Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/80

Rh, Kentucky. Mary had been accustomed to hardship and exposure in her early days and proved her worth in this new home. But Carpenter's difficult labors of the winter in clearing the ground and raising the building which was to form their little home brought on a hemorrhage which two years later resulted in his death. Though urged by her friends to take up her home inside the borders which the settlers had erected, she preferred the solitude and independence of her own little home which her husband had made for her. It is said that she planned a way of protecting her little children in case of an attack by the Indians by digging out beneath the puncheon floor of her cabin a small cellar, and every night she lifted the timbers and placed her children on beds in this cellar, keeping a lonely vigil herself. Her fears were not groundless, her cabin being frequently surrounded by savages, and but for her careful provisions for protection, she and her little family no doubt would have been killed. Cincinnati became the headquarters of the army through the establishment of a garrison there known as Fort Washington. One of the first schools established in the Northwest Territory was that of young Francis Dunlevy who had served in many Indian campaigns, and came to Columbia, in 1792, and established his school. Hearing of Mrs. Carpenter's courage and sacrifices for her children, he sought her out and finding that none of them had been exaggerated he became a suitor for her hand, and they were married in January, 1793. Mr. Dunlevy became one of the most respected citizens of that section of the country, and was afterwards a member of the legislature of the Northwest Territory and the convention which formed the constitution of Ohio. He was also Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Mrs. Dunlevy had two daughters by her first marriage and three sons and three daughters by her second, and after the death of her eldest child her health failed and she died in 1828, without any apparent cause but that of a broken heart.