1781 -- The winter of 1780-81 was comparative a mild one & the people on Salt River had plenty of provisions for themselves and families. My father had increased his stock of horses he also procured some sows and pigs from Whitleys Station, and everything appeared to prosper reound him, but a reverse was at hand. My mothers youngest Brother Joseph McCoun, a youth about eighteen years of age on the 6th day of March (1781) early in the morning went out to look after his fathers milk cows, & concluded to go to some traps he had set the evening before at a cave high up on the Bank in a clift of Salt River above his fathers cabbin. The Indians discovered him and purused him he ran down Salt River on the west side, and crossed over the Indians keeping between him & his fathers cabbin he ran nearly a mile before they caught him in a small glade now near the Turnpike road North of the Road leading from Vandike's mill to Armstrong's old ferry on the Kentucky river now inside of Robert McAfees wood pasture (formerly Meaux) no(t) returning The family suspected some mischief & took his trail and followed It until they found where he had been taken and tyed with hickory bark. It was in the evening before the alarm was given, and when my father heard at His cabbins where I live he only had time to pack up his household stuff and his children and reach James McAfees station about dark, burying a large chunk of led in his yard, which he never afterward could find. John Magee, Saml McAfee and my Grandfathers family all took shelter in the Station that night, and next morning a party of men made pursuit under the direction of my father. The Indians had retreated with great rapidity & could not be overtaken before they crossed the Ohio above the mouth of Kentucky some distance & the company returned, indulging hopes that as they had not killed him this side of the Ohio that his life would be spared. but it turned out a vain hope, as certain information was obtained a few years afterward from other prisoners that he was taken to a small Indian town on the head waters of Mad River (a few miles beyond where Springfield now stands in the State of Ohio) where he was tyed to a tree and burnt to death. This was a heavy blow to my Grandmother (for he was her darling son), as well as the youngest, she seldom afterwards was seen to smile and in a few years afterward sank to her grave.
Kevin.
