After my familiarization with the terrain that tried her body and soul, I felt that I had as much understanding of the essential Mary Draper Ingles as one could have. What better study of a human spirit is there than a study of the trials it has overcome?
Of the several appearances of young George Washington in this novel, all are substantiated by historical documentation. There is no record that he did meet or speak to Mary Ingles at Vass’ Fort, but I find it conceivable that he did, as he was inspecting the fort in his capacity as Virginia militia commander at about the time Mary Ingles was sheltered there. His keen interest in land speculation would have caused him, I am sure, to ask such questions as he asked her in this novel’s dialogue.
My search for the probable Mary Ingles led me eventually to those parts of West Virginia that were first opened up and developed by the Ingleses and the Drapers, and by good fortune I was directed to a great-great-great-granddaughter of that dauntless woman.
Roberta Ingles Steele of Radford, Virginia, might well have met me with reserve and suspicion. She feels the Mary Draper Ingles story has been distorted in many of its retellings through the years, and here I came, another outsider bent on doing another version of it. I could sense her reserve, but she did not hesitate to offer me her hospitality and a good hearing.
Mrs. Steele is, of course, a guardian of Ingles family history. Her great-great-grandfather was John Ingles, Sr., who was born in 1776, about a decade after his mother’s return from captivity. His handwritten manuscript, the first known written account of her journey, is for Mrs. Steele the most authentic documentation of the story. That manuscript is preserved in the library of the University of Virginia. In 1969, Mrs. Steele and her brother, Andrew Lewis Ingles, edited and published an annotated version of that manuscript, under the title, Escape From Indian Captivity (Commonwealth Press Inc., Radford, Va.). They tried to decipher the original manuscript accurately, preserving John Ingles’ spelling, word choice, style and punctuation.
Mrs. Steele sat with me on the broad, pleasant porch of her splendid Radford home, and we did our best to share our conceptions of the brave woman. Little by little she began to give me hints and leads for additional research, and also gave me a copy of Escape From Indian Captivity. She made a special trip away from the house to fetch a facsimile of the original manuscript for me. When I returned to Radford a few months later to continue my research, she arranged to drive me out to the site of Ingles’ Ferry for a look at the hewn-log structure William Ingles had built there as an adjunct to his wayside inn. Mrs. Steele was at this time much bothered by the encroachments of vandals on the properties, and, indeed, by the general decline in morality and character that she professed to see going on throughout modern society. It was obvious that she had high expectations of people and probably not much patience with moral sloppiness. The world built here through such risk and work and suffering by her ancestors was being eroded by modernity. I felt that her keen sense of worth and family pride, stemming from the pioneer heroism of Mary and William Ingles, is still trying to withstand the long siege of easier times, the slow softening of fiber. Through all her helpfulness and hospitality and dry humor, I could detect a sadder, more severe side. There was a vestige, I thought, of the pioneer woman, looking down the centuries through the eyes of her descendants onto an undreamed-of world. It may be only my writer’s fancy, but I think I glimpsed the character of Mary Draper Ingles, that doughty survivor, in the face and the demeanor of this keeper of her legend.
And so my special thanks go to Roberta Steele for lending me her ancestor so that I might try to tell an inspiring story. I am also grateful to Rev. Harold J. Dudley of Raleigh, North Carolina, editor of the Third Edition of John P. Hale’s Trans-Allegheny Pioneers (Derreth Printing Co., Raleigh, North Carolina), for making his thoughts and his insights available to me; and to dozens of Virginians and West Virginians living along the New River Valley who gave me directions, hospitality and friendship, guided me to great views and campsites at the tops and bottoms of mountains and paddled me here and there in their fishing boats because, knowing I was writing a book about their legendary Mary Ingles, they apparently wanted to make my passage up the valley easier than hers.
By James Alexander Thom
Published by Ballantine Books:
PANTHER IN THE SKY
LONG KNIFE
FOLLOW THE RIVER
FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA
STAYING OUT OF HELL
THE CHILDREN OF FIRST MAN
THE RED HEART
SIGN-TALKER
WARRIOR WOMAN (with Dark Rain Thom)
SAINT PATRICK’S BATTALION
JAMES ALEXANDER THOM
lives in the southern Indiana hill country, near Bloomington, in an antique log cabin he recently moved onto his own wooded land.
Jim Thom has been a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, a freelance writer, and a member of the Indiana University Journalism School faculty. He now devotes all his time to writing.
Jim Thom researches his American historical novels meticulously, traveling, tracking down primary sources, and even walking in the footsteps of his characters. He walked, climbed and camped along much of the New River gorge in preparation for writing Follow the River. He traveled the entire route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition while writing From Sea to Shining Sea. To convey the experiences of the frontier soldiers in Long Knife, his first historical novel, he mastered the use of eighteenth-century tools and weapons and waded the icy flood waters of the Wabash.
For his latest novel, Panther in the Sky, Jim Thom immersed himself in present-day Shawnee tribal life, spending time with the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band of Ohio. The Washington Post praised Panther in the Sky, which is based on the life of the leader Tecumseh, as “brave and honorable.… Thom’s rendering of the Shawnee world is authoritative.”
Available in paperback
Frances Slocum, kidnapped from her frontier home when she was five by the Lenape, was raised by them to become an honored leader and healer of her adopted people. When she has a chance, as an adult, to return to her white family, there is no doubt in her mind that her heart is a red one.
THE RED HEART
by
James Alexander Thom
This powerful story about a real woman out of history adds another strong chapter to the large contribution James Alexander Thom is making to American literature.
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available in bookstores everywhere.
JAMES ALEXANDER Thom, Follow the River
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