The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Extract of a letter from Marietta to a gentleman in this town, dated August 21.

"I am happy in being able to inform you that notwithstanding our being almost continually harassed by small parties of Indians, ever since the affair of the Big-Bottom, and our people frequently fired on, yet Providence has so ordered it that only two persons have been killed, viz. Capt. Rogers, and Mr. Keer, both late from Virginia; and a lad, son of James Converse, formerly of Hardwick, taken prisoner: on our part one Indian has been killed, whose body we recovered, and there is reason to believe some others have been wounded. As soon as the war broke out, several of our out settlements were abandoned, & the people began to erect works for their security, at Marietta, Belleprée, fifteen miles down the Ohio, and at Waterford, twenty miles up the Muskingum; and although we have been able to clear very little new land, and a great deal of the lands which have before been cleared we have not been able to plant, yet we have harvested most of our English grain, which was very good, and a prospect of a good crop of Indian corn, sufficient for the settlement. We have suffered considerably in our stock, several horses having been stolen, and upwards of forty head of cattle either killed or driven off by the Indians. This unhappy war has involved us in a great deal of expense and trouble, and greatly checks the growth of the settlement. Several people have already left us, and should it continue longer than the present year there is great reason to fear that the most of the non-proprietors will quit the settlement, as they can obtain no land on which they will be able to establish themselves; and the proprietors cannot employ them, because they, being restrained from prosecuting their farming business, and shut up in garrison, have no means in their power to pay for the hire of labour."