THE AMAZING JOURNEY OF MARY DRAPER INGLES

I forgot the housework, neglected needed sleep and sort-of supervised the youngsters. That was my experience many years ago when I first read James Alexander Thom’s Follow the River. The fictional account of the true story of Mary Draper Ingles capture and captivity by the Shawnee in 1755, and eventual escape and journey home was one of those books that was impossible to put down. This twenty-three-year-old woman’s story demanded I do further research to learn more about her.

The Ingles and Draper families migrated to and settled in Draper’s Meadows on the western frontier of the Virginia colony, what is now Blacksburg, Virginia. Mary Draper was only eighteen when she married twenty-one-year-old William Ingles.

On July 30, 1755, Mary was at their cabin with their two young boys and William was harvesting in the fields when Shawnee warriors killed or captured most of the inhabitants of Drapers Meadows. Mary, her sons and her injured sister-in-law Bettie were captured and forced to travel further west. Mary’s sons were taken from her and adopted into the Shawnee tribe and taken to another village. Bettie was given to a warrior and traveled to another site.

Mary and another captive referred to as “Old Dutch woman” traveled another one hundred miles to a Shawnee village west to current day Cincinnati, Ohio. The two women were given the latitude to roam about freely and search for food. Mary Ingles was respected among the tribe for her indomitable spirit and her skills as a seamstress. She made shirts for the natives.

Mary’s journey with the Shawnee Indians is noted by the red line,
her return east is noted with the blue line her return east.

attributed to: Blue Ridge Country Magazine

In October of 1755, the two women escaped under the guise of foraging for food. They headed off along the Ohio River on almost a five-hundred-mile journey back to southwest Virginia with only two blankets and a tomahawk. Their forty-three-day odyssey through treacherous wilderness and Mary’s eventual return home is spellbinding.  

Mary’s story doesn’t end there. She and William had several more children and moved to the New River near Radford, Virginia where they built a home, an inn, and operated a ferry crossing. Over a period of years, the Ingles searched and found one of their sons purchasing him from the Shawnee tribe. Will died in 1782 and Mary lived in their log cabin and operated the ferry until she died in 1815 at the age of eighty-three. Will and Mary Ingles descendants of still own and inhabit their land.

A bronze sculpture of Mary Draper Ingles

by sculptor Matt Langford stands in front of

the Boone County, Kentucky Public Library Main Branch. 

attributed to: Blue Ridge Country Magazine

Mary Draper Ingles story is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the courage and fortitude of the women who helped settle our country.