A True Heroin

Posted: June 22, 2026 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: history, Poetry, Uncategorized | Tags: history, John F. Garvin, Mary Jane Garvin, Poetry, Writing to be Read |Leave a comment

My mother used to research the genealogy of her family. This is a poem which she uncovered, which was written by one of my ancestors, John F. Garvin, in 1894, in Eustis, Florida. This account of an Indian attack, in which his mother, Mary Jane Garvin killed seventeen of her attackers, is said to appear in the History of the Great West.

A True Heroin

In the far, far west

On the wild frontier,

There a woodsman made his home,

Where the wolf, the bear,

The panther, and the deer,

And the red man used to roam.

There was turkey, too

In the forest new

Which full many a meal supplied

And many a ham

Of their autumn game

Were hung from the beam and dried.

Then the Indians came

With their wheat and rye

Together supplied their bread

In their cabin home

The reds and whites

Alike were lodged and fed.

They worked like bees

And lived in peace

Till the reds to the warpath fled.

The whites they were burning

And killing they knew

They waited their time with dread.

The husband was sick

And in anguish turned

As he heard the war whoop wild

“Oh, what can I do,”

He wildly cried

“To protect my wife and child?”

No time could be lost

She grabbed the ax

As the reds cut the door away

And as in they came

They fell to the floor

As forms of lifeless clay.

Some thought to climb

Down the chimney flu,

But the feather bed put on the fire

So smothered the ones

That were coming down

So that one by one the expired.

When her work was done

Her strength was gone

And fainting she fell to the wall

And only one red man

From the conflict ran

To tell what became of them all.

Calmly their forms were returned

To Earth

But there stood on history’s page

A tale how she rought

with nerve and thought

To keep from the red man’s rage.

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