Nearly 100 people attended a program on Mary Jemison’s 1758 abduction by Native Americans during the French and Indian War Tuesday evening at the Adams County Historical Society, underscoring the continued interest in her story.
Presenter Debra McCauslin said she was encouraged by the turnout and audience response. “I was delighted to share information about her remarkable life, which visibly moved the audience, as evidenced by their audible gasps,” McCauslin said.
Jemison was a colonial frontierswoman in Pennsylvania and New York, who became known as the “White Woman of the Genesee.” As a young girl, she was captured and adopted into a Native American family. After her capture, she became fully assimilated and chose to remain a Seneca rather than return to American colonial culture.
The program drew heavily on Jemison’s own words, as recorded in James Seaver’s biography, and included a live phone call with Fred Trimbrell of Tennessee. Trimbrell discussed his connection to Jemison’s brothers, who escaped the April 1758 raid in Adams County and later settled in Virginia with their grandparents.
McCauslin also urged attendees to continue exploring and commemorating Jemison’s legacy through additional research, storytelling, public art, and place-naming efforts in her honor.
She encouraged the use of the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center to research Jemison’s descendants, including those with the surnames Jamison, Jemison, Jimerson, and Green. McCauslin said she has identified more than 30 of Jemison’s descendants who attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Among those descendants were two individuals, Lucy and Jenny, who lived with Adams County families more than 150 years after Jemison’s capture. They stayed at properties in Straban Township and Butler Township as part of the Carlisle school’s outing program, which placed students with white families when school was not in session.
McCauslin noted that properties associated with the Carlisle Indian School outing program may qualify for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
The next program in the series is scheduled for June 23 at 6:30 p.m. and will focus on the life of George Washington Sandoe and the events of June 26, 1863.