Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/73

50 Joseph Brandt, that mysterious character who was supposed to have been born an Indian chief among the Mohawk tribe, and who was the young Nation's intermediary with the Indians. It was through her shrewdness and the influential position which Molly Brandt came to occupy in the family of Sir William Johnson that her brother came to the attention of those in authority and received his education. She arranged to have him sent to the Moor Charity School at Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1761. Through this training of his mind, and the cultivation of sympathy with the colonists, he became as valuable an assistant as many trained diplomatists have been in later years. We find, moreover, that in 1770, Sir William, after the decease of Lady Johnson, "took to his home as his wife, Mary Brandt, or Miss Molly." And this may be the first historic instance of an American girl marrying a title!

The early history of West Virginia is filled with the same stories of privation, suffering, and horrors experienced by the settlers in Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina. The privations of that time necessitated women taking upon themselves the hardest labors. They worked with their husbands clearing the land, and the rude provisions for domestic comfort were largely those acquired by their own efforts. The tableware of those days consisted of a few pewter plates and kettles which had survived long journeys from the East. They wove the cloth of which their own and their children's garments were made, spun the flax which made the linen, and in fact, the entire furnishings of their homes were the work of their own hands. It is said that the first settlers came into West Virginia in 1749, and in 1751 two settlers were sent in by the Green Brier Company to open up the lands, and the first settlement was