1761

Fort Pitt Deserters Camp Near Present-Day Aurora

According to an account first published by historian Alexander Scott Withers in 1831, Fort Pitt soldiers William Childers, Joseph Linsey—also spelled Lindsey—and brothers John and Samuel Pringle deserted in 1761. They traveled up the Monongahela River before crossing into the glades at the headwaters of the Youghiogheny, where they camped and hunted for about a year. S. T. Wiley’s 1882 Preston County history places their camp approximately two and one-half miles east of present-day Aurora. In 1762, the four followed a path to the Looney’s Creek settlement in present-day Grant County. Childers and Linsey were apprehended there, while the Pringle brothers escaped and returned to the glades. Early county historians treated them as the next documented Euro-American group in present-day Preston County after the Eckerlin settlement, although the story rests largely on later recollections and local tradition.