emigrated from the North of Ireland to America when he was about eighteen years old. He first settled in Cumberland county in this state, where he was a pioneer in a wilderness region, and from that time for many years the surname was associated with the events of history of that part of the province. John Boyd married Nancy Urie, who was a daughter of another of the pioneers of the region mentioned, and the Uries as well as the Boyds helped to make history during the period under consideration and the frequent Indian outbreaks which characterized Pennsylvania provincial history from the early part of the eighteenth century to the close of the Revolution.
David Boyd was the eldest son of John Boyd, and was born in Cumberland county in 1743. When he was a boy, his father's family and John Stewart and his family moved into a still more remote part of Cumberland county and settled on the site of the present town of Shippensburg, which then was an unbroken and uninhabited wilderness. There the bordermen built cabins, made clearings for their crops, and prepared themselves for comfortable future lives. They of course knew that they were frontiersmen, and that the region was infested with bands of marauding savages, but these settlers felt in a measure secure in the fact that peace then existed between England and France, the powers which then were struggling for supremacy in America; and even the Indian allies of the contending nations were disposed to peace, although predatory bands still carried on their lawless work in the province. These Indians were allies of the French during the wars, and were turned loose on the frontier settlements by the French officers, and were permitted to murder and plunder and burn without restraint. John Boyd and John Stewart were regarded by the French as English subjects, and therefore enemies and legitimate prey for their savage allies when the powers were at war. This came in 1756, when France and England began the last of the series of wars and which ended in the final overthrow of French power in America. On the 10th of February in that year John Boyd, had gone to his neighbor Stewart's cabin for a web of cloth, and was on his way home through a piece of dense woods when the attack was made on his home. His absence at the time saved his life, for the savages did not discover him in the woods; and had he been at home when the attack was made his own courage and strength could not have prevailed against the superior number of Indians, and he must have been killed with others of his family. His cabin was burned, his wife and an infant child was killed, and his four other children were carried away into captivity by the murderous horde. These children were David, John, Sarah, aged seven, and Rhoda Boyd, aged 5. The Stewart cabin was also attacked and burned, and both the pioneer and his wife were slain.
Of the Boyd children taken into captivity by the Indians, David was adopted by a Delaware chief, and his younger brother John and his sisters Sarah and Rhoda were claimed by other chiefs. The girls were held among the Indians until 1764, and then were exchanged. John Boyd became reconciled to the Indian life, and ever afterward made his home with some one of the tribes. Once after many years he returned to the place where he had lived, but could not be prevailed upon to stay among the white settlers. He visited with his relatives for a short time and then went back, never again to be heard of. In 1760 David Boyd was restored to freedom by the chief who had adopted him. Subsequently he married and raised a family, and his descendants are now numerous in the State. After being released at Detroit, Sarah and
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