Here the young Clemmers, Lawrence and Valentine, were held prisoners for nine years. On the conclusion of peace with the Indians the boys were returned to the white settlements. Valentine, the younger boy, and who at the time of the capture was only five years old, married near Williamsport, and in 1802 removed with his family to Allegany County, the scene of his earliest recollections. His son, Jacob Clemmer, a man of great respectability, afterwards filled several important offices in the county.
Fort Cumberland, where the town of Cumberland now stands, was laid out about 1749, by the Ohio Land Company, and was then supposed to belong to the territory of Virginia. On the site of the old fort a beautiful church of Gothic architecture has been erected by the Episcopalian congregation of Cumberland. One of the first settlements made within the territory now embraced by the county of Allegany was made shortly after Fort Cumberland was located by Thomas Cresap, usually called the " English Colonel," at a place called by him " Skipton," now called Oldtown.
The house, or fort, as it was then called, built of stone, is still standing, and was afterwards occupied as a dwelling-house. Col. Thomas Cresap, the progenitor of the Cresap family, now a numerous and highly respectable family of Allegany County, was an Englishman by birth, a member and agent of the Ohio Land Company, and a man of great bodily strength, and of a high order of intellect. He had been the agent of Lord Baltimore, proprietor of the province of Maryland, and had built a fort on the banks of the Susquehanna for the purpose of taking possession and holding that part of the country, claimed as part of Maryland, against the family of Penn, the proprietors of Pennsylvania. Some of the Pennites came over, and after an obstinate resistance, in which they burnt his fort, they took him prisoner and carried him to Philadelphia. After his release he removed to Allegany, and settled at Skipton, where he reared a numerous family of enterprising sons. His house served as a fort for the protection of the white inhabitants who were settled around him, to which all fled in the hour of danger, and many a fierce combat was fought around that little house. Cresap was the master-spirit, and always took the command, and marshaled his little band of stout hearts when the alarm was given that a party of marauding Indians were in the neighborhood. A braver band of pioneers never pulled the trigger.
The sons of Col. Thomas Cresap were Daniel, Thomas, and Michael. He had also two daughters.
In one of the conflicts with the Indians, after the latter had come stealthily upon the settlement and had murdered a family and stolen some of their horses, Cresap mustered his clan, pursued them, and surprised them on the side of the second mountain beyond Fort Cumberland, Will's Mountain being the first. The Indians separated and fled. Daniel Cresap, one of the colonel's sons, a young man of humane disposition and of remarkable fleetness of foot, observed a young Indian separate from his comrades and take a southerly course along the side of the mountain. Not wishing to shoot him, he pursued, and after a severe race overtook him. The Indian, finding that Cresap was gaining on him, would spring behind a tree and raise his gun, as though about to shoot. Cresap would shelter himself behind a tree, and after watching each other for a minute or two, the Indian would again run. This was repeated several times, when Cresap concluded that the Indian's gun was not loaded, because he had had several opportunities to shoot and had not done so. When at length they came to an open space, and the Indian, looking back, found that Cresap would overtake him before he could reach a shelter, he whirled round, and raised his gun to shoot. Cresap saw at once from his motion that he was mistaken in supposing that his gun was unloaded. He instantly took aim, and both guns went off at the same moment. The ball of the Indian passed through Cresap's lungs, and Cresap's ball through the abdomen of the Indian. Col. Cresap, hearing the report of the rifles, started in pursuit. When he came up with them he found the pursuer and pursued, both mortally wounded, lying within a short distance of each other. The Indian in the agonies of death begged that they would kill him, which they did. Cresap died of his wound before they got him off the mountain. The mountain was called " Dan's Mountain" after him, and has been known by that name from that day until this. Young " Dan" Cresap, on account of his generosity of spirit, was a great favorite with the mountaineers, who in giving the mountain his name have perpetuated the memory of his dramatic death.
Dan's Mountain forms the eastern verge of the coal basin of Allegany County. The mountain immediately west of " Dan's," and running parallel with it from south to north, is known as " Savage Mountain." It is a grand and noble elevation, rising some twenty-five hundred to three thousand feet above tidewater, is rough and rugged, and abounds in fine springs of pure sandstone water. Prior to the year 1760, and during the period when the habitations of the settlers were confined principally to " Cresap's Fort," or Skipton, — now called Oldtown, situated some fifteen miles below Cumberland, near the Potomac, opposite the present station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, called " Green Spring Run," — the Indian, who had been gradually driven westward, still held possession of this mountain. The whites, it is true, had located and then held Fort Cumberland, but they held but little save the inside of the fort.
The Indians who had been driven westward from the Conococheague, now within the present limits of Washington County, kept up a constant warfare upon this pioneer settlement. They would suddenly burst from the dense forest surrounding it, and sometimes would succeed in killing one or two of the inhabitants and driving off their cattle and horses. But as soon as they made their appearance and committed depredations, Col. Cresap, at the head of his pioneer band, would start in pursuit and generally succeed in chastising them, sometimes overtaking them on " Kobly" Mountain, sometimes on " Will's" Mountain, and sometimes upon " Dan's," but for many years never pursuing them as far as the mountain immediately west of the present village of Frostburg, called Savage Mountain. That mountain was left for years in the undisputed possession of the Indian. The grave of his father was there; it was the ultima thule to which he would retreat. There he made a desperate stand for many years; there he held his nightly war-dance, and recounted among the braves of his tribe the glorious war deeds of his father. In troublous times the deep glens of the mountain-passes and the dark lonely peaks of that grand old mountain were lighted by the beacon-fires of the savage foe. The white man, awed by the rugged grandeur of the lofty mountain and the deep and almost impenetrable forest which covered its side, halted when he had pursued his foe to its base, and called it the Savage Mountain, or the mountain belonging to the savage. Hence to this day the mountain is known by its original name, — " The Savage Mountain."
Years rolled on, and the tide of emigration flowed westward, and Col. Cresap's little colony at Skipton had become more than a match for the Indians. But one night the colony was aroused from sleep by the war-whoop of the savages. Col. Cresap, equal to every emergency, soon rallied his affrighted colonists, got them into the fort, and stood upon the defensive until the morning, when it was ascertained that a family had been murdered and some of the horses of the colonists taken. Pursuit was at once determined upon, and the colonel's order to that effect was given. In the morning, when the colonel came out of the fort, he found his body-servant, Nemesis, a large athletic negro, cleaning his rifle to be ready for the fray He said to him, " Well, Nemesis, are you ready for the fight?" Nemesis replied, "Yes, massa; but I don't come back." Col. Cresap jestingly said, " Well, Nemesis, if you are afraid of being killed, you can stay here with the women, and I will go without you." Nemesis hesitated a moment, and then