OLD HOMESTEAD 



of the terrors of border warfare and in the center of hostile 

 operations under the very shadow of Queenston Heights, and 

 within hearing of the guns of Fort Niagara and of Lundy's Lane. 

 The older ones were even too young to realize the gravity of the 

 situation; but they realized their poverty and helplessness and 

 anxiously hoped to save the beautiful home of their parents and 

 keep the little family of brothers and sisters together. They 

 had promised this to their dying parents. They had nowhere 

 else to go and no means to move if they wished. For a time it 

 looked as if they might succeed; but the employment by the 

 British of hostile savages to rob, burn, mutilate and murder the 

 settlers drove them in dead of winter from the home they had 

 learned to love and hoped to keep, but which they left none too 

 soon to escape the tomahawk and scalping-knife, which the next 

 day was the fate which overtook many of their neighbors, in- 

 cluding the kind-hearted physician who had attended their father 

 and mother in their last illness. 



As the situation became more critical, those who could went 

 nightly for safety to Fort Niagara, near the lake; but all could 

 not do this and it was impossible without transportation to move 

 the smaller of the children there every night. For months the 

 settlement was guarded by mounted sentinels, who rode about 

 among the neighbors both day and night to ascertain if all was 

 well and to discover and give warning of the approach of the 

 savages. This only served to increase fear and panic, and many 

 of their nights were passed in the adjacent woods, filled with 

 the terrors of expected torture and death at the hands of piti- 

 less brutes. 



About this time their uncle Norman, of Camden, N. Y., 

 knowing of the peril that overhung them, hastened to their res- 

 cue. Deciding upon immediate flight, he bundled the eight lit- 

 is 



