Did this Shawnee chief have a white wife and daughter?

Question

The Wikitree profile for the Shawnee chief known as "Pe-aitch-tah" or "PHT" has a white wife and daughter attached.  They only seem to exist in a romantic, but unsourced and improbable, story involving a secret marriage, a sudden death, and a child taken to Canada and adopted by a white family.   See: The Allen County Reporter, "How Hog Creek Got Its Name," Vol. # LII, No. 1 1996, “A Missionary, An Indian, and a Hill: Their Story. ["http://www.htracyhall.org/pdf/IRH-Genealogy/Materials%20Added%20April%202014/Genealogy%20-%20Book%20of%20Remembrance/The%20Allen%20County%20Reporter.pdf story] 

There are very few documents that mention this man at all and I did not locate any that named his family.  Most reports say that he had a Shawnee wife and daughter living when he died, although they are not named.  He died in 1831 or '32 shortly before the Hog Creek band that he led was removed to Kansas, and twelve families connected to him delayed their departure for a year due to his death.  

Can anyone help solve this mystery?  Any documentation that supports the facts of his life would be wonderful.

Comments

Almost a year later... sorry to request this of you, but you wrote: "Most reports say that he had a Shawnee wife and daughter living when he died, although they are not named."

Can we cite any of these?

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(I found one source for the mention of wife and daughter and added it to the profile.)

In the meantime, can anyone else access the PDF linked to in Kathie's post? I get a blank page. Tried two different browsers on my ipad.

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Not having any luck, the link was to someone's private archive and I can't find any links to the journal on the Allen County Museum website.

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Thanks for trying; I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't my iPad being uncooperative.

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Just e-mail the library at the museum & they can pull the file or send me a private message with what you want from the file or if you want a full copy of the file & I can go over there & copy it. I have a copy somewhere in my paper files but haven't been able to find it. I am the one who cited it as a source.

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Thanks, Deborah; I've contacted them and requested a copy of:

The Allen County Reporter, "How Hog Creek Got Its Name," Vol. # LII, No. 1 1996, “A Missionary, An Indian, and a Hill: Their Story."

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Jillaine, I don't know if they have any of the reprints available or whether they will have to pull their archived copy as the reprints have usually sold out as quick as they get them printed, however there is an old copy scanned on line. I believe it's listed as a source on one of the profiles. If not, I probably have it. I also have an original copy & have it scanned in my computer that I could send you. The original files donated by the family would be in the vertical (family files) under Staley, Hall, & Pe-Aitch-Ta (PHT). I don't remember if there's anything under Walton. I have copies that I obtained from the museum several years ago but when we moved, I haven't been able to locate them. I can go over sometime & try to find them again.

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There's something wrong with the online link that is cited on several profiles. It comes up blank.  So if you have an electronic copy that you could share, that would be great.

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I just tried it. Apparently, it has been removed as it was blank when I tried it also. I can send you copies of the website but you said that you requested a copy from the musesum.

Answer 1

Most of the information on these people & the Shawnees in Allen County & the Hog Creek Reservation are preserved in the Allen County Historical Society Museum in their archives & library.

PHT was first married to Montaigna Mitchell who was the daughter of a white missionary, George Mitchell & his wife, Quintilla, who was of the Montagnais tribe of Quebec, Canada. More on her people at: Access Genealogy https://accessgenealogy.com/native/montagnais-tribe-htm

PHT & Montaigna had a daughter, Deborah Arvilla who was taken to a white family, the Gilberts to be raised for her safety. She married Joseph Walton & returned to Allen County where they are buried & their descendants lived. Her descendants still live on the original property & donated much of the original material to the museum where it is held.  

After Montaigna died when Deborah was a child, PHT took a Shawnee woman as his wife. They had at least one child, a daughter. I do not know of any other children. I do not know the name of the wife or child. I do know where the house & garden were where PHT died & was said buried. There is a historical marker. A monument & marker were placed across the road in Shawnee Cemetery, which had been part of the original Hog Creek Reservation. Kathie, I have left several messages requesting that you contact me. What documentation I don't have copies of, I can get & what I have, I'm willing to share. I am trying to answer your questions. Please e-mail me & I will try to answer any of your questions & send you what I can.

Comments

Unfortunately none of that is supported by documentation.  That’s why I posted the question.  The Rev. Mitchell existed, but I don’t find him with an Indian wife in any document.

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I don't know how to find a marriage record for them. It would be in Canada probably & may not have been licenses if she was Indian. I'm not sure how to find it. My notes say they were married in 1768 in Quebec & that she died in 1768 when Montaigna was born. I don't know if there would be Canadian records. I know there was a British Indian Department that Alexander McKee was superintendent of. I don't know if there would be records from that existing.

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I find it challenging to believe that a Native American living in what is now Ohio married a woman from a Native tribe in Quebec. The distance was significant.  A document describing the one-way journey in 1812 indicated it took six weeks for a group of settlers to emigrate from the Canadian/Vermont border area to Allen Co., Ohio.

Do we have any evidence that PHT (or his wife/mate) made such a trip(s) a good 40-50 years earlier?

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There is also no evidence that the Rev. George Mitchell was in America before 1774 when he was ordained in England.

Answer 2

Deborah seems to have found a lot of information, but have you contacted the Shawnee Tribe in OK?  https://www.shawnee-nsn.gov/

Comments

This man died before Shawnee removal, but I have been in contact with the Eastern Band of Shawnee Indians, the tribe that his band became part of.  They have an extensive documentary record, but nothing that supports the claims regarding "Deborah Arvilla Gilbert" as a daughter of PHT.

The  Allen County  article is part of a collection of information from Family Search at https://www.familysearch.org/service/records/storage/das-mem/patron/v2/TH-904-57501-108-51/dist.txt?ctx=ArtCtxPublic  which includes the following which outlines some of the problems with the claim: 

"NOTE OF CAUTION REGARDING INDIAN STORIES. Letter from Roscoe J. Dearth to shb, 26 Nov 2003: "That includes the information on the Gilbert families. It's a nice story, but a little fishy to me. I would like to know why those familes moved from French Quebec (which would have been British Canada) to another British-held territory. The French who refused allegiance to Britain were expelled and returned to France or elsewhere (a-la the Nova Scotia-ians who headed to New Orleans and are now called Cajuns). "Re: the story of McKee's Hill - I have to look into that further. It sounds suspicially like it was right close to Cyrus Hall's property north of Lafayette. I know of a cabin site there along Hog Creek.... I was told this was the cabin of a British Indian agent, but it could have been Reverend Mtchell who was also the agent. "What's fishy about the Mitchell 'Gilbert' Walton story is that Reverend Mitchell's wife was purported to be a Shawnee princess and then is reported to [have gone] to Quebec to visit her family. Hogwash. These tribes lived in relatively small areas - not scattered across half a continent. Now the Shawnees were associates, not members, of the the Seven Nations (the Iroquois League) and so had contact. But either Montaignia was a Shawnee and her family was in Ohio or else she was from Quebec and her family was there. I can't remember who it was I first discussed this with, but she had a name for the brand of Indians in Quebec. Regretfully, I informed her that there was no such tribe, that what she had found was a generic name for 'savages' in French.

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Here are links to Deborah in the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Censuses with her second husband, Anthony Hall.  Both say she was born in Vermont.

 "United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MX3X-HBD : 21 December 2020), Deborah Hall in household of Anthony Hall, Jackson Township, Allen, Ohio, United States; citing family , NARA microfilm publication (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

"United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MC2L-K4N : 3 February 2022), D Haul in entry for Anthony Hall, 1860.

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The following describes the movement of Joseph Walton (and others) from Vermont to Canada (after the Revolution) and then from Canada to Ohio in 1813:

Beers, W. H. 1883. The History of Union County, Ohio, containing a history of the county 
its townships, towns ... military record. Chicago: W. H. Beers & co. Part V. Township Histories. Chapter 2. Union Township. P. 171; http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofunionco00dura#page/171/mode/1up

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And thanks to the generosity of a Find-a-Grave contributor, we've gotten our hands on a digital image of the 1788 birth record of Deborah Gilbert, daughter of Moses Gilbert by [his wife] Lydia.