Incident Among Indians Gave Community Name

Newcomerstown News: August 16, 1964 - Newcomerstown was not founded until 1814, but its actual history goes back further than that date when Nicholas Neighbor founded the settlement.

The earliest visit by a white man to the Tuscarawas River was that of Christopher Gist in 1750. An explorer and surveyor, he was sent out by a company of Virginians, among them George Washington, to explore the land west of the Allegheny Mountains and to determine if it were suitable for new settlements.

The notes in the Gist journal tell of what must have been the earliest account of the "eternal triangle" in this region.

Chief Eagle Feather became tired of his wife, Mary Harris, who as a child had been abducted from her home in Deerfield, Massachusetts by Indian raiders. While on one of his tribe's raiding trips to the Virginia frontier, he captured a younger and more beautiful squaw and established her in the same wigwam with Mary Harris.

This caused no end of trouble and Mary Harris became increasingly jealous of the "Newcomer" as she was called. One morning the Indian village was aroused by the cries of Mary Harris that her husband, Chief Eagle Feather, had been murdered and that the captive "Newcomer" had fled.

The Indians immediately pursued the fugitive and she was recaptured at a small Indian town on the banks of the Tuscarawas River. This town was thereafter known as Newcomerstown.