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LITTLE IS KNOWN OF the real Thomas and Elizabeth McQueen. Thomas was born about 1730 to Dugal McQueen, a Jacobite exiled to the colonies after the Uprising of 1715-16. He patented 29 acres on Foxes Thicket on 22 January 1760. He died about 1763, possibly during Pontiac’s Uprising.
Even less is known of Elizabeth. Her maiden name has been said to be Berry, but there is no paper trail to support this claim. Stories persist among family descendants that she was a French convict. The sons of Thomas and Elizabeth spoke French, and some were of a small and dark stature. The French, however, did not send prisoners, political or otherwise, to the British colonies. The British did, however, send the Acadians.
It is entirely plausible that this ancestress of mine was Acadian and among the group that arrived in Baltimore Town on the Leopard in January of 1756. Dugal McQueen, before his death in 1746/47, owned property known as Cranberry Plains in now Westminster, Carroll County, Maryland. Westminster is 40 miles west of Baltimore Town. Where Thomas was living in 1756 when the Acadians arrived is not known, but doubtless he was still in the area. As Baltimore Town was the largest town in the area at that time, the real Thomas and Elizabeth may well have met there, although this theory has not yet been proven.
It may never be.
What is known is that the world Thomas and Elizabeth lived in was violent, harsh, and dangerous. Political factions were tearing apart the colonies, and ethnic challenges between the English, the French, and the Native Americans exacerbated the situation. The French and Indian War broke out in 1756, and the frontier was never the same.
Around these few facts of Thomas and Elizabeth, I have woven my tale of The Rood, but their story, in the larger context of history, is drawn from others. A number of sources were indispensable to me.
For Thomas’ run of the gauntlet, I drew heavily, but not exclusively, from the same run by frontiersman Simon Kenton. His adventures among the Indians can be read in a number of books (and for primary source material in The Draper Manuscripts), but the most readable are found in The Frontiersman by Allan Eckert. I also took the liberty of using Eckert’s glossary of Shawnee words which I combined with a few internet sources. I will add that Eckert wrote what is termed narrative historical fiction. He used primary source materials and insisted his characters’ conversations had some basis in fact. His books are, however, stories and should be weighed as such.
For Thomas’ near burning, I drew from The Narrative of John Slover which can also be found in a variety of sources. Slover was a scout in Crawford’s Campaign in 1782 and was captured. He was roped and awaiting his burning when a thunderstorm broke overhead. He later escaped and made his way home.
Paul Wallace’s Indian Paths of Pennsylvania was indispensable to me in recreating the route Thomas and Elizabeth took to the upper Ohio River, although Iron Gun’s Village is from my own imagination. For information on Braddock’s Route, which the Indians no doubt used after the general himself carved such in 1755 on the way to his defeat, I also used Braddock Rock, published in 1909 by John Kennedy Lacock, and found online at http://www.route40.net/page.asp?n=10592. Most of these areas are now gone or the paths forgotten. In fact, the two crossings of the Monongahela River, well known at the time, have been lost as steel works have since been built at both.
The names of the places along Thomas and Elizabeth’s route into the backcountry are real – Kittochiny Mountain (Catoctin Mountain), Peddlar’s Rock, Gist’s Plantation, Fort Necessity, Fort Cumberland, and so forth. In 1756 this wilderness was pockmarked with Indian villages and a few hardy settlers. Otherwise, it remained unchanged as it had from the beginning of time.
Rounding out their trek was my reading of James Alexander Thom’s Follow the River about the capture and captivity of Mary Draper Ingles. The summer of 1755 she and her two sons were captured by Shawnee Indians after the Draper’s Meadow Massacre. She was taken nearly 600 miles to the Lower Shawneetown on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers, and then, facing daunting odds, she escaped and made her way back home.
As always, I am indebted to my beta readers – this time to Danielle Brown, Bernadette Matties, Brenda Peters, and Belinda Johnson. They read a somewhat confusing, incomplete manuscript as I recovered from surgery and Hurricane Harvey bore down upon the Houston area, and they still managed to provide me with feedback and encouragement. A special thank you to my good friend Denise Hyde. She has read every one of my novels thus far, and her feedback has been invaluable and much appreciated.
And last, but not least, let me refer you back to the dedication page. When we moved into our house sixteen years ago, a black, half lab half basset hound mix of a dog greeted us as a one dog welcoming committee.
If I was outside with the boys (which was all the time every day), Razon was sitting under my lawn chair. When we took walks around the block, he came racing down the street to walk ahead of us. If the kids were playing in the neighborhood, Razon was there in the middle. When I conceived the idea for this book and worked on the first chapters as a fledgling author, Razon was, again, under my lawn chair.
Naturally, I had to put him in my book.
One day, I looked up from my lawn chair to see a Rottweiler racing into my yard and toward my child. I pushed the child behind me, folded the chair, and reached my leg out to take the dog’s bite. The jaws were within inches of my leg when Razon came from nowhere. He jumped between the dog and my leg. He drove the dog into the ditch, giving me time to get into the garage. The dog was twice Razon’s size, but he gave up the fight.
Years later, Razon moved, and yes, I cried and I missed him terribly. A year or two later, I visited his new neighborhood while taking my children to a birthday party. He saw me and came running down the street. He remembered me even then, and we had a grand reunion.
May you rest in peace, sweet boy, and may the flowers bloom for you every year from now to forever.