Penns Creek Massacre: First Hostility on the Frontier

On October sixteenth, seventeen fifty-five, A settler named Le Roy was killed near this spot in what became known as the Penns Creek Massacre. It was the first act of hostility by Native Americans in Pennsylvania following the defeat of British General Edward Braddock in July of that year. Braddock's crushing loss near Fort Duquesne had emboldened Indigenous peoples allied with France to strike at Pennsylvania settlers.

Leroy's daughter Marie and her companion Barbara Leininger were taken captive and carried to the Muskingum River in Ohio. Both eventually escaped and made their way back to Philadelphia, where their accounts of captivity were published and widely read, deepening settler fear and fueling calls for frontier defense.