The following was put together by me, Vickie Beard
Thompson a descendant of Penelope through my Mom's side of the family and who is my 11th great-grandmother, through Penelope
Kent and Richard Stout through their son James B. Stout who married Elizabeth
Truax; through their daughter Elizabeth Stout who married John Warford; through
their son Joseph Warford for whom the town of Warfordsburg, Pennsylvania is
named and who was married to Elizabeth Banner.
Through their son Henry Warford who married Elizabeth Van Hook, then
through their daughter Deborah Warford who married Peter Fischer/Fisher. Then double related through two of the
children of Deborah & Peter, through their son Henry Fisher who married
Eleanor Bridgewater and also through their daughter Hannah Fisher who married James
Graham who were my double 5th great-grandparents, because Henry
& Eleanor’s son John Fisher married Eliza Ann Graham daughter of Hannah
& James. Then next I come through
John & Eliza Ann’s daughter Mary Ellen Fisher who married John Washington Fryar,
then their son William Lonzo Fryar who married Ida Ann Hart, then Mary Belle
Fryar who married Robert Ermon Fraley, then Ermon Edward Fraley who married
Daisy Elnora Loftis, then Erma Jean Fraley who married Duell Franklin Beard and
then ME.
Penelope Kent Stout
1622-1732
The following story has been told along the New Jersey coast
for over 350 years with very little variation in the telling of said story, as
such it can probably be said that the events that transpired in the following
story are probably fairly accurate.
In the early days of New
Jersey, the Dutch, settlers suffered very much from
Indian hostilities. It was at the time that New Amsterdam, afterwards New York, was in the possession of the Dutch that a ship
came from Holland,
bringing passengers who intended to settle in the new country. The ship was
unfortunately wrecked in the area around that of Sandy
Hook; a majority of the passengers managed to save themselves, and
reached the shore.
Among these was a young couple, the young mans name has been
lost but some believe his name may have been Jan Van Princin. His wife was named Penelope Kent and was the daughter of the Rev. Kent of Amsterdam. Her husband had been very sick during the
voyage; and getting ashore through the surf from the wreck could not have been
of any benefit to him, for, after he had reached dry land, he felt even worse
than he had upon shipboard, and needed all the attention his wife could give
him.
Although most of the passengers and the crew of this vessel
had reached the shore, they did not by any means consider themselves in safety;
for they were very much afraid of the Indians, and desired above everything to
make what haste they could toward New Amsterdam.
They therefore started away as soon as possible. But Penelope's husband was too
sick to go any farther at that time, and his wife was too good a woman to leave
her husband in that lonely spot; and so these two were left behind, while the
rest of the company started for New Amsterdam,
promising, however, that they would send help to the unfortunate couple.
The fears of these immigrants in regard to the Indians were
not without foundation; for the main party had not long departed, when a band
of red men, probably having heard in some way of the wreck of the ship,
appeared upon the scene, and discovered poor Penelope and her sick husband. It
is unfortunately the disposition of most savages to show little pity for
weakness and suffering, and the fact that the poor young man could not do them
any possible harm had no effect upon them, and they set upon him and killed
him; very much as a boy would kill a little harmless snake, for no reason
whatever, except that he was able to do it.
Then they determined to kill Penelope also, and, attacking
her with their tomahawks, they so cut and wounded her that she fell down
bleeding and insensible. Having built a fire, these brave warriors cooked
themselves a comfortable meal, and then departed. But Penelope was not killed,
and, coming to her senses, her instincts told her that the first thing to do
was to hide herself from these bloodthirsty red men: so, slowly and painfully,
she crawled away to the edge of a wood, and found there a great hollow tree,
into which she crept.
This made but narrow and doleful quarters for a wounded
woman, but it was preferable at that time to the blue sky and fresh air. She
did not leave the tree until nightfall, and then she made her way to the place
where the fire was still glimmering; and by great care, and with what must have
been painful labor; she kept this fire from going out, and so managed to get a
little warmth.
In this way, living in the tree the greater part of the
time, and depending for food chiefly upon the fungous excrescences and gum
which grew on the outside of it, – for she was not able to go in search of
berries and other food, – poor Penelope lived for a few days, with her dead
husband on the beach, and her almost dead self in that cavern-like tree. The
hours must have passed mournfully indeed to this young woman who had set out
for the New World with such bright hopes.
That she survived her terrible hardships was due entirely to
the existence of the danger she most feared; that is, the reappearance of the
Indians. On the second morning, nearly famished and very weak, Penelope was
making her way slowly over the ground, endeavoring to find something she could
eat, or a little dew in the hollow of a leaf, that she might drink, when
suddenly there came out of the woods two tall Indians, who, naturally enough,
were much surprised to find a wounded white woman there alone upon the
seashore.
Penelope gave herself up as lost. There was nothing now for
her to do but to submit to her fate. It was a pity, she thought, that she had
not been slain with her husband. But the
Indians did not immediately rush at her with their tomahawks: they stood and
talked together, evidently about her, with their fierce eyes continually fixed
upon her.
Then their conversation became more animated, and it was
soon plain that they were disputing. Of course, she did not then know the cause
of their difference of opinion; but she found out afterwards that one of them
was in favor of killing her upon the spot, and the other, an older man than his
companion, was more mercifully inclined, and wished to carry her off as a
prisoner to their camp.
At last the older man got the better of the other one; and
he, being determined that the poor wounded woman should be taken care of, took
her up and put her on his shoulder, and marched away with her. That an Indian should be able to perform a
feat like this is not at all surprising; for when one of them shoots a deer in
the forest, though many of those animals are heavier than Penelope was, he will
put it on his back and carry it through the forests, perhaps for miles, until
he reaches his camp. And so Penelope, as if she had been a deer wounded by some
other hunters, which these men had found, was carried to the Indian camp.
There she was taken care of. Food and drink were given her.
Her wounds were dressed and treated after the Indian fashion. In due course of time she recovered her health
and strength, and there – living in a wigwam, among the women and children of
the village, pounding corn, cooking food, carrying burdens as did the Indian
women – she remained for some time, not daring even to try to escape; for in
that wild country there was no place of safety to which it was possible for her
to flee.
Although there was a good deal of bad feeling between the
Indians and the whites at that time, they still traded and communicated with
each other; and when, in the course of time, it became known in New Amsterdam
that there was a white woman held as a prisoner in this Indian camp, there was
every reason to suppose that this woman was the young wife who had been left on
the seacoast by the survivors of the wreck. Consequently some of the men who had been her
fellow-passengers came over to the Indian camp, which was not far from where Middletown now stands.
Here, as they had expected, they found Penelope, and demanded that the Indians
should give her up.
After some discussion, it was agreed that the matter should
be left with Penelope herself; and the old Indian who had saved her life went
to her, – for of course, being an inferior, she was not present at the
conference, – and put the question before her. Here she was, with a comfortable
wigwam, plenty to eat and drink, good Indian clothes to wear, as well treated
as any Indian woman, and, so far as he could see, with everything to make her
comfortable and happy; and here she might stay if she chose. On the other hand,
if she wished to go to New Amsterdam, she
would find there no one with whom she was acquainted, except the people who had
rowed away and left her on that desolate coast, and who might have come in
search of her a long time before if they really had cared anything about her. If she wanted to live here among friends who
had been kind to her, and be taken care of, she could do so; if she wanted to
go away and live among people who had deserted her, and who appeared to have
forgotten her, she could do that also.
Very much to the surprise of this good Indian, Penelope
declared that she should prefer to go and live among people of her own race and
country; and so, much to the regret of her Indian friends, she departed for New
Amsterdam with the men who had come for her.
Just a slight variation of the story is told in this matter and
it goes has follows: Penelope
and her first husband Mr. Van Princin, had left Holland
and were on their way to America. Their ship wrecked off the coast of New Jersey, by a place called Sandy
Hook. This was in about
1640. The crew and most of the
passengers made it to shore, but Penelope's husband was either sick or injured,
and so they were left behind, as she would not leave him. They the crew promised to send help
back. They had not been alone long when
some Indians killed them both (or so they thought) by skinning them alive, however
Penelope came to after the Indians had left.
Her skull was fractured and her left shoulder was so hacked that she
could never use that arm like the other.
She also was cut across the abdomen so that her bowels were hanging out
and she had pushed them back in with her hands.
She continued this way for about 7 days, taking shelter in a hollow tree
and eating the excrescence of it. About
the seventh day she saw two Indians and hoped that they would put her out of
her misery. One went to do exactly that
but the other Indian, an older man stopped him.
This Indian put his coat around her and took her to his wigwam and
doctored her cuts and bruises. As soon
as she was well enough to travel he took her to New York and made a present of her to her
countrymen, viz.: an Indian present, expecting ten times her value in return. No one ever heard about the men that had left
them in the forest and it was assumed that the Indians that found her probably
had killed them before finding Penelope and the others. Penelope, however, did
survive the shipwreck and the torture and in about 1644 she married Richard
Stout who was living there at the fort that the old Indian had taken her
too. They say she never grew much hair back just a
few tufts here and there and she always wore a stocking cap to cover her head
and long sleeves, always, so that no one could see her arms. Her body was
covered in scars similar to 3rd degree burns.
Her husband Richard Stout lived to be 90 years of age, so between the
two of them they must have come from some very sturdy stock.
A year or two after Penelope had gone back to New Amsterdam, being then about twenty-two; she married
an Englishman named Richard Stout, who afterwards became an important person. He, with other settlers, went over to New Jersey and founded a little village, which was called
Middletown, not
far from the Indian camp where Penelope had once been a prisoner. The Indians
still remained in this camp, but now they appeared to be quite friendly to the
whites; and the new settlers did not consider that there was anything dangerous
in having these red neighbors. The good
Indian who had been Penelope's protector, now quite an old man, was very
friendly and sociable, and often used to visit Mrs. Stout. This friendship for the woman whom he had
saved from death seemed to have been strong and sincere.
One day this old Indian came to the house of Mrs. Stout,
and, seating himself in the room where she was, remained for a long time
pensive and silent. This rather unusual
conduct made Penelope fear that something had happened to him; and she
questioned him, asking him why he was so silent, and why he sighed so often. Then the old man spoke out and told her that
he had come on a very important errand, in which he had risked his own life at
the hands of his tribe; but, having saved her life once, he had determined to
do it again, no matter what might happen to him.
Then he told her that the good will of the Indians toward
their white neighbors had come to an end, and that it had been determined in
council that an attack should be made that night upon this little village, when
every person in it – men, women, and children – should be put to death, the
houses burned, and the cattle driven away. His brethren no longer wanted white people
living near them.
Of course, this news was a great shock to Penelope. She had
now two little children, and she could not get far away with them and hide, as
she herself had once hidden from Indian foes. But the old man told her that she
need not be afraid: he could not save all the people in the village, but he was
her friend, and he had arranged to save her and her family. At a certain place,
which he described so she could not fail to find it, he had concealed a canoe;
and in that she and her husband, with the children, could go over to New
Amsterdam, and there would be plenty of time for them to get away before the
Indians would attack the place, having said this, and having urged her to lose
no time in getting away, the old Indian left.
As soon as he had gone, Penelope sent for her husband, who
was working in the fields, and told him what she had heard, urging him to make
preparations instantly to escape with her. But Richard Stout was not easily frightened by
news such as this. He did not believe the whole story, and told his wife that
the Indians over there in their camp were as well disposed and friendly as if
they had been a company of white settlers, and that, as these red men and the
whites had lived together so long, trading with each other, and visiting each
other with perfect freedom, there was no reason whatever to suppose that the
Indians would suddenly determine to rise up and massacre a whole settlement of
peaceable neighbors, who had never done them any harm, and who were a great
benefit to them in the way of trading. It would be all nonsense, he said, to leave
their homes, and run away from Indians as extremely friendly and good-natured
as those in the neighboring camp.
But Penelope had entirely different ideas upon the subject. She thoroughly believed in the old Indian, and
was sure that he would not have come and told her that story unless it had been
true. If her husband chose to stay and risk his life, she could not help it;
but she would not subject herself and her children to the terrible danger which
threatened them. She had begged her
husband to go with her; but as he had refused, and had returned to his work,
she and her children would escape alone.
Consequently she set out with the little ones, and with all
haste possible she reached the place where the canoe was moored among some tall
reeds, and, getting in with the children, she paddled away to New Amsterdam,
hoping she might reach there in time to send assistance to Middletown before the Indians should attack
it.
When Richard Stout found that his wife had really gone off,
and had taken the children with her, he began to consider the matter seriously,
and concluded that perhaps there might be something in the news which the old
Indian had brought. He consequently called together a number of the men of the
village, and they held a consultation, in which it was determined that it would
be a wise thing to prepare themselves against the threatened attack; and,
arming themselves with all the guns and pistols they could get, they met
together in one of the houses, which was well adapted for that purpose, and
prepared to watch all night.
They did not watch in vain, for about midnight they heard
from the woods that dreadful war whoop which the white settlers now well
understood. They knew it meant the same thing as the roar of the lion, which,
after silently creeping towards his intended victim, suddenly makes the rocks
echo with the sound of his terrible voice, and then gives his fatal spring.
But although these men might have been stricken with terror,
had they heard such a war cry at a time when they were not expecting it, and
from Indians to whom they were strangers, they were not so terrified at the
coming of these red men with whom, perhaps only the day before, they had been
trading buttons for venison and beans. They could not believe that these apparently
mild and easy-going fellows could really be the terrible savages they tried to
make themselves appear.
So Richard Stout and his companions went boldly out, guns in
hand, to meet the oncoming savages, and, calling a parley, they declared that
they had no intention of resting quietly, and allowing themselves and families
to be slaughtered and their houses burned. If the Indians, who had so long been their
good neighbors, were now determined to become bloody enemies, they would find
that they would have to do a good deal of hard fighting before they could
destroy the village of Middletown; and, if they persisted in carrying on the
bloody job they had undertaken, a good many of them would be killed before that
job was finished.
Now, it had been very seldom that Indians who had started
out to massacre whites had met with people who acted like this; and these red
men in war paint thought it wise to consider what had been said to them. A few of them may have had guns, but the
majority was armed only with bows and tomahawks; and these white men had guns
and pistols, with plenty of powder and ball. It would clearly be unsafe to
fight them.
So, after discussing the matter among themselves and
afterwards talking it over with the whites, the Indians made up their minds,
that, instead of endeavoring to destroy the inhabitants of Middletown, they would shake hands with them
and make a treaty of peace. They then retired; and on the following day a
general conference was held, in which the whites agreed to buy the lands on
which they had built their town, and an alliance was made for mutual protection
and assistance. This compact was
faithfully observed as long as there were any Indians in the neighborhood, and Middletown grew and
flourished.
Among the citizens of the place there were none who grew and
flourished in a greater degree than the Stout family. Although Penelope bore upon her body the scars
of her wounds until the day of her death, it is stated, upon good authority,
that she lived to be one hundred and ten years old; so that it is plain that
her constitution was not injured by the sufferings and hardships of the
beginning of her life in New Jersey.
Penelope was the mother of ten children
all of whom lived to be adults, which, for that time was very unusual, as the
infant mortality rate was very high at the time. It is said that when she died she had 502
descendants.
Not only did the Stouts flourish in Middletown, but some of
them went a little southward, and helped to found the town of Hopewell; and
here they increased to such a degree that one of the early historians relates
that the Baptist Church there was founded by the Stouts, and that for forty-one
years the religious meetings were held in the houses of different members of
the Stout family, while, at the time he wrote, half of the congregation of the
church were still Stouts, and that, all in all, there had been at least two
hundred members of that name. So the Baptist
Church in Hopewell,
as well as all the churches in Middletown,
owed a great deal to the good Indian who carried poor Penelope to his village,
and cured her of her wounds.
Different parts of this story can be found given in and
by the following:
The story of Penelope as told by a Mr. Smith in 1765
The story of Penelope as told in “Benedict’s History of the
Baptists” in 1848
The story of Penelope as told by Frank R. Stockton in 1896
"History of New
Jersey" by S. Smith has mention of Penelope and
her survival
"History of New Jersey" by J. C. Raum has mention of Penelope and her
survival
"Historical Collections" by Barber and Howe has mention of Penelope
and her survival
"Story of an Old Farm" by A. C. Mellick has mention of Penelope and
her survival
