These names are mentioned in an 1860 letter of Abram Mason in middle Tennessee in relation to his early remembrances. He came to TN in 1790 from Monongalia Co VA and died in Crockett County TN in 1862.. RE: ABRAM MASON B 1778 KENT DE, SON OF ISSAC MASON b1753 & PARTHENA HALL MASON b 1756 Transcript: Title: “Letter of an Old Settler” From: American Historical Magazine Representing the Chain of American History in the Peabody Normal College Vol. III. January, 1898. No. 1. Devoted Especially to the History of Tennessee and Adjoining States Published Quarterly by the Peabody Normal College at Nashville, Tenn. University Press, Nashville, Tenn. .............................................................................. ................................................................ page 88 The American Historical Magazine “Letter of an Old Settler” “The following letter from Mr. Abram Mason of Mason’s Grove, Madison C’y Tenn. to his nephew Dr. Jno Henry Currey of this city is full of interesting reminiscences of old Mr. Mason’s early life when this now bustling city was then a forest. MASON’S GROVE, TENNESSEE, March 27, 1860. Dear Nephew, After my compliments to you all, and my thanks to you for the book you sent me; I will proceed to give you such things as I can recollect about the early settlements in Middle Tennessee. I was born in the State of Delaware, Revet Cy, (sic) in the year 1778. Father moved to Virginia when I was young, and settled in Monongahela (sic) County, on Monongahela River. He stayed there until I was about 12 years of age; when he and eighteen of his neighbors, in the Spring of 1790 built a large keel bottomed boat. We did not start till (sic) May, we then started down the Monongahela River. It was very troublesome times on the Ohio River. There were no settlements, from Pittsburgh down to the mouth of the Ohio, on the North side of the river, except forts. General St. Clair had one where Cincinnati now stands, and one opposite Louisville. It was very dangerous traveling on the Ohio in those times; the indians (sic) were taking boats often on the river. St. Clair got badly defeated in 1791; he lost nine hundred brave men. We saw the indians crossing the river before us. We made ready for battle. The women and children were placed in the bottom of the boat, and beds placed around them. When we came near to where they were, a gun or two was fired, and they landed and took to the cane, and we saw them no more. We got to the Falls of Ohio in June, and the river had got so low we could not get the boat over the falls. We stayed in Kentucky the balance of the Summer, and then tried to get her over, and stuck fast. The river took another rise and she went off, and was lost. In September 1790, nine families out of the nineteen built perogerrogs (sic), one to each family, and started down the Ohio. There was not a settlement on either side of the river to the mouth of the Cumberland, and none on it, till we got to Clarksville, forty miles below Nashville. If the Indians had met with us, we would have been all killed or taken. We killed some buffaloes, elk, and other game. Our powder gave out before we got up the river, and we got on sufferance, (sic) being longer in the way than we expected. We landed about the first of October, three miles below Nashville. Father bought a small tract of land in Davidson County, on Richland Creek, about three miles west of Nashville in the neighbourhood of old General Robertson’s. We heard the guns when the Indians wounded the General and his son close by where he lived. We heard the guns which killed a boy up the same Creek, at Johnson’s Ford, where John Bosley now lives. The Indians were killing and stealing horses all around us. They killed a fine young man at Jonathan Robertson’s. They shot him in the evening. I went there that night and sat up with them; he died about midnight. The neighbours raised a party , followed them and overtook them at Tennessee where they had made their winters hunt. They killed and took nearly all of them, brought back Helen’s scalp and hat, burnt their skins, bears meat, and oil. I was going to school when they came by with the prisoners, with the scalps upon long canes, carrying them like colors. This was in the spring, I think, of 1793. About this time the Indians came in and killed Mr. James Thomson, wife and a daughter; & took another prisoner, and a marraid (sic) lady by the name of Espy; and carried them to the nation and kept them sometime. When they got back, this young Miss Thompson married a Mr. Edward Collinsworth, and became the mother of a family. Her oldest son, James Collinsworth, a noted lawyer in Nashville, went to Texas and died there. A younger son became my son in law, and is living close by me now. The Indians were still troublesome, and father was drafted to guard the outside fort. I went and served his tour. I hadn’t to go but a mile and a half, we were so near the outside. I had to go to Wm. Cash’s Fort and set at the back of the field and watch while the others worked. My orders were, if I saw any Indians, to fire at them and run for the fort; but none came while I was there. This Wm. Cash was a brother in law to General Robertson. In the Spring of 1794, the Indians were still troublesome. We forted up at Philip Sutes fort, only a half mile farther. We went to the fort as rest, (sic) and looked for father to come to the fort that night; but he went in with his meal, and fed, and bellied, and hobbled his horse, thinking to go back the next day, and laid down by himself, without any gun to defend himself. Mother was uneasy at his not coming to the fort, and we started early next morning, and when within two hundred yards of the cabin, heard father calling his horse. I was walking in front carrying a gun, mother and nine children behind. A little brother looked out one side in a thick bunch of priv...... [Here the letter ends abruptly. The remaining portion has probably been lost.]