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- The husband of Peters daughter Brigetta was killed by Indians. Brigetta was taken prisoner.
John & Peter Van Bibber settled in 1781 on the bank of the Ohio river, just below the mouth of the Great Kanawha. Their sister, Brigetta, who had married Isaac Robinson, lived on the north side of the Kanawha, near the mouth of Crooked Creek, now Point Pleasant.
It was only a few weeks after the murder of Rhoda Van Bibber that Indians attacked the Robinsons at their home. Isaac Robinson, a man who was helping him with the farm work, & a baby boy some 2 years old, were slain. The house was burned,igetta & 2 sons were taken prisoners. The older boy, Isaac, was about 8 & John some 4 years old. The latter, unable to stand the strain of rapid travel, was slain by the Indians & his little body was left by the roadside where his father's brother, John Robinson, found it a few days later. Two days & 2 nights, without resting, the prisoners were forced to march & though he tried, Robinson could not overtake them.
One night after a long day's march & before the Indians had reached their destination, somewhere in the vicinity of Detroit, Brigetta Robinson gave birth to a child. Carrying the little one in her arms, she was compelled to keep on the mare next & several other succeeding days. Then the Indians thought the babe too great a burden for the weakened woman, so they beat its head against a tree, threw the body at her feet & left it there as prey for the wild beast as they kept on their way.
Mrs. Robinson was kept for 5 years in virtual slavery before a French trader bought her release & sent her back to her girlhood home in Botetourt County, Virginia. Meanwhile, Isaac had been carried away to some other habitation of the trio she had to leave him behind, when she started for her old home.
But, 3 years later, during a period of peace between the Indians & the whites, this woman of iron nerve started back to hunt for her son. Two of her children had been brutally killed before her eyes, a 3rd was held a captive by the Indiansr heart yearned for him. In one of the Indian villages where she sought him, smallpox was raging & taking its prey by thousands, & she was stricken. It was many months before she could go on, & she too had to make her temporary home among the Indians.
After his 8 years of life among the wild tribe of Indians, she found her son, Isaac, so weaned away from civilization that he refused to return to the white habitations & all the restrictions of convential life. But, the heroic mother finaon him over after weeks of persuasion, she induced her son to return with her to Point Pleasant. There his health gave way & he lived but a few years, though his mother, Brigetta Van Bibber, born of heroic mold, lived until almost a hundred years of age, & delighted in telling the descendants of her brothers the stories of her early adventures.
--Van Bibber Pioneers E-Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 4, February 2001.
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