Ohio History Journal

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MITCHENER'S "LEGEND OF THE WHITE

MITCHENER'S "LEGEND OF THE WHITE

WOMAN, AND NEWCOMERSTOWN"

 

 

BY GEORGE F. SMYTHE

 

Mr. C. W. Butterfield, in his "History of Ohio,"

says,1 "Mark Kuntz, upon the Tuscarawas, with an In-

dian wife, and Mary Harris, upon the Walhonding,

with an Indian husband, were, it may be proper here

to mention, the first white settlers of Ohio, so far as

any authentic records disclose." My interest, at pres-

ent, is concerned with this Mary Harris.

There may, indeed, have been white women in Ohio

before Mary Harris; but I believe that Mr. Butterfield

is correct when he says that she was the first white

woman settler in our state, so far as authentic records

show. Mr. A. T. Goodman, in his "First White Chil-

dren Born on Ohio Soil," says:2 "Up to the period of

the American revolution, thousands of French and Eng-

lish traders had passed through the Ohio country.

* * * For the most part the traders were married

to squaws, and had children by them. In rare cases,

white women accompanied their husbands on trading

excursions, which generally lasted for months." But,

to accompany one's husband on a long trading expedi-

tion in Ohio is not to be a settler of Ohio; and in any

case, the only two instances which Mr. Goodman says

he ever heard of "where traders had white wives living

with them in Indian villages," were dated, one in 1768,

and the other in 1770; while Mary Harris was a resi-

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