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Notes for Mary "Polly" Piper:
From Kathleen Diane Cormack: "This is a story that was submitted to the Staunton Star-Times, on 23 February 1912 by Mrs. J. A. Wilder of West Prairie. It was in response to the newspaper asking for "Old Settler Stories." This collection of articles was reprinted by the Macoupin County Genealogical Society. "As told to me by mother when a child. In the latter part of the 18th century, my great-grandparents Piper by name, lived on the hill that Otto Funderburk lives on and at the present time, on the road going from Staunton to Bunker Hill near Cahokia bridge. In those days there were a great many so called friendly Indians in this part of the country, also a few unfriendly panthers. At one time my great-grandfather was confined to his bed with a severe spell of sickness. At the time grandmother was a young lady (Mary Piper). One day she was piecing a quilt when some Indian squaws came on the rounds of begging. One of them went to grandma and jerking the quilt out of her hand and wrapped it around her own shoulders, began dancing around the room, while the other squaws clapped their hands in glee. When she was done with it , she handed it back to grandma telling her in her own language, how pretty it was. In a few days she came again, this time grandmother was carding some wool, getting them ready to spin. They were preparing to weave some cloth for winter clothing. They were always prowling into everything that they could get their hands on that could be eaten and great-grandmother always divided everything that she could for although they claimed to be friendly, they were very treacherous at times. This time, they spied some pumpkins under the bed. The bedstead being an old high poster, the Indians were soon rolling them out over the floor and one of them, on discovering a decayed place in the pumpkin, ran her hand on it and pulling it out, she went around holding her hands to the other squaws noses and soon had them making faces. Going to grandma, she rubbed the rotten pumpkin all over her face. That made grandma so mad that she raised a card to hit the squaw but her father spoke to her quickly, telling her not to do that. After the Indians went away, he told her never to anything to provoke them or sometime they would murder the whole family. It was there, that grandmother was married to Steven Wilcox, going from there to Silver Creek to live. Now grandmother used to come over on horseback to visit her parents, usually starting in the afternoon and staying. So one day, taking my mother up in back of her and baby in her arms, she started to West Prairie. At that time a public road came up to the creek from the south toward the bridge and there was heavy timber on either side of the road. As grandma was riding along, probably crooning a lullaby to her baby, she saw some berries that people used for coloring and on riding out to examine them to see if they were ripe, she heard the snapping twigs and looking over some bushes and saw a panther smiling there. Well it didn't take her so very long to get back to the road with the panther following close at her heels; she couldn't ride very fast for fear of the little girl falling off, but she kept watching the beast and every time it started wagging its tail, she would make the horse trot so, in this manner she kept out of its reach until she came to a bunch of cattle lying down where Chas. Hoffstetter lives. There it took after the cattle and grandma was soon on the hill with her parents. After grandfather bought or homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of what is at this time the business portion of Staunton and was the owner of the first grocery store that was ever in that city. After deciding to go to a warmer climate, he sold his farm, receiving a small payment and reserving a small part, only seven blocks, for sale or future use. He them emigrated to Arkansas, dying there without he or his heirs realizing anything more for the sale of their home, after going though many hardships of the war. Grandma died 20 years ago, at the ripe old age of 91."
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