Civilian & Telegraph

A Romantic Introduction.

On a pleasant afternoon in June 1776, a pioneer, six and thirty years of age, bearing a captain's commission, and commanding a little garrison in a small stockade fort on the Watauga river in Western North Carolina between the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains, was introduced to a young woman in a most marvellous manner. The records of gallantry afford no parallel. All around him was a wilderness. His fort was in the midst of a clearing, the trees from which formed his barracks and palisades. For days he had been expecting an attack from a band of Cherokees, with old Abraham, a noted chief, at their head, for he knew that they were out on the war path. The sharp report of a rifle fell upon his ears, and looking in the direction of the sound, he saw emerging from the dark forest and flying in the bright sunlight of the clearing toward the fort with the speed of a doe, a tall, slender girl, closely pursued by old Abraham and his savage warriors. They cut off her approach to the gate, when she turned suddenly, leaped the palisades, and fell, almost exhausted, into the arms of the gallant captain, who had watched the chase with painful interest. She was the lovely Catharine Sherrill, the acknowledged beauty among the settlers of the Holston region, who had come down from the mountain districts of Virginia and North Carolina. Long years afterward she was heard to say that she would be willing to have another such race, if necessary, for the joy of another like that and its happy results. She became the loving and much loved wife of the captain, and the mother of ten children.