Hard times for a great-grandmother - Susannah Phillips and the Wyoming Massacre

Want to know hard times? Take a read of my 4th great grandmother - daughter of Deacon John Phillips who fought with the Green Mountain Boys in Vermont in the American Revolution and a descendant of Mayflower passenger George Soule who also happened to be a signer of the Mayflower Compact!  Quite a lineage in our family!

SUSANNAH- 2nd daughter of Deacon John and Mary (Chamberlain) Phillips, born August 7, 1773, in Pownal, Bennington, Vermont (She was born in Vermont because the family moved there to avoid the Yankee-Pennimite War where Connecticut claimed the northern tier of Pennsylvania). She died August 8, 1849 and is buried in Marcy Cemetery, Duryea, (cemetery located behind the United Methodist Church) Pennsylvania with her husband.

Marcy Cemetery, Duryea, PA

     They lived in Hughstown, Pennsylvania which is where all their children were born and raised.  She married on 17 September 1789 to Samuel Miller Jr.  Miller was born in Dutchess County, NY, and of Holland decent, (She married at 16 and had 13 children), and died 9 April 1839 in Hughstown. Samuel Miller Jr., was the son of Samuel Miller, Sr.  Samuel Miller Jr. was known to be a farmer, preacher, physician and undertaker.

     Susannah often told her children how (when she was young) played with little Indian children before the Wyoming Massacre, 1778 (http://www.revwar75.com/battles/primarydocs/wiom1778.htm). One day while she was holding a stick for a little Indian boy to cut with his tomahawk, he cut her fingers.  Suddenly, some hostile Delaware Indians came upon their homes.   Her parents, hastily wrapping up her fingers and hand, hid her between the feather and straw beds. At the first opportunity, they escaped alive and uninjured.  Several families fled and hid in the mountains. They suffered severe hardships, working constantly to get sufficient food when one day were glad to capture a pig.  Susannah, about 1778, she would have been around 6-7 years old, was kept busy taking care of the babies within the group. While watching the roasting of a pig by a woman whose baby Susannah was caring for, the woman threw her a bone and said “There child, eat that if you are starving."  When the cloth was taken from her hand where the Indian boy cut it, 3 of her fingers were grown together.
 

     It is said that Susannah, as women did back then, spun her own flax and wool, and that "a beautiful piece of linen spun and woven by her is a cherished relic in the possession of one of her
great-granddaughters."  She was a strong woman, and one day, while hoeing in the garden with a man, bashed him. (What happened there!?). She died of a stroke @76.

"(Quote taken from a newspaper written about 1901).  (Most of this information is on Ancestry.com)