Ohio History Journal

CATHERINE GOUGAR

Probably the Earliest Pioneer Resident of Ohio Who Has De-

scendants Living Upon the Original

Place of Settlement

 

BY FRANK WARNER, M. D., D. SC., COLUMBUS, OHIO.

 

On the farm of Alfred Immell, situated on the pike

from Columbus to Chillicothe, some ten miles north of

the latter city, lies buried Catherine Gougar.  Her

remains have lain here since 1801, when she died at the

age of sixty-nine years.  She died within two years

of the establishment of Ohio as a State and within

view of its first capital, Chillicothe; having lived under

the shadow of Mount Logan from which Ohio has taken

its great seal.

Mrs. Alfred Immell is a direct descendant of Cath-

erine Gougar and lives upon the same farm where her

great-great-grandmother lived when she was brought a

captive here by the Indians in 1744.

As related in the inscription on the monument, after

having returned to her old home in Pennsylvania, she

married George Goodman; bore a son, John, and came

back to Ohio in 1798; settling upon the same spot where

she had been brought captive.  Mrs. Immell was a

Goodman before her marriage and is a direct descend-

ant of the little girl, Catherine Gougar, who was but

twelve years of age when she was brought here 178

years ago.

(295)

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296       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications The following is the inscription on the monument: IN MEMORY OF CATHERINE GOUGAR Pioneer wife and mother, born in New Jersey in 1732. Cap- tured by the Indians in 1744, in Berks County, Pa., and for five years held a captive at and near this place. Sold to French- Canadian Traders, she served in Canada for two years, finally gaining her freedom, she returned to her former home only to find her parents gone and herself homeless. She lived with friends until 1756, when she married George Goodman who died in 1795. With her son John, came to Ohio in 1798 and, by a strange for- tune, settled on this spot where she had been held a captive while with the Indians. Died in 1801, and lies here in the place chosen by herself and cleared by her own hands. This monument is erected to her memory by her great grand- children in 1915.

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Catherine Gougar            297

Hildreth, in Memoirs of the Early Pioneer Settlers

of Ohio, observes that the settlement of Ohio first com-

menced on the 7th of April, 1788, at the confluence of

the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers; that the settlement

was called Marietta in honor of the friend of their

country, the Queen of France.  He further observes in

reference to the settlement: "This was directly athwart

the Indian war path; for it was down the Muskingum

and its tributary branches that the Wyandotts, the

Shawnees, the Ottawas, and all the Indians of the North

and Northwest, were accustomed to march, when from

time to time, for almost half a century before, they

made those dreadful incursions into western Virginia

and western Pennsylvania, which spread desolation,

and ruin, and despair, through all these regions."

It was on one of these incursions of the Indians,

forty-four years before the earliest settlement of Ohio,

1788, that Catherine Gougar was captured, in 1744, and

brought to the Ohio country. She was then only twelve

years old and remained here captive five years, living

with Indians near Chillicothe. What a wonderfully

strange circumstance that she should have returned

here later, in 1798, to make her home with her son as

her escort and protector.  Almost as interesting is the

fact that the descendants of Catherine Gougar, who

first came to Ohio thirty-two years before the signing

of the Declaration of Independence and the war of the

American Revolution, should be living and owning the

land upon which this early pioneer first located, though

captive, in the very dim light of the early morning of

Ohio history. How her life was mingled with tragedy

and romance!

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298     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

An Ordinance for the government of the Territory

Northwest of the Ohio River was passed by Congress

July 13, 1787.  Forty-three years before this, the sub-

ject of our sketch had lived here; and she returned

eleven years after that. She lived under this territorial

government for three years before her death which

occurred in 1801, or one year before the adoption of

the constitution of the State of Ohio. What wonderful

civic history was in the making in Ohio during the clos-

ing years of her eventful life!

Catherine Gougar, after a residence of five years on

the banks of the Scioto, near Chillicothe, was just leav-

ing here with her new owners, the French Canadian

Traders who had purchased her, and was on her road

to Canada, where she was to make another enforced

residence of two years, when Louis the Fifteenth of

France was taking formal possession of a vast territory

of which Ohio was a part, though a small part. This

was in 1749. This formality consisted, says Hildreth,

in his Pioneer History, published in 1849, of- "Erect-

ing a wooden cross, near the mouth of a stream and

burying a leaden plate at its foot on which was en-

graved a legend, setting forth the claim of Louis the

Fifteenth to the country by the right of prior discovery,

and by formal treaties with the European powers."

In 1763, fourteen years after Catherine, the girl now

seventeen years of age, was taken from Ohio to Canada,

the lands along the Ohio river as well as Canada, were

surrendered to England after the terrible struggle of

the French-Indian War which had begun in 1755.

When she again returned to Ohio, in 1798, she came

to a land no longer owned by the French, as she had

left it, nor to the English, who had possessed it for a

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Catherine Gougar            299

number of years during her absence; a new nation had

been born; the United States was now the owner of this

territory which was soon to become a state - the great

state of Ohio, the soil of which her feet had trod so

many, many years before.  As Atwater observes, in

A History of the State of Ohio, (1838, p. 110), "It was

indeed a long and bloody war, in which Louis XIV, XV,

lost Canada, and all the country watered by the Ohio

river." It was fortunate for our heroine that she was

neither in Ohio nor Canada during this bloody conflict

which cost so many lives; the lives of Logan's family

were lost at this time, and such a bloody conflict might

well included our captive heroine when this story of

her could not have been related.

The first substantial effort at the settlement of the

Ohio river country was not made until 1748, four years

after our captive child had been residing in Ohio. This

was through the formation of the Ohio Land Company

under the leadership of Thomas Lee, of Virginia, which

had been granted a half million acres of land located

principally on the south shore of the Ohio river be-

tween the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers.   The

fruition of the settlement of Ohio under the stimulus of

this company was not until the expedition which started

for the Muskingum outlet to form the town of Marietta

under the leadership of Rufus Putnam, in 1788. Just

forty-four years before the first settlement of Ohio was

formed, Catherine Gougar was a resident here.

Of these early captive settlers, history tells of two

of great interest, Mary Harris and Mary Ingles.

"Mary Ingles is often claimed," says Randall, in Randall

and Ryan's History of Ohio, "as the first white woman

in Ohio, but this is clearly erroneous."  She was cap-

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300     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

tured in 1755 at the outbreak of the French and Indian

War, on the day previous to Braddock's defeat on the

Monongahela.   Just eleven years before Mary Ingles

was led captive to our Ohio soil, Catherine Gougar was

living upon the fertile banks of the Scioto. It is true,

the romantic incidents, with such terribly stirring fea-

tures, especially occurring during Mrs. Rankin's escape

and return to Virginia, gives her residence here wonder-

ful interest.  But she was not the first white woman

living upon our Ohio soil. Catherine Gougar had pre-

ceded her by eleven years as a resident of Ohio. Mary

Harris, who preceded Catherine Gougar in Ohio by at

least four years or more, is reputed generally to have

been the first white inhabitant of Ohio, having lived as

the wife of Eagle Feather, after she had been brought

here as a captive, upon the banks of the Muskingum

about 1730 or 1740.  But, as Mr. Randall observes,

"It is more than likely that many white women preceded

her to Ohio, either as captives or voluntary migrants."

While Catherine Gougar was not the first white

woman to have lived upon Ohio soil, she was one of the

very earliest inhabitants.  Her early presence in Ohio

gives rise to history of the most captivating interest.

What induced her to return to Ohio after she had

gained her freedom and regained her former home in

Pennsylvania?  She was now sixty-six years of age

when she made her second appearance near Chillicothe.

Was it the strong love of home which had been de-

veloped in her young impressionable mind? Or, was

it the conquering passion that seized her to do some-

thing for her son by bringing him out to what she had

seen was a land of great fertility- the fertile meadows

of the rich soil of the beautiful Scioto valley?  At her

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Catherine Gougar            301

time of life it was hardly likely that she would have

undergone voluntarily the new hardships of a severe

pioneer life for any personal advantage to have been

gained.

Today one of her descendants, Mr. Alfred Immell,

Jr., is sheriff of Ross County, where she first located in

1744, prisoner as she was of the Indians. His parents

still live in the old homestead located on the soil where

Catherine Gougar lived and near where sleeps the one

whose memory these descendants love so well.

There are a number of descendants of her living in

the county and surrounding country as well as in other

states. These are people of sterling worth and possess

high ideals of the best citizenship. They not only pos-

sess these high ideals of citizenship, but they live lives

worthy of that type of people.

It would seem she is the first white woman to set

foot upon Ohio soil who has left descendants, sterling

and worthy ones, that occupy the same home land that

she originally occupied in her life and that now enfolds

her sacred dust - the dust of a once noble woman who

sacrificed the leisure she had earned for her old days

to make a new home, a better and more prosperous one,

for her son and his descendants.

It would seem impossible to offer a parallel history

in all Ohio that can approach this wonderfully interest-

ing one of Catherine Gougar.  Her voluntary return

to the land she first occupied as an Indian captive, the

continued possession of this same land by her lineal de-

scendants and the faithfulness of her relatives in rever-

ing her memory are certainly remarkable facts con-

nected with the early pioneer history of Ohio.

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302     Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

SUPPLEMENTAL SKETCH

A short time after the foregoing contribution was received,

a brief sketch was sent to the editor by a descendant of Catherine

Gougar. Omitting the inscription on the monument which has

already been given, this sketch is substantially as follows.-ED.

West of the Chillicothe-Columbus Pike a short dis-

tance south of the Alfred Immell home, there was

erected in 1915 a fine monument to mark the last rest-

ing place of Catherine Gougar Goodman, the first white

woman in Ross County of which there is any positive

record. This monument is near the road from which

a well beaten path indicates that it is frequently visited

by the passers-by.  It was erected by the descendants

of Catherine Gougar, headed by Honorable Oliver P.

Goodman, former member of the Ohio House of Repre-

sentatives and mayor of Kingston, Ohio. Many of the

family lived in Green Township and Chillicothe. The

spot where the monument stands Catherine Gougar

Goodman cleared herself and requested that she should

be buried there. It was there that she was held captive

by the Shawano Indians in the long ago. This is his-

toric ground and is visited each year by many tourists.

The parents of Catherine Gougar Goodman emi-

grated to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, when

she was a little girl, and later moved to Berks County,

being among the early pioneer families of that part of

the country, while the colonies were still under British

dominion.

In 1744, when she was but twelve years old, she and

a little brother were captured by the Indians, her father

being killed in the fight.  Her mother had gone to a

spring some distance away and so escaped.  The In-

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Catherine Gougar           303

dians hurried the children westward and on the third

day the little boy was killed.  Catherine was held a

captive for five years, but was not unkindly treated.

She was traded to French-Canadians who took her to

Canada where she remained two years.  Finally re-

turning to Pennsylvania, she found her mother was

dead and the cabin home abandoned.  She remained

with friends there until her marriage with George

Goodman in 1756.

Six children were born to them, four sons and two

daughters.  In 1798, Mrs. Goodman, then sixty-six

years old, with her son John came to Ross County,

bringing with her her two youngest children, Christenia

and William.  Christenia married a Mr. Moots and

located on Mad river in Logan County, Ohio. William

married and settled in Crawford County, Ohio. Both

lived to an advanced age.

John took up land in what is now Green Township,

Ross County. His mother recognized the places where

she had lived when a captive of the Shawano Indians.

Here she lived and died.  The monument marks the

last resting place of a pioneer mother whose life was

marked by many changes of fortune that make it one

of unusual interest, even in the thrilling period of border

adventure and warfare.

The Indians remained in camp near the mouth of

Blackwater Creek, in Green Township, Ross County,

from 1745-1746 and then moved to Kentucky for a

short time and later to the northern part of Ohio.

The foregoing facts were obtained from the young-

est son and daughter of Catherine Gougar Goodman

and recorded about the year 1860.

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