Ceres High School - Mountaineer Yearbook (Ceres, VA)

Page 17 text:

THE MASSACRE OF THE SCHLUSS FAMILY The weather was warm and mild for the season of the year. The time was last of April, 1788. The place was in what is now near Ceres, in Bland County, Virginia. The locality was very thinly settled. The Schluss and Spangler families were near neighbors, for they lived a little less than a mile apart. The family consisted of Old Mr. and Mrs. Spangler, Mrs. Spangler's two sons, John and Gideon Hubble, by her first husband. Young Frederick Copen- haver, son of a neighbor some miles away was at Spanglers on this eventful morning, and the three young men began the necessary but somewhat frolicsome work of shearing the sheep. The Schluss family consisted of John Schluss, the father, and Mary, his wife, their two daughters, Jemima and Katie, age 16 and 20 years, and just blossoming into womanhood, and Peter, a youth of 10, David a lame boy about 7, and Mary a child about 6 months old. Rather early one morning Mr. Schluss and his son Peter harnessed the horses and started off to the new ground a mile distant to plow. As they passed through a thick woods skirting near their farm, their horses snorted and shied considerably at some large ''Root heads near the path, along which they rode. Peter said, ''There must be some bears around here! A sharp lookout for a few minutes revealed no bears. However, father and son rode up to their work. How near to death the father and son were while peering around for the bear, none will ever know! Of course, as was customary in these troublesome days, they had their guns with them, and these probably saved their lives, but they rode on away from death themselves, yet innocently leaving their family to fate behind them. About 10:00 o'clock the attention of the Spanglers was arrested by the violent barking of the farm dogs and the screams of the women up at the Schluss'; A sheep half sheared was on the shearing board at the time. One of the young men said, ''Boys, there are Indians at the Schlusses, run for the guns; let's go! Hands off.'' The last of the flock, unsheared, was freed and permitted to go, the whole summer long half shorn in memory of the sad interruption. Before the young men could come near the house the massacre was over and the bloody murderers gone. Three stalwart Indians had entered the house. The three women, taken by surprise and unarmed, fought a moment as best they could. Just inside the door Mrs. Schluss head was cleaved by one of the tomahawks. Katie was found tomahawked and scalped in the rear of the house, and Jemima, who had snatched up David, the lame boy, and tried to escape with him, reached a fence at the woods, a little distance in the rear of the house and tossing the lame boy over she had just attempted to climb over the fence when one of the Indians caught the poor girl by her long flowing hair, for which she was noted, and pulling her back, drove his accused weapon into her skull and then scalped her in fiendish glee. The Indians didn't cross the fence, or they would have seen the little lame boy hidden be- hind atree. The little boy looked around the tree and saw his sister murdered. It is thought that the approach of the young men from Spanglers prevented the Indians from crossing the fence to look for the lame boy. In the house was a singular case of preservation. May--little May, the infant, was lying in her cradle asleep when the Indians rushed in upon the family, and so hurried were they that they didn't notice the child in the cradle. She escaped! When the young men from Spanglers arrived at the house, they found murdered ones as be- fore described. Poor Jemima, the rosy cheeked girl with the long, flowing hair, was not found for some little time. A search was made with the hope of finding her alive, perhaps hidden. She was betrothed to one of the young Hubbles--Gideon. In his anxiety and anguish he called aloud and searched everywhere, and started to the woods. Gideon was the first to come upon--to find his dear dead, intended wife. Could anyone have ever passed through a more heart sending, awful hour than poor Gideon Hubble did at the side of his dead intended wife? There was a pursuit of the Indians by these young men and others by the aid of dogs, but the Indians beat the dogs back and fired the mountains in their rear, and so made good their ‘ escape to the valleys of Ohio. The graves of the three murdered women may still be seen just inside of the little grave yard at Sharon Church, pictured above. Nothing but smooth round stones lie at the head of the graves. A closer search of the Old ''Root-heads, ' where the horses scared, revealed the fact that the Indians were at that time lying there concealed in the Piles of leaves. There were doubtless members of the Shawnees, who on the 14th. of July, fourteen months before, had murdered the Moore family who lived in Abbs Valley about 35 miles north of the Schluss family.