Mary Lewis Kinnan

Writer

  • Born: August 22, 1763
  • Birthplace: New Jersey
  • Died: March 12, 1848

Biography

Mary Lewis Kinnan was born in New Jersey in 1763. In 1778, at the age of fifteen, Kinnan married Sergeant Joseph Kinnan, who fought in the Revolutionary War. Nine years later, the couple left New Jersey with their two children to settle in West Virginia. In West Virginia, the family lived in a two-room log cabin with Kinnan’s brother, a widow with three young children, another gentleman, and Kinnan’s newborn daughter.

Two Shawnee tribesman attacked Kinnan’s home in 1791, killing her daughter and husband and the daughter of the widow who was living with them. Although the rest of the household escaped, Kinnan was captured while trying to save her infant. Her captors took her to Ohio, where she was enslaved and sold to a woman in Delaware. Kinnan remained in servitude for three years before being rescued by her brother, who took her back to New Jersey, where she lived until her death in 1848. Kinnan shared her story with Shepard Kollock, a printer, who published the tale in 1795. Kinnan’s memoir of her harrowing ordeal is titled A True Narrative of the Sufferings of Mary Kinnan, Who Was Taken Prisoner by the Shawanee Nation of Indians on the Thirteenth Day of May, 1791, and Remained with Them till the Sixteenth of August, 1794.