1741. Girty is born.
Simon Girty was the son of an Irish immigrant who settled in Eastern
Pennsylvania. Simon Girty is his father's name, and Mary Newton is
his mother's name. The son of a packhorse driver employed in the fur
trade, Simon Girty's mother made their home at Chambers Mills, on the
east side of the Susquehanna, above Harrisburg, now Dauphin county,
Pennsylvania. Here Simon Girty, the second son, was born.
1749. The Girtys move
to Sherman's Creek. There were four of the Girty sons—Thomas,
Simon, James and George. Then later, there was a half brother, John
Turner. In 1749 the family removed to Sherman's Creek, in Perry
county, along with a number of other settlers, to engage in farming.
But the Indians regarded this as an unauthorized encroachment upon
their lands, and they protested to the government. Evidently this
protest was accounted well-grounded, for the authorities forcibly
expelled the settlers and burned the houses they had built.
1750 or 1751. Simon
Girty's father, “Simon Girty”, an Irish immigrant and an Indian
Trader, was killed in a duel in 1750. Or maybe Simon Girty's father
was killed in 1751 in a drunken frolic by an Indian called “The
Fish” in Chamber Mills, over a land dispute. There's conflicting
reports of the slaying of Simon Girty's biological father.
1753-1755. Mary Newton,
Simon Girty's mother, married John Turner, who had been a boarder in
the family. John Turner took his crew, his new family back to the
Sherman's Creek valley in 1755, and here all fell into the hands of
Indians when the latter captured and destroyed Fort Granville there
on the Juniata.
1755. By the time Girty
was fourteen his family had moved to Sherman's Creek in eastern
Pennsylvania. During the French and Indian War, the Girtys, fearful
of attack, sought refuge in Fort Granville. In 1755, a combined army
of French soldiers and their native allies captured the fort, taking
several British colonists captive including Simon Girty. He was first
taken to Kittanning, a town belonging to the Delaware natives, but he
eventually found himself in the hands of the Seneca natives who took
him to the Ohio Country. There, he was adopted into the Seneca tribe.
Girty seemed to enjoy his new surroundings, spending his late teens
learning the language and customs of the Senecas.
1756. The Burning of
John Turner at the Stake. During the French and Indian War, Simon,
his three brothers, his half-brother, his mother and his step-father
were taken by French-led Shawnee and Delaware forces who
captured Fort Granville. Following the capture of the entire Girty
family by Indians during the French & Indian War in America, his
step-father, John Turner, was burned at the stake before Simon's eyes
in 1756 at the Delaware village of Kittanning. All were brought over
the mountains to Kittanning. The Indians recognized John Turner as
one who had injured their race, so in retaliation they sacrificed him
at the stake. Gordon's " History of Pennsylvania " says
they tied him to a blackened post, made a great fire, danced around
him, heated gun barrels red hot and run them through his body, and
after three hours of such torture scalped him alive. Then a native
American revolutionary held up to him a boy who gave him the
finishing stroke with a tomahawk. A month later, English militia
under the command of William Armstrong attacked Kittanning, and
Thomas Girty, the eldest of the Girty brothers was liberated.
Thomas had been a captive for only 40 days. The rest of the
family remained in Indian hands and was separated and given to
different tribes. James Girty was adopted into a Shawnee tribe.
George Girty was adopted into a Delaware tribe. Simon Girty was taken
by western Senecas to a village near Lake Erie’s east shore, where
he was adopted into the Iroquois League, and trained as an
interpreter.
1756-1764. Simon Girty
spent the next eight years living with a Seneca tribe in the Ohio
Country. Simon Girty had become fully assimilated with the Seneca and
preferred their way of life. He proved adept at learning different
native languages and dialects and became skilled as an orator. This
facility, together with his ability to quickly memorize speeches,
would serve him well in his later work as an interpreter and guide
first for the American colonists and eventually as an agent for the
British Indian Department.
1758. General John
Forbes captures a major French outpost in the Ohio Country: Fort
Duquesne.
1759. Their French
allies having yielded to the British, the Senecas signed a peace
agreement with the English in 1759 and agreed to return all captives.
The natives returned Simon Girty to his mother in Pittsburgh, and he
spent the next several years as a struggling farmer. The next decade
of his life was spent living among the Seneca of northwestern
Pennsylvania. By then, Simon Girty had come to love the Indian way of
life, and, at one point, served as bodyguard to Seneca Indian Chief
Guyasuta. He also served as an interpreter for traders seeking furs
from the Delaware natives in western Pennsylvania.
1764. All three Girty
brothers were brought back from the woods when the French had been
expelled from the country, and English domination had become assured.
Simon Girty returned from life among the Senecas in 1764, at which
time he was fluent in eleven native languages.
1774. Simon Girty
helped Lord Dunmore in Lord Dunmore's War as a scout and interpreter.
1775. Simon Girty, the
frontiersman, the white savage, helped General James Wood in 1775 in
negotiations with the Shawnee natives, the Seneca natives, the
Delaware natives, and the Wyandot natives.
1776. The American
Revolutionary War for Independence. At the outbreak of the American
Revolution, Simon Girty sided with the imperialist revolutionaries.
1777. September. Simon
Girty is charged with treason by the Americans. Simon Girty did not
like the structure of military life and frequently clashed with his
superiors. In September 1777, Girty was arrested, and charged with
treason for supposedly helping plan the seizure of Fort Pitt. The
conspirators reportedly hoped to massacre the fort's residents and
then turn it over to the British. U.S. authorities eventually
acquitted Girty, but his desire to help the U.S. had evaporated.
1778. Simon Girty
participates in General Hand's “squaw campaign” of 1778, and is
disgusted with fighting for the Americans afterwards. Simon Girty saw
the squaw campaign murder lots of innocent natives.
1778. March 28. Simon
Girty leaves Fort Pitt, and offers his services to the British
military in Detroit. James Girty, brother of Simon, was then with the
Shawnees on the Scioto, having been sent from Fort Pitt by the
American authorities on a futile peace embassy. He had been raised
among the Shawnees, was a natural savage, and at once joined his
brother and the other tories. For 16 years Capt. McKee, Mathew
Elliott and the Girtys, were the merciless scourges of the border.
They were the instigators and leaders of many Indian raids,
continuing their hostility until long after the close of the
revolutionary war.
1779. October 1. Simon
Girty and Alexander McKee, another Scots-Irish Loyalist, with the aid
of a large force of Native Americans, attacked and killed American
forces in present-day Kentucky, who were returning from an expedition
to New Orleans. The ambush occurred near Dayton, Kentucky, across the
Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio. Only a handful of the Americans
survived, among them Colonel John Campbell and Captain Robert Benham.
1782. March 8. The
Gnadenhutten massacre. Also known as the Moravian massacre, as the
wholesale slaughter of 96 Christian Lenape (Delaware) natives by
colonial American militia from Pennsylvania on March 8, 1782 at the
Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio.
1782. June 11. Butcher
William Crawford burned at the Stake. Girty was present, and jolly,
and laughing, merrily, during the ritual torture, and execution of
William Crawford by the Lenape (Delaware) war chief Captain Pipe, in
retaliation against the Gnadenhutten massacre. William Irvine was the
man who convinced Crawford to come out of retirement, for “one last
savage barbaric hoorah”, which turned into the failed Sandusky
River campaign.
1786. August 29. Shay's
Rebellion, in central and western Massachusetts, begins.
1790-1794. Simon Girty
fought, and was a major instigator, in the the General Native
American War.
1818. At 77 years of
age, Simon Girty was increasingly infirm with arthritis and had
failing eyesight. Simon Girty returned to his farm after the war, and
died in 1818, completely blind, in Canada.
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