Great Cove massacre

On November 1, 1755, Shingas led a combined force of Shawnee and Lenape fighters against the settlement of Great Cove, Pennsylvania, sometimes called Big Cove and known today as McConnellsburg, then part of Cumberland County. Roughly fifty people living there were killed or taken captive in the assault. Afterward, residents came back to reestablish the community, while the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania set about erecting a network of forts and blockhouses meant to shield inhabitants and repel any future incursions. Those fortifications later proved crucial to the defense effort throughout the French and Indian War.

Massacre

On the first of November 1755, roughly one hundred Lenape and Shawnee fighters, joined perhaps by a handful of French soldiers, struck the settlement at Great Cove and the nearby community called the Conolloways. Just before falling upon their targets, the raiding party divided into two bands of fifty. Shingas, the Lenape chief, is confirmed to have been present, as was Captain Jacobs, and one account also places the Lenape leader Tamaqua at the scene. Warning reached some of the residents beforehand, said to have come from a settler named Patrick Burns who had broken free after being held captive by Indians, and roughly half of the people living in these two communities managed to escape.

The following day, the Pennsylvania Gazette carried word of the assault through an express dispatch from Conococheague, noting that settlements at Great Cove and Cannalaways had come under attack, with numerous houses reported ablaze and gunfire heard extensively enough to suggest that residents had either perished or fled. The dispatch warned that Conococheague and Harris's Ferry might face similar threats and mentioned reinforcements arriving steadily from Lancaster and York counties.

Sheriff Potter, writing that same day, described leading forty men into the area in pursuit of the raiders but finding no trace of them. His force later gained sixty additional men, and debate arose over whether to continue the chase through the night or retreat to McDowell's. Ultimately, fewer than six men were willing to press onward after the Indians. Days later, on November 6, Adam Hoops informed Governor Robert Morris that Captain Hance Hamilton was en route from York County with two hundred men, while another two hundred from Lancaster County stood ready for combat. Though Pennsylvania militia combed the region, fresh snowfall erased the trail; they did recover the body of a child, likely left behind because the youngster could not keep up with the retreating warriors.

The true scale of casualties remains uncertain. A Pennsylvania Gazette report from November 13 identified seven people killed and eighteen captured, eleven of them children. Testifying before provincial officials on November 14, Sheriff Potter stated that of ninety three families residing across the two coves and the Conolloways, forty seven individuals had been either killed or captured. Adam Hoops, in his earlier letter of November 6, had put the figure at approximately fifty persons killed or taken.

Captives

Those seized during the assault were marched to Kittanning, a

Aftermath

After the killings, the majority of the settlers made their way back to Great Cove and the Conolloways. Isolated homesteads remained targets, and on 24 November the Gnadenhütten massacre claimed the lives of 11 Moravian missionaries. A further tragedy struck on 10 and 11 December, when the Northampton massacre left as many as 89 settlers dead. As 1755 turned to spring, settlers had begun erecting numerous small, privately funded forts to shield themselves during attacks. Among these was Fort McCord in the Conococheague settlement, which fell to destruction in April of 1756.

In response to the Great Cove killings and similar assaults on Pennsylvania's settlements, the provincial government moved to establish a network of forts stretching across the frontier's western edge. A secondary chain was also planned, meant to function as supply hubs and a defensive line of retreat, encompassing Fort Augusta, Fort Halifax, and Fort Hunter. North of Great Cove rose Fort Lyttleton, while Fort Loudoun took shape just east of it. Yet the sudden fall of the newly constructed Fort Granville that August exposed how fragile these strongholds truly were, and it was already apparent that maintaining supplies and garrisons for them came at great cost. When Kittanning was destroyed in September of 1756, it proved that the colonists could strike back effectively, and after the Treaty of Easton in 1758, attacks by Native Americans grew far less common.