Information about her is from Forerunners: A History or Genealogy of the Strickler Families Their Kith and Kin, by Harry M. Strickler (Harrisonburg, Virginia: 1925), p. 189-190.

The Painter Family is another old pioneer family in the Massanutten area. From A History of Shenandoah County Virginia, by John W. Wayland (Shenandoah Publishing House, Strasburg, VA: 1927), p. 65:

About 1758, says Kercheval, some fifty Indians and four Frenchmen came into Shenandoah, to a populous community nine miles south of Woodstock, and attacked the house of George Painter. Painter had a large log house, with a good-sized cellar, and many of his neighbors had assembled, there upon the alarm. The attack came late in the afternoon. Mr. Painter, for some reason not stated, tried to get away, but was shot and killed, pierced by three bullets. The others then surrendered. The Indians plundered the house of what they desired, dragged Painter's body back to the house, threw it in, and set fire to the house. While the house was burning they seized four infant children, wrenched them from their mothers, hung them up in trees, and shot them in savage sport. They then fired a stable and burned up in it a lot of sheep and calves. After these atrocities they marched away with forty-eight prisoners. Among the latter were Mrs. Painter, five of her daughters, and one of her sons; a Mrs. Smith and several of her children; a Mr. Fisher and several of his children, one a boy of twelve or thirteen, large for his age and fleshy.

Two of Painter's sons and a young man by the name of Jacob Myers were concealed somewhere about the place and escaped capture. That night Myers and one of Painter boys ran over to "Powell's Fort," a distance of fifteen miles, to Keller's Fort, for aid. They had neither hat nor shoes, nor any clothing beside shirt and trousers. Early the next morning a small party of men, well mounted and well armed, set out to avenge the outrages their neighbors had suffered. They reached Painter's place early in the day, but learning the strength of the enemy from the other young Painter, who had been able from his place of concealment to count the marauders, they gave up pursuit.

After six days of travel over mountains and river valleys the Indians and their captives reached their villages. There they put the Fisher boy already mentioned to death with fiendish tortures, as a spectacle to the howling camp.

After an absence of about three years Mrs. Painter, with her son and two of her daughters, was allowed to return home. The other three Painter girls remained with the Indians, either by choice or constraint. Mary, the youngest, who was about nine when taken captive, was a prisoner with the Indians eighteen years. The other two never returned. Mrs. Smith, Mr. Fisher and his remaining sons, and several others of the prisoners returned home with Mrs. Painter at the end of three years. Mrs. Smith brought with her an infant son by a distinguished war chief. This boy, grown to savage manhood when the Revolution broke out, enlisted in the army and never returned.

The story of the attack on Painter's Fort and the resulting tragedies was told to Kercherval by Mr. George Painter, and aged man, who lived at the old homestead a hundred years ago and who was a grandson of the George Painter who was killed there in 1758. The place is in or near the present village of Hamburg, Shenandoah County, and less than two miles from Woodlawn, the birthplace and boyhood home of the author of this book. So far as known, the number of prisoners taken at Fort Painter was the largest secured at any time by the Indians anywhere in the Shenandoah Valley.

The tract of land where Fort Painter stood has never been out of the Painter family since the first settlement. The present owner is Garnett Painter, a son of Naason Bear Painter, and a first cousin to Otto V. Pence, the present clerk of the court of Shenandoah County. Mr. Pence's mother was a sister to N. B. Painter. Some one, probably one of George Painter's sons, and after the massacre of 1758 had shown the need for it, erected a stone house near the site of the old log house; also a stone barn at a distance of about fifty feet from the stone house, the two being connected with an overhead bridge well enclosed on either side. These two structures were evidently built and thus connected for defense against the Indians. This stone barn stood until about the year 1840. The foundations of the stone house can still be seen; also the depression in the sod on the east side of the road that indicates where the cellar of the log fort stood. In 1921, when the road was being repaired, part of the old foundation was dug up. Lime mortar and charred bones were found in the debris of the cellar wall. On the hilltop a few rods westward is the old Painter graveyard, started when the victims of 1758 were buried there. The Painters and their relatives continued to bury in this graveyard until a few years ago. Possibly two hundred bodies in all lie resting there. Near the site of the old fort two abundant springs gush out of the limestone ledges and contribute materially to the sources of Painter Run, a small stream that flows into Stony Creek a mile west of Edinburg. One of pioneers George Painter's cellar wall and was not found by the murderers; neither was it destroyed in the burning of the house. The money, with certain valuable papers, was found afterwards in good conditions.