Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 41392-h.htm or 41392-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41392/41392-h/41392-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41392/41392-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://archive.org/details/historyofearlyse00jone Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A caret (^) is used to indicate that the character following it is printed as superscript, such as Y^e. Printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained. [Illustration: JUNCTION OF FRANKSTOWN AND LUCKAHOE BRANCHES OF THE JUNIATA BELOW ALEXANDRIA.] HISTORY OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE JUNIATA VALLEY: Embracing an Account of the Early Pioneers, and the Trials and Privations Incident to the Settlement of the Valley, Predatory Incursions, Massacres, and Abductions by the Indians During the French and Indian Wars, and the War of the Revolution, &c. by U. J. JONES. Philadelphia: Published by Henry B. Ashmead, George St., Above Eleventh. 1856. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1856, by U. J. JONES, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Stereotyped by L. Johnson and Co. Philadelphia. Dedication. TO MAJOR B. F. BELL, BELL'S MILLS, BLAIR COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA. DEAR SIR:--I hope your well-known modesty will not be shocked when your eyes encounter this notice. In dedicating to you the fruits of my first historical labors in the field of literature, allow me to say that I am governed by reasons that will justify me. In the first place, I may cite your well-known and often-expressed veneration and esteem for the memory of the brave old Pioneers of our Valley, their heroic deeds, and their indomitable energy and perseverance, under the most discouraging circumstances, in turning the unbroken wilderness into "a land flowing with milk and honey." Secondly, you are the son of one of those self-same old pioneers, (now in his grave,) who, if not a direct actor in some of the scenes portrayed in the pages following, lived while they were enacted, and trod upon the ground where many of them occurred, while the actors in them were his friends and his neighbors. Manifold, indeed, were the changes he witnessed during a long and useful career; but the common lot of humanity was his, and he now "sleeps the sleep that knows no waking," where once the lordly savage roamed, and made the dim old woods echo with his whoop, many, many years ago.