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Elizabeth "Betsy" Bates was born March 4, 1749, in Augusta, Virginia, and died October 4, 1846, in Du Quoin, Illinois.

From Rootsweb:

She married Lewis Wells, Sr., on June 1, 1775, in Greenville, South Carolina. They had twelve children, all born in Greenville:

Thomas Bates Wells, born January 24, 1776; Lewis Wells Jr., born September 5, 1778; Elijah Wells, born about 1780; Elizabeth Bates Wells, born August 12, 1782; Anna Wells; Susan Wells, born about 1784; Martha "Patsy" Wells, born April 28, 1786; Sarah "Sally" Wells, born August 30, 1788; Keziah Wells, born March 20, 1790; Mary "Polly" Wells, born April 30, 1792; Joseph Wells, born June 30, 1796, and Giles Wells, born April 15, 1798.

According to an account found on Rootsweb:

When Betsy was about twelve years old [c. 1761], she and her mother, along with three of her siblings, were taken captive by an Indian raiding party. Her father and a "hired hand" were killed. Betsy's mother later gave birth to a baby, and as the group crossed the swollen Roanoke River, the child was torn from the mother's arms by the raging water. The mother and children lived with the Indians for about a year before they were ransomed.

Sometime around the year 1803, the Wells family left South Carolina and ventured into Southern Illinois along with the Taylors, Pyles, McElvains, and others. Finding the Native American population in a state of unrest, they moved back into Kentucky, staying for awhile in Christian County. Between the years 1812 and 1815, the colonists drifted back into what became Jackson County, Illinois, in an area that became part of Perry County in 1827.

Lewis and Betsy lived on this land until their deaths in 1846 and were buried in McElvain cemetery.

(Source: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=shawcross&id=I24389)

The captivity story may have arisen from incidents in the Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761).

The Anglo-Cherokee War was a part of the Seven Years War (1754-1763), in which Britain and France contested for, among other things, control of North America. The Cherokees had been British allies at the beginning of the war, despite French efforts to draw them away.

The war began when Virginia militiamen attacked Cherokees passing through Virginia on their way home after taking part in the British attack on Fort Duquesne. The Cherokees were accused of stealing horses.

(See Anglo-Cherokee War.)

In 1761, as the war was concluding, the government of South Carolina traded "non-military goods" for captives of the Cherokees, and 115 captives are said to have been freed by the end of May. (E. Laurance Lee, Indian Wars in North Carolina, 1663-1763 [Raleigh: Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission, 1963], )