January 12, 1768. According to the historian G.S. Rowe, it was on this day that William Blyth first heard of the deaths of six local Indians who had been friendly with the colonists. Blyth (or Blythe) was an officer at Fort Augusta during the French and Indian War. Before that, he had made a living as a trader out of Shippensburg in the 1740s. In his 1889 history of the region, John Franklin Meginness stated that Blyth lived in a cabin at the mouth of Middle Creek, which would have placed him close to the location of Stump’s cabin.
Blyth went to the property of George Gabriel, the local social hot spot, to get more information. Here he found none other than Frederick Stump, who was all too eager to claim responsibility for the deaths. Stump insisted that the visiting White Mingo, Cornelius, John Campbell, Jones, and two women were inebriated and hostile. Fearing for his safety and that of his nineteen-year-old indentured servant, John Ironcutter, he killed his visitors and concealed the bodies in the frozen Middle Creek.
Stump further alleged that he had thought he and Ironcutter would suffer a vengeful response if word of the murders were to spread to other Indian populations. In response, on January 11 the two Germans walked fourteen miles up Middle Creek, where they found another woman and three children. According to the historian Linda A. Ries, Blyth later claimed that Stump killed three of these Indians and Ironcutter killed one after his master ordered him to do so. Stump and Ironcutter then placed the bodies inside of the Indians’ house and set it ablaze.
Horrified, Blyth sent a party to verify Stump’s claims, and he and his posse found evidence of charred remains in the Indians’ cabin. Blyth immediately traveled to Philadelphia and informed the Governor and Provincial Council about these happenings on the 19th. In the Minutes of the Provincial Council, his deposition is described as a “Melancholy piece of intelligence just brought to Town.” His quick response and strong testimony led to formal murder charges against the men. In return, the Governor awarded Blyth with a parcel of land farther up the Susquehanna River, just south of White Deer Creek.
The house was a space not only to socialize, but also a place where European settlers on the frontier would later start to become unhinged. Such was the significance of Gabriel and his homestead that in 1767, the official plan of Penn Township, as laid out by Cumberland County surveyors, was:
Beginning at the intersection of Cocolamus Creek with McKee’s Path; thence up said creek, according to the North-East branch thereof, to the Susquehanna River as high as George Gabriel’s plantation; thence down said river as far as McKee’s Path; thence along said path to the place of beginning.