From Transactions of the Illinois State.....
The "Pond settlement massacre" October, 1812, spread terror over that section for a long time, but it did not frighten John Pond from pursuing the murderers unto death for the atrocity. That story...from the lips of Prussian Pearce, son of Col. Hosea Pearce, the famous Illinois pioneer, and soldier.
[Pond] found his wife killed and scalped in the cabin, and his two little boys scalped and lying outside in the corner made by the old fashioned stick and mud chimney joining the cabin wall. Pond lost no time in calling on his neighbors and before midnight a pursuing party of vengeance was formed. It was learned that three Indians of the Pi-an-ka shaw tribe had been skulking about the settlement, and as this tribe was then living far up the Wabash the chase promised to be a long one. Three men, John Pond, Pearce, a brother of Col. Hosea Pearce, and Trousdale, were the party who proposed to have retribution. [Note: was he my ancestor, Alexander Trousdale (who married 2nd Edah Pearce), or his son, James, who married Mary Pearce...or?]
...Pearce, had become an old man...emigrated to western Missouri. One of Trousdale's sons went there with him. These two were away from home one day, and at night stopped at the house of a middle aged man, living on a fine and well furnished farm. After supper, the host, in the course of conversation, ascertaining the locality of his guests' former homes to have been in White, county, Il1., asked, "Do you know anyone in the Pond settlement?" "Why, that is right where I lived," replied Pearce. "Did you ever know John Pond?" "Yes, sir."
...he said, "Here is the scalp of one of John Pond's boys;" and bowing down his head, parting the hair from the crown, revealed a shining bald scar, when placing his finger on the spot, he added, "and there is where it came from."
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