1755. At that time, she was living at Chillicothe with the family of a widowed Cherokee chief. She was ransomed, and John took her to New River Valley. On 8 May, 1779, Lord Henry Hamilton, a British prisoner of war, was being escorted under guard to Williamsburg and spent the night at the home of William and Mary Ingles. In his journal, Hamilton noted that the trauma of Mary's captivity and escape still affected her, 24 years later: 8th. In the Evening crossed over in a ferry the new river or great Canhawa, and were kindly and hospitably received at the house of Colonel Ingles-- here we rested for an entire day...Mrs. Ingles had in her early years been carryed off with another young Woman by the Savages, and tho carryed away into the Shawanes country had made her escape with her female friend, & wonderful to relate tho exposed to unspeakable hardships, & having nothing to subsist on but wild fruits, found her way back in safety, from a distance (if I remember right) of 200 miles-- however terror and distress had left so deep an impression on her mind that she appear'd absorbed in a deep melancholy, and left the management of household concerns, & the reception of Strangers to her lovely daughter. Historical accounts of Mary Draper Ingles' journey The three primary sources of information are: 1) The 1824 written account by John Ingles (1766-1836, son of Mary and William Ingles, born after Mary's return); 2) Parts of an 1843 letter by Letitia Preston Floyd (1779-1852, wife of Virginia Governor John Floyd and daughter of Colonel William Preston, himself a survivor of the Draper's Meadow massacre) to her son Benjamin Rush Floyd. 3) An article published in the New York Mercury on 16 February 1756 based on a report from "a Traveller who lately came from New River in Virginia," which contains a few details not found in the two other accounts. Her escape journey is also referred to briefly in two other Mercury articles, on 26 January and 1 March. Differences between the first two narratives suggest that the Ingles and Preston families had developed distinct oral traditions. They differ on the date of the massacre (July 30 vs July 8, according to Ingles and Floyd, respectively), the number of casualties, the ages of Mary Ingles' children, and several other aspects. John Peter Hale, one of