Crestlands: A Centennial Story of Cane RidgeBayne, Mary Addams
History
Crestlands: A Centennial Story of Cane Ridge
Bayne, Mary Addams
Kentucky -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
When Abner Logan returned to Williamsburg the day after his conference
with Peter Stump, he found a letter from Mason Rogers. Mr. Rogers wrote
that he had questioned several men who had been in the fight at Blue
Licks and who remembered the Page brothers well. The elder brother was
Marshall, the name of the younger was Marcemus. Rogers further wrote
that two women who had been in Bryan Station during the siege and who
were now living in Fayette County, remembered that Marcemus Page, after
his escape from the Indians, had come back to Bryan's for the little
orphan boy whom he took to the mother's people in Virginia. These
witnesses could swear that it was Marshall Page's wife who had died at
the station in August, 1782, while the men were in pursuit of the
Indians. Moreover, one of the women remembered that Marcemus Page had
told her that he intended, after placing Marshall's little stepson in
the care of the boy's Virginia relations, to go on to Maryland. The
woman also said that Marcemus had told her that his own wife, who had
died that spring on the way into Kentucky, was a native of Maryland,
from Charles County.
After hearing what these women said, Rogers, knowing that Barton Stone
was a native of Charles County, Maryland, had then gone to see him.
Stone, though but a lad when his family had removed from Charles
County, remembered the Page family. There were two brothers, Marshall
and Marcemus, and Marcemus had married Mary Beale, a cousin of Stone's
mother; and soon afterward had left Maryland with his wife to join his
brother somewhere in Virginia, intending to go on with him to settle in
the backwoods of Kentucky.
After receiving Rogers' letter, Abner Logan lost no time in returning
to Kentucky. The day following his arrival at Cane Ridge, he sent Major
Gilcrest a note asking for an interview. The messenger brought back the
note unopened and the verbal message from Gilcrest declining to hold
any intercourse with Abner or to receive any written communication from
him.
Rogers then advised communicating with the Major through a lawyer, but
Abner felt that he must see Betty before he could decide upon this
course. He contrived, through Aunt Dilsey, to convey a note to the
girl. She wrote back that she would meet him that afternoon at their
former trysting-place. Here, accordingly, the two lovers met, after a
separation of over half a year, and renewed their vows of love and
fealty.
Abner gave Betsy a full account of everything, and consulted with her
as to the best way to communicate with her father; for it was
imperative that Major Gilcrest should immediately be made acquainted
with Abner's true history and his right to the Hite inheritance. Betsy
urged her lover not to place his affairs in the hands of a lawyer until
she had first tried what she could do with her father. She also thought
that her mother, first of all, should be told everything. To this Abner
agreed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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