Indian Massacres in Grant and Hardy County, West Virginia
A Shawnee chief named Killbuck, whose home was probably in Ohio, invaded what is now
Grant and Hardy Counties in the spring of 1756, at the head of sixty or seventy savages. He killed
several settlers and made his escape. He appeared again two years later in Pendleton County,
where he attacked and captured Fort Seybert, twelve miles west of the present town of Franklin,
and put to death more than twenty persons who had taken refuge in the fort. The place no
doubt could have made a successful resistance had not the inmates trusted to the promise
of safety made by the Indians, who thus were admitted into the fort, and at once massacred the
settlers. In 1758 the Indians again invaded Hampshire County and killed a settler near Forks of
Capon. This same year eight Indians came into the country on the South Branch of the Potomac,
near the town of Petersburg, and attacked the cabin of a man named Bingaman. They had forced
their way into the house at night, and being at too close
quarters for shooting, Bingaman clubbed his rifle and beat seven of them to death. The eighth
made his escape. In 1759 the Indians committed depredations on the Monongahela River near
Morgantown.
57 gruesome stories of Indian capture and torture