WONDERFUL CHARLES BRANDON.

Colonist, Volume XXX, Issue 5016, 27 September 1887, Page 4

WONDERFUL CHARLES BRANDON.

"When Western Pennsylvania was the frontier and the Indian fighter was the most important and . indispensable person in tbo settlements, Charles. Brandon was one of the best and most daring of all the aotive foes of the rod men. , At the age of three years, in 1764, he was captured by the Indians, who killed .his father at the same time. This was. on tlje banks of the Ohio river. For twelve years the hoy was kept among the savages, but he disliked them and escaped when he was fifteen years old. He found a white Bettlemer.t and learned to talk his native language. From that time on he gave his life to Indian killing. In 1790, when the Indiais were; getting scarce, Charles Brandon married a young.woman named Mary Meyers. She bore him two children aud died. He then married Fannie Slusher. "She boro him eighteen children, and died in 1880. Brandon was then nearly seventy years old. When he was five years older he married Sarah Barker, who was only .sixteen. She was -the youngest of sixteen children. She lived with him twenty-one years, bearing him, in the meantime, fifteen children. Then she got a divorce from him, he being ninety-six. The t>eparation from his wife broke his heart, and although at the time he was aa agile, strong and active as he was when he was married, he pined away and died the same year the divorce was obfcaiced. He then had thirty-three.living children. His divorced wife had had the care of all of them, and she raised all that were young enough to neefl. raising. Brandon had been the father of thirtyfive children, but two died, one a child of his first wife and the other one of the eighteen his second wife had borne him. The divorced widow moved to Moundsvilie, W. Va., and the most of the thirty-three children went with her. Among them were two Johns and two Charleses. One of the Johns and one of the Charleses were the third wife's children. There was a James who was old enough to go to the Mexican War, whsre he was wounded in the neck. When the War of the Eebellion : broke out the two Johns, the two Ohaileses, Sim, Evens, Peter, Josephus, Hiram, James Van Buren, Jacob, Abraham, Alexander, David,"Andrew and l?eese, of the sons enlisted in the Union Army, all in the Ohio and Virginia regiments. The third Mrs Brandon's John ar>d Charles were taken prisoners at Ohickamaugau, They were both put in Andersonville Prison. John died in nine months ; Charles was there twenty-one months and escaped. Peter was killed at Shiloh whiie his regiment, the Seventysecond Ohio, was making a charge. All the other sons served through the war and came home. The third wife uf the remarkable old Indian killer, and mother and stepmother of his remarkable family, still lives at Moundsvilie. She is seventy years old. Until tbre6 months ago she was in destitute c rcumstances. Thsn she got a [ ension and 2,500d01. as her claimsga^f6fche Government. • She is six feet in*^^nt, as straight as an arrow, as^ stroß'g as a man, and excelling nine out of every ten men in power and endurance. Only a few days ago—one of the hottest—she walked to St. Clairsville, twenty miles, in five hours, and back again in the same time. She has only one eye. The other one was shot out about thirty years ago by one of the second wife's boys. She had occasion to correct him. He got his bow and arrow and shot her, putting out her eye. This remarkable woman knows the whereabouts of only nine of the thirtj-three children. They live near her. ♦ But, takin' them an' their children, an' their children's children, there must be nigh to a tbousan' on 'em by this time.'