City founder Michael Ross had not yet been given land that would become Williamsport when a group of pioneers was ambushed in a violent attack amid the boughs of a thicket of wild plums.

The thicket was in the area today known as West Fourth and Cemetery streets.

It was dusk when the wagon load of people met its fate June 10, 1778, according to John F. Meginness, author of the 1882 “History of Lycoming County.”

Forever known as the “Plum Thicket Massacre,” the attack is claimed in Meginness’s retelling to be among the bloodiest days in the annals of early county history.

The attack on the women, children and frontiersmen was a precursor to a mass exodus of settlers that began a month later and was known as the Big Runaway. A subsequent smaller evacuation a year later became known as the Little Runaway.

“At first the Indians fired two guns, then three, when they came from their place of concealment, yelling fiercely, and advanced on the wagon,” Meginness wrote. “The Indians closed in very fast and endeavored to surround the party.”

Those who escaped could see the carnage from a distance.

“Fleeing men saw the Indians attacking the women and children with their tomahawks!” Meginness wrote.

A boy and girl who ran for their lives were found by a militia party led by Capt. William Hepburn, who had trouble getting the correct information out of them and misunderstood. The children apparently were in shock.

“But owing to the frightened condition of the children, their story was misunderstood, and the persons to whom they gave the information rushed to the river, thinking that a canoe had been attacked,” Meginness wrote.

By morning, those returning to the site gazed in horror at what they encountered.

The wife of a man identified as Peter Smith was found shot through the body, stabbed and scalped, a knife lying by her side. The wife of another individual, Pennsylvania militiaman William King, was discovered to have been tomahawked and scalped, but still living. She was sitting up, and when her husband approached, she seemed to recognize him, leaned against him and died, according to Meginness’s account.

Meanwhile, children who could not get away were found slain. A girl and a boy were killed and scalped, according to Meginness.

Few items were left in the wagon. The sight of mutilated and disfigured bodies presented a hideous scene.

The pioneers collected and buried the remains near the spot where they fell, according to Meginness.

“The dead were buried on the spot, which most likely was the reason a cemetery was created there later,” he wrote.

“Their internment was very likely the beginning of the cemetery which afterward served for many years as the place of burial for scores of the original settlers,” Meginness wrote.

The massacre occurred about six weeks before a general uprising of Indians along the North and West branches of the river.

In July of that year, a full-scale mass exodus of settlers occurred.

Meanwhile at Samuel Wallis’s residence on Muncy Farms, Michael Ross served Wallis as an indentured servant for seven years. Ross then settled in a cabin on ground where he would name the village after his first son, William, and because he thought the river was a good port of entry, came up with the name Williamsport. It served as some defense against the Indians. But the defensive works were not completed until after the first heavy blow had fallen, according to Meginness.

Today, a sandstone monument, erected in 1901 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, remains at the site of the plum orchard, behind the former Calvary Methodist Church, which since has been converted into apartments.

Two smaller stone monuments also were placed there in memory of Revolutionary War soldiers who had been buried on the plot before it was acquired by the Methodist congregation, according to a Sun-Gazette article.

National Geographic Society writer W. Ralph Gray visited the monument as part of a story he wrote on early life along the Susquehanna River.

On the uneven stone memorial is a plaque with the words “This memorial marks the site of a massacre of white settlers by the Indians, June 10th 1778.”

The smaller stones were dedicated in memory of Sgt. Arad Sutton, 3rd Pennsylvania Regiment, Continental Line, and Lt. King, of the Pennsylvania Militia, whose wife met her fate at the hands of the Indians and whose children were taken into captivity.

King spent may years looking for his daughters, who were believed to be enslaved by the Indians, according to Meginness. King died in 1802, just four years before Williamsport became a borough in 1806.