Читать книгу A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner. U.S. Interpreter at the Saut de Ste. Marie онлайн

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The third wife was variously described as a poor but respectable member of the Baptist church, and by another writer as a chambermaid in Ben Woodworth’s hotel (an obviously slurring reference; again the writers’ personal sympathies and antipathies color their writings). There seems little doubt, however, that she could not endure conditions in the Tanner menage, which must have been very Indian-like, and asked men in Sault Ste. Marie to advise her. The advice was not given, but a purse was made up to help her “escape.”

There is likewise some confusion as to his children. Quite likely Martha was the oldest, having been born about 1808, and she lived a long and useful life as a teacher. Mary may have been the second, born in 1809, and it was she who died in 1820. Lucy, the baby born in 1820, was drowned in a shipwreck on Lake Michigan. She had been given up for adoption by Tanner before she was a year old, and, Indian-like, he never more had anything to do with her.

Since there were two other children with him in 1820, James and John must have been on the scene. One report mentions two Johns; another says one brother was an Indian chief, and another says John was killed at the Battle of Bull Run. James became a minister; he was not too well spoken of, and died in a fall from a wagon about the time of the Riel Rebellion. Of the two children born after 1820, nothing appears—nor of the one born to his wife from Detroit.