My dads father was born and raised on the Slater Farm on Slater Road just south of Ligonier, PA. My grandfather, Ken Slater, was one of 6 kids growing up on the farm that had been in the Slater name for generations. Ken Slater moved to the Pittsburgh area where my dad was born and raised. As a kid growing up in New York we visited the Slater Farm every year and I have many fond memories of that place. However, it turns out the farm has other memories from a distant past that connects me to american history. Read on if you like… The Ulery family lived about two miles south of Ligonier. In the month of July, most likely in the year 1778, the three girls, Julian, aged twenty, Elizabeth, aged eighteen, and Abigail, aged sixteen, were raking hay a short distance from their home, when they were attacked by Indians. The girls ran toward the house whith their pursuers close on their heels. Abigail was unable to keep up with her sisters, and when the latter got into the house, they immediately closed and barred the door, thinking that Abigail had been captured. The father then shot through the door, wounding one of the Indians. In the meantime, Abigail ran into the woods above the house, and hid herself among leaves and weeds in a depression made by the uprooting of a tree. The Indians came near where she lay concealed; but the wounded member of the band was moaning so piteously that his companions, without making further search for Abigail, carried him away, and soon disappeared over the brow of the hill above the Ulery home. No doubt this Indian died, for shortly afterwards a newly made grave was found at that place, and many years later the grave was opened and human bones exhumed by Isaac Slater. The following day, Julian and Elizabeth went to work in the same field, when Indians, evidently the same band that made the attack the day before, got between the girls and the house, and succeeded in capturing them. Julian and Elizabeth struggled desperately with their captors. Then, in the hope of making the girls reconciled to going along with them, the Indians gave them new moccasins. The captives still struggled, and were dragged along to the rivulet near Brants school house, when the Indians became desperate and told them to make a choice between captivity and death. The girls struggled all the harder, and were then tomahawked and scalped on the spot. The Indians then hurried on, but presently returned to remove the moccasins from the girls, when they found Elizabeth partly recovered, and sitting up against a tree. An Indian then sunk his tomahawk into her brain. Julian was conscious but lay still, and the Indians thought her dead. She recovered but was never strong, and her scalp never healed. She spent her days on the homestead with her sister Abigail, whose descendants, the Slaters, have resided on this historic farm for a number of generations. The present Slater farm house stands only a few yards from the spot where the frontier cabin stood. Children attending the Brant public school play in the meadow where Julian and Elizabeth Ulery were captured and under the large oak by the rivulet where Elizabeth gasped out her sweet, young life. taken from Pennsylvania in the Revolution, Fort Ligonier and Its Times by C. Hale Sipe, Telegraph Press, Harrisburg, PA, 1932. It turns out Abigail married a gentleman named Isaac Slater and it became the Slater Farm. Over 100 years later my grandfather was born on that farm. There is a museum in Fort Ligonier with the preserved front door and the bullet hole. Interesting note is that my wife Dayna is Cherokee Indian. Go figure...
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 08:15:25 +0000
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