Elisabeth Avery

Elisabeth (Smith) Avery, daughter of Jonathan Smith, who moved from Connecticut to Plymouth, Luzerne county. Pa., opposite the Shawnee flats. A company, with his brother, were captured by the Indians near the Nanticoke dam. His brother, being lame, was killed and scalped before his eyes, while he was bound out to a squaw, to fill the place of a lost son. He was finally ransomed by a British officer, and settled on 560 acres two miles south of the confluence of the Tunkhannock and Susquehanna on the east bank of the latter. Here his eight children were born, namely: William, born March 19, 1788; Elizabeth, February 17, 1790; Susanna, September 22, 1791; Zura, December 15, 1795; Ziba, January 12,1798 ; Polly, November 24,1799; Whitney, July 14, 1804, and Asher M., October 28, 1807. Whitney and Asher were pioneers of this county, as noticed in the chapter on Toulon.