Rebecca Ashley

REBECCA KELLOGG ASHLEY, A.K.A. "WAUSANIA" / "THE BRIDGE"

Rebecca Kellogg Ashley (Dec. 22, 1695 - Aug. 1757) was an English child captured by French Canadian militia and their Iroquois and Algonquin allies in the 1704 raid of Deerfield, Massachusetts (also known as "The Deerfield Massacre"). The Deerfield raid was part of the decade long "Queen Anne's War", the North American theatre of "The War of the Spanish Sucession" of 1702 - 1713 in Europe.......Rebecca was eight years old at the time of her capture. Also taken captive during the Deerfield Raid were -- 1.) her father, Martin Kellogg, 2.) her brother, Joseph Kellogg, and 3.) her sister, Joanne Kellogg. In common with many of the Deerfield captives, Rebecca converted to Catholicism and was thence adopted by a Mohawk family in Kahnawake, on the St. Lawrence River near Montreal. Rebecca Kellogg married fellow "captive" Jonathan / John Evans, with the couple parenting five sons.......Unlike her younger sister, Joanne, Rebecca Kellogg was finally persuaded by her brother, Joseph Kellogg, to return to New England in 1728 despite being "besotted by the Catholic religion". Finding employment with the Reverend Jonathan Edwards at the Stockbridge Indian School, Rebecca Kellogg met and married her much younger cousin, Captain Benjamin Ashley -- she being fifty and Captain Ashley thirty. The Reverend Edwards expressed his admiration of Rebecca's faith and interpretation skills in many of his letters. Although "redeemed" from captivity, Rebecca Kellogg continued to self identify as a member of the Mohawk nation.......Rebecca Kellogg Ashley passed away in 1757 while on mission among the Oneida at Oquaga, New York (present day Windsor, New York). Rebecca Kellogg Ashley did not leave any known writings but her life is visible in the writings of other missionaries with whom she worked. Her colleague in the Oneida mission, the Reverend Gideon Hawley, wrote that the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) "greatly lamented" her death.

Source: "Rebecca Kellogg Ashley" -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Kellogg_Ashley

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Rebecca Kellogg Ashley is interred, courtesy of The Daughters of the American Revolution, at The Rebecca Kellogg Ashley Burial Site in Windsor, New York.

Find A Grave Memorial #112646065 / Created June 21, 2013 by Doug Miller