient clearing, and the huts of the
red skins have passed away forever.

The sturdy farmer, Elijah Brayton, who once returned to his cabin from
the weary journey to Chillicothe after millstones, and was met by news
that made the blood forsake his parental heart in a sudden rush, had
passed by some years the allotted period of man's life, and is fast
progressing towards his fourscore years. William, the boy of sixteen
who had set out with his little brother on that search for stray
cattle, but had returned without him, has reached the meridian of
life, and sees around him a young family springing up. Long since, the
paternal cabin near the Tymochte Creek has disappeared, and two or
three miles away from it, somewhere in the direction where the two
brothers had separated thirty-four years ago, a fine brick house has
become the dwelling of the oldest son of Elijah Brayton. Up at
Springville, some five or six miles farther to the northwest, and at
no great distance from the trail on which the young boy was borne off
by the thieving Canadian Indians, lives another brother, Peter, and
one of the married sisters. Here also lives the patriarch himself.
There are other sisters who mourned when their brother was lost, and
they too are married. A son and daughter born to the patriarch of the
family after the loss of Matthew, have long since died, and another
son, Asa, y