John HARROD

                   THE HARROD FAMILY OF AMERICA were and are a notable family , descendants of John Harrod (1700-1754), who came from Bedfordshire, England, about 1722 and settled in New Jersey across the Delaware River and a little to the south of Philadelphia.  There his first two sons were born, Thomas in 1724, and John in 1727.  There also in about 1732/1733, on an occasion when the husbandf and the two little boys had gone to visit some nearby relatives, and when the wife was busily engaged with the usual duties of a pioneer home, some Indians observed that she was home alone.  They broke in and killed her, plundered the house of all they wanted, and cut off her hand in order to obtain the wedding ring John had given her when they were married in England.  They set fire to the house and John, seeing the smoke from his burning home, rushed back as quickly as possible.  Upon his arrivel there he was horrified to find that his wife had been killed and scalped.  Upon his approach the Indians ran into the forest before he could get a shot at them.  He discovered her hand in the canoe which the Indians had loaded with plunder from his house.  This heart-rending situation was beyond any description by mere words, but it was just one more example of the many tragic incidents that our colonial ancestors had to endure.  With the help of relatives John cared for his two motherless sons, then he remarried, this time to Sarah Moore of Maryland.  They moved to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where they extablished a new home, and here John's third son, Samuel, was born in 1735.  After two years the family moved again to Little Cove, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, where John Harrod died in 1754.  Sarah and the childrren stayed on the farm until 1766, when the Delaware Indians under Chief Shingas made a raid on the settlement, burned houses and buildings and massacred every white who delayed in getting out.  As the Harrod family passed through Cove Gap on their flight to the east they could look back and see their home in flames.  They found safe refuge at Fort Littleton. (Rootsweb.com)