Pigeon Roost
Reverend Stephen R. Beggs

When the news came of the "Pigeon-Roost massacre", nearly all the settlers north of us fled across the Ohio, leaving their effects behind. Returning, they built a fortification around my father's house, which was of stone. Here they remained for days, in constant expectation of the Indians. Several block-houses were built to the north of us, the occupants of which would flee to our fort on every fresh alarm. The "Pigeon-Roost massacre", of which I spoke, occurred at a settlement of that name, formed in 1809, and which, confined to a square mile of land, was five or six miles distant from neighboring settlements.

On the afternoon of the third of September, 1812, Jeremiah Payne and a man by the name of Kauffmann, were surprised and killed by a party of Indians while at work in the woods, about two miles from the settlement. The Indians then - Shawnees, ten or twelve in number - attacked the settlement about sunset, and murdered one man, five women, and sixteen children. The bodies of some of the victims were burned in the cabins where they were slaughtered. Mrs. John Biggs alone escaped with her three small children, reaching a settlement six miles distant near daylight.

A number of the militia of Clark county proceeded to the scene of the massacre, where they found only the mangled and half-consumed bodies of the dead, and the ruins of the houses; and the remains were all buried in one grave.

Return

Pages from the Early History of the West and North-West, pages 13-14
The Methodist Book Concern, Cincinnati, 1868