Rebecca Kellogg Ashley

Rebecca Kellogg Ashley (December 22, 1695 – August 1757), known as Wausaunia among the Mohawk, was a child living in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, captured by allied French, Canadian militia, Haudenosaunee, and Algonquin soldiers in the 1704 Deerfield Raid. The Deerfield attack was part of the decade-long Queen Anne's War (the 1702-1713 War of Spanish Succession on the Continent). Rebecca was eight years old when she was taken to Kahnawake with her sister Joanna across the Saint Lawrence River. Eunice Williams was captured in this same raid, as was her father, John Williams who wrote about his captive experience in The Redeemed Captive. Like Eunice and several other children from Deerfield, Rebecca Kellogg was adopted by Haudenosaunee Mohawks in the town of Kahnawake. She married and raised children in the Mohawk Community but later remarried Ben Ashley. Edwards expressed his admiration for her faith and interpretation skills in many letters. Although she had left Kahnawake, she often lived with the Haudenosaunee and identified as a member of the Mohawk. Rebecca Kellogg Ashley is notable for being an interpreter of early eighteenth-century borderlands and a hybrid individual who mediated cultural exchange on the borderlands. Jealous, in this sense, meant devoted, fond, and zealous for the well-being of something. Rebecca Ashley was so valued in the community as a tie between the Mohawks and the white settlers that Johnathan Edwards believed if she left to go back into Haudenosaunee country, it would cause the entire community to fall apart. In the Spring of 1753, Gideon Hawley came to Stockbridge to handle the school and continue the work of Johnathan Edwards, who left the mission. Hawley additionally used Rebecca Kellogg Ashley as his translator. The French and Indian War began years later, in 1756. The Haudenosaunee warned Hawley that he must leave the Indian territory, while they warned Rebecca Ashley to continue farther into the Indian Territory to keep her safe. Rebecca Kellogg Ashley died only a few months later in the same community she stayed within the native American territory in 1757.

Legacy In 1757, Rebecca Kellogg Ashley died and was buried in a cemetery in Onaquaga, where she died. In the 1900s, her remains were moved to a safer location, and in 1909, the Daughters of the American Revolution created a large headstone on a boulder in her memory. The inscription upon the headstone reads, In memory of 'Wausaunia" Rebecca Kellogg Ashley. Rebecca Kellogg Ashley left an impact on the mixing of Native American society and Christian communities. Rebeca Kellogg Ashley did not write any journals herself. However, she was well documented through the writings of the Christian Missionaries with whom she worked. Rebecca Ashley additionally viewed herself and was viewed as a member of the Mohawks. This allowed her to navigate and mend the borderland's troubled relationship between settlers and the Haudenosaunee. Rebecca navigated several different communities, cultures, and identities and later worked within the Christian Church and their mission to combine Native society and the church.