The Mary Ingles Trail Associates (MITA) will present the 2021 Legacy of Mary Ingles encampment and living history event. This year marks the 266th anniversary of Mary Ingles’ odyssey in 1755 as she was captured by, and escaped from, Shawnee Native Americans. The Mary Ingles Trail Associates (MITA) presents a historical encampment based on research of the life of Mary Draper Ingles. Friday activities are offered for school groups and Saturday and Sunday encampment activities and presentations are open to the public without charge.

About Mary Draper Ingles: In 1755, during the French and Indian War, Ingles was a 23-year-old frontier wife living with her extended family at Drapers Meadow, near present-day Blacksburg, VA, when a Shawnee war party attacked the settlement. The pioneer woman’s mother was among those killed in the raid, while Ingles, her two sons and a sister-in-law were among the settlers captured. Ingles was separated from her boys and taken to a Shawnee settlement near the site of present-day Portsmouth, OH, and then on to Big Bone Lick in north-central Kentucky. There, she and a captive from another settlement managed to escape, and follow the Ohio, Kanawha, and New rivers back to Drapers Meadow in a perilous 40-day trek.

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