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In looking at the evolution of this mixed group I had assumed marriages between neighboring Native American villages and frontier Quaker communities were the main way people met and married. The more research I do the more I realize the real history is more complicated and violent than I would have guessed. Reading about the history of my Coppock line in the Carolinas I came across this story:
Molly Coppock at an evening camp fire of those from Bush River on their way to the Northwest
Territory. She stated that her grandmother was a Cherokee Indian.
"For over seventy years, there was an Indian village on Bush River not
far above the little Friends settlement. There was a good deal of
bitterness between the Indians and the white men, and border warfare between them
was frequent. One night, a company of soldiers, together with some
settlers, who had volunteered, fell upon this Indian village and killed every
Indian, man, woman, and child, save only two. A little boy and a little girl,
about five and six years old, escaped in some way from the burning wigwams
and the scenes of slaughter, and the next morning they were found by my
great-grandfather, when he happened to pass that way. They were hungry and
were crying, and he took them to his home. Later, he adopted them. They
grew into manhood and womanhood, as my great grandfather's own children, and
his own son fell in love with the girl and they were married That girl was
my grandmother Sanders, and from that time the Cherokees have always been
our friends. Grandmother taught me their language when I was a little girl
and I can still speak it quite well."
source: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/SC-BUSHRIVERQUAKERS/2011-02/1296588182
I wasn’t aware this was Cherokee territory – this is present-day Newberry SC circa 1760s-1790s. I would have thought this was Catawba land at that time.
Seeing adoptions stories like the one above, I’m wondering if it is a reason why some ancestors I have seen have surnames that do not match their listed parents or husband. Our Coppock line passed history of buying land from Daniel Boone. There is another account of events from the Bush River Monthly Meeting from a Boone:
Another version, perhaps referring to the same massacre, written by Walter
Boone, includes the following:
The Quakers heard that an Indian village in the Carolinas had been
destroyed and the inhabitants massacred by white men. The Quakers went there
to see if there was anything they could do. They buried the victims and
found two little Indian girls hiding in the bushes nearby. They brought
them home and they were raised by a Quaker family, David Johnson-Mary Woody.
Later two Sanders brothers married them. My grandmother, Elizabeh Hoover
(Sanders) Boone was dark complected -------
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