Captured by the Indians

Elizabeth Consalus was carrying a milk-pail from her 
father's home to a field near it and had to pass through 
the bars (of a split rail fence).  The lower rails were down 
and as she stooped to pass under the upper one, she was 
caught by a savage, who by threats so terrified her that she 
did not dare to give an alarm.  The red warrior took her to 
his party who were in the vicinity with other prisoners.  
All then traveled for days and days in a southwest course 
over mountains and up and down, across rivers until they
reached the village of the tribe in the interior of Pennsylvania.  
Here Elizabeth remained a prisoner for twenty years. (pp. 395-96]

She had disappeared so suddenly and mysteriously that 
her parents and brothers were not positive in regard to her 
fate....  It was believed, however, that she was a prisoner, 
and in some anguish her father continued year after year to 
make inquiries of those who had been in Indian country....

At last he heard of a white woman who was with a clan 
near Harrisburg in Pennsylvania whose age and some other 
circumstances led him to believe she was his lost child.  
He searched for this clan....

Twenty years and a life of servitude, with brutal treatment, 
had so changed her appearance that her father could see no 
resemblance to his lost child.  He listened to her story -- she 
had forgotten the names of father, mother and brothers -- but 
she remembered some of the circumstances under which she 
was taken by the savages, and this led her father to claim her 
and take her home.  

When they reached the house in which she was born, she 
went directly to the bars where she was captured.  The shock 
of 20 years before had fixed the scene indelibly in her memory 
and she pointed out the place where she was taken.  
There was no longer a doubt.  She was the lost one. 

 From  History of Sullivan County by James Eldridge Quinlan.  
Published by G.M. Beebe and W.T. Morgans, Liberty, NY 1873.  
In Arizona Branch Geneological Library, 464 East First Avenue, 
Mesa, AZ.[pp. 395-396}