Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Hendee, Mrs.

HENDEE, Mrs., heroine, b. in 1754. When the Indians burned Royalton, Vt., in 1776, her husband, Joshua Hendee, was absent in a Vermont regiment, and she was at work in an adjacent field. The Indians entered her house, seized her children, and carried them across White river, where it was a hundred yards wide and too deep for fording. Mrs. Hendee dashed into the river, swam and waded through, and, entering the camp, regardless of the tomahawks that were flourished about her head, demanded her children's release, and persevered until her request was granted. She carried them across the stream, landed them in safety on the other bank, and, returning three times in succession, procured the release of fifteen children belonging to her neighbors. On her final return to the camp the Indians were so struck with her courage that one of them declared that so brave a squaw deserved to be carried across the stream, and taking her on his back swam with her to the place where the rescued children were awaiting her return. She was twenty-two years old when she performed this feat, and in 1818 she was living in Sharon, Vt., with her third husband, whose name was Mosher. It is thought that she removed to one of the western states about 1820.