Frances Slocum

Frances Slocum (Maconaquah, "The Little Bear") was an adopted member of the Miami tribe taken from her family home by the Lenape in Pennsylvania at the age of four and raised in what is now Indiana. Her burial site is a Miami Indian shrine near Peoria, Miami County, Indiana.

Frances was part of a family of early Quaker settlers of the Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys. Her parents, Jonathan Slocum and Ruth Tripp, settled from Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Frances had at least two brothers, Ebeneezer and Benjamin. The Slocum family remained in the settlement while many others had fled during the Battle of Wyoming of 1778.

Frances Slocum was taken captive by a group of Lenape on November 2, 1778 when she was just five years old. It is believed that she escaped captivity that first night but was soon recaptured and was held for the night under a rock ledge along Abraham Creek in what is now part of Frances Slocum State Park near Wyoming, Pennsylvania (named in her honor). Frances Slocum spent the rest of her life with the Native Americans. Her brothers found her 59 years later living on an Indian Reservation near Peru, Indiana. Despite the pleadings of her brothers, Frances refused to leave her family. She had been married twice and was the mother of four children. Frances, now called "Maconaquah" (meaning "Young Bear"), lived for the rest of her life in Indiana. She died in 1847 when she was 74 years old. Her name lives on in Indiana, where the Frances Slocum State Recreational Area and Lost Sister Trail in the Mississinewa Reservoir and State Forest are named in her memory. Her final resting place is marked with a monument along the banks of the Mississinewa River in Indiana. There is a high school named Maconaquah High School after her in Bunker Hill, Indiana. There is a Frances Slocum Elementary School in Marion, Indiana. There was a Frances Slocum Elementary School in Fort Wayne, Indiana named after her, closed about 1975. In addition, a Wabash, Indiana bank was named after her, although the bank is now known by another name.

References

* [http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/francesslocum.aspx Frances Slocum State Park]
* [http://www.marion.k12.in.us/frances.cfm Frances Slocum Elementary School]
* [http://www.rootsweb.com/~scwhite/slocum/frances.html Biography and genealogy of Frances Slocum]
* [http://www.maconaquah.k12.in.us/ Maconaquah School Corporation (K-12)]