Friends of the Library Present Chautauqua History Comes Alive: Mary Draper Ingles, Wilderness Survivor

The Friends of the Laurens County Library are pleased to present:

History Comes Alive: Mary Ingles, Wilderness Survivor (1755) – a Chautauqua Presentation
Location: Laurens Library, 1017 West Main Street, Laurens SC
Date: March 16th at 2:00 PM

This program and is free and open to the public!

Carolyn McIntyre of Greenville will offer an in-character presentation of the story of Mary Draper Ingles (1732-1815). Ingles was the first white woman married west of the Alleghenies and the mother of the first child born there. Captured by a Shawnee war party, 23-year-old Mary Ingles and her four-year-old and two-year-old sons were taken from Drapers Meadows, Virginia, past present-day Cincinnati. And she was quite likely in some stage of pregnancy. She escaped in late autumn in a summer dress without weapons, fire or food. With the rushing Ohio River as her only guide, Mary Ingles walked through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen. After traveling approximately 800 miles, she returned home in snow, then skeletal in form, and almost naked. She regained her health, bore four more children in 10 years, and lived to a robust 83.

Drapers Meadows was burned and not resettled. Today it is the site of Blacksburg, Virginia, and the Virginia Tech duck pond. Mary and her family moved to the Radford, Virginia, area where most of the descendants of her 34 grandchildren remain. Both Virginia and West Virginia claim Mary Ingles’ heroism runs in their veins.