Note 334 — Chapter XXII · 1763. DESOLATION OF THE FRONTIERS.
Reading edition
Extract from a MS. Letter—Thomas Cresap to Governor Sharpe:—
“Old Town, July 15th, 1763.
“May it please yr Excellency:
“I take this opportunity in the height of confusion to acquaint you with our unhappy and most wretched situation at this time, being in hourly expectation of being massacred by our barbarous and inhuman enemy the Indians, we having been three days successively attacked by them, viz. the 13th, 14th, and this instant.... I have enclosed a list of the desolate men and women, and children who have fled to my house, which is enclosed by a small stockade for safety, by which you see what a number of poor souls, destitute of every necessary of life, are here penned up, and likely to be butchered without immediate relief and assistance, and can expect none, unless from the province to which they belong. I shall submit to your wiser judgment the best and most effectual method for such relief, and shall conclude with hoping we shall have it in time.”
Extract from a Letter—Frederick Town, July 19, 1763 (Penn. Gaz. No. 1807):—
“Every Day, for some Time past, has offered the melancholy Scene of poor distressed Families driving downwards, through this Town, with their Effects, who have deserted their Plantations, for Fear of falling into the cruel Hands of our Savage Enemies, now daily seen in the Woods. And never was Panic more general or forcible than that of the Back Inhabitants, whose Terrors, at this Time, exceed what followed on the Defeat of General Braddock, when the Frontiers lay open to the Incursions of both French and Indians.”