Returns were required from the assessors of all persons within military age, and the captains of the companies of the Associators were directed to furnish to their colonels and the colonels to the County Commissioners lists of such persons as had joined the Associators. The commissioners were empowered to assess those not associated £2 10s annually, in addition to the ordinary tax. The Assembly also adopted rules and regulations for the better government of the military association, the thirty-fifth article of which provided “that if any associator called into actual service should leave a family not of ability to maintain themselves in his absence, the justices of the peace of the proper city or county, with the overseer of the poor, should make provisions for their maintenance.” ---------- Captain Thomas McKee, Indian Trader, Makes Deposition Before Governor January 24, 1743 Thomas McKee was the most noted of the later Shamokin Traders, and we have records of his trading expeditions as far west as the Ohio. His career was highly romantic, and a consideration of the same will enable us to understand his son, Captain Alexander McKee, who afterwards became well-known at Fort Pitt, and rendered himself notorious in border history by deserting to the British during the time of the Revolutionary War, carrying over to that interest a great many Indians whom he had befriended during his service as Deputy Indian Agent under the Crown. We will then know better why he should seek more congenial company among the Ohio Indians and in the service of the King, than he had found among the American forces at Fort Pitt, who were enemies of both. Dr. W. H. Egle has stated that Thomas McKee was a son of Patrick, but it is quite possible that he was the son of one Alexander McKee who died in Donegal Township, Lancaster County, in May, 1740, leaving a son, Thomas, who was the executor of his will. A contributor to Dr. Egle’s “Notes and Queries” relates a traditionary account of Thomas McKee’s marriage, which had been told to him in his boyhood days by his father, a native of the Susquehanna Valley. This story was to the effect that Thomas McKee, in his early manhood began trading with the Indians, and after learning the language of the Delaware, established a trading post among them, in the vicinity of Shamokin (now Sunbury), at or near the Forks of the Susquehanna. In the performance of this enterprise while he was on a trading expedition farther up the West Branch, he ventured into the camp of strange Indians, who stole his goods, drank his rum, and then becoming incensed at the resistance he made to their proceedings, bound him as a captive, and decided to burn him at the stake the following day.