Mary Jemison or Dehgewanus"The White Woman of the Genesee"In the fall of 1743, somewhere on the stormy Atlantic, a child was born to Thomas and Jane Jemison aboard the ship William and Mary . The little girl's name was Mary and, although she didn't know it, she was joining her parents and siblings on a journey to the New World. The Jemison family landed in Philadelphia and soon joined other Scots-Irish immigrants. the western frontier, a place that promised them cheap land and freedom. Thomas Jemison took his family to the Marsh Creek settlement near South Mountain (not far from present-day Gettysburg PA), raised a cabin, and began building a new life. Although life was tough on the western edge of the Pennsylvania colony, Mary fondly recalled those “childish, happy days,” full of hard work and the love of a family that now numbered six children. But when Mary was fifteen, these happy times came to a tragic end. The French and Indian War was raging in the English colonies and Canada. It was a bitter struggle between two European powers, and the colonies and indigenous populations on both sides suffered as a result. Those at the border suffered the most. In the spring of 1758, a raiding party of French soldiers and Shawnee warriors descended on the frontier region that included Marsh Creek. On Wednesday, April 5, they swept through the small clearing where the Jemisons lived. The two oldest boys escaped, but Mary, her parents and the rest of the family were taken prisoner. The raiding party headed west toward Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh). The decision was made to lighten their load because they had too many captives to outrun the militias pursuing them. As night fell, they separated a tearful Mary from her family, along with a neighbor boy who had also been captured, and took them away. The rest of the Jemison family was killed and scalped. At Fort Duquesne, Mary was purchased by a group of Senecas who loaded her into a canoe and headed for the Ohio. When she arrived in the village, she found herself in a very different world; the world of the Seneca people. They adopted the teenager, abandoning her old name, her clothes, and her existence in Ohio and wrapping her in her identity. It was now called Dehgewanus, or “Two Falling Voices.” Over the next few years, Dehgewanus learned the Seneca methods. She took a husband from Delaware, Sheninjee.