This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/wNHBAIB/2842.1.1.1.1 Message Board Post: "However, this particular paragraph is rather embellished -- the "burned out insides of a hollow tree" -- which tends to suggest a specific history or remembrance that was recorded somewhere." I remember reading somewhere that this description was included in a genealogy written by members of the Crain family, apparently as a story passed down from generation to generation. It isn't so improbable that a family could have lived in a burned-out hollow of a tree at that time. When the first settlers arrived (and even into the 1920s and possibly 1930s, there were standing trees with diameters of 6 or 8 feet. I was told that the natives had been using such burned-out (usually set afire by lightning) trees and the settlers learned the usage from them. BTW, as much as I appreciate Mr. Paludan's work, much of the history of the earliest Sheltons was received by word-of-mouth from people who were not alive at the time of the massacre. Those who were alive at the time of the massacre were mostly not alive or not in the area when the earliest settlers stopped in Shelton Laurel.