Western Pennsylvania Genealogy
Compiled by Douglas H. Lusher


Family Group Record



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Gen. Daniel Brodhead and Rebecca [Unk]




Husband Gen. Daniel Brodhead 1 2 3 4




           Born: 17 Sep 1736 - Marbletown, Ulster Co, NY 2 3 4
     Christened: 
           Died: 15 Nov 1809 - Milford, Pike Co, PA 2 3
         Buried: 


         Father: Daniel Brodhead (1693/1698-1753/1755) 4 5 6 7
         Mother: Hester Wyngart (1697-      ) 4 5 7


       Marriage: 

   Other Spouse: Elizabeth Dupui (      -      ) 2 7



Wife Rebecca [Unk] 2

           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

   Other Spouse: Gen. Samuel Mifflin (      -      ) 8


Children

General Notes: Husband - Gen. Daniel Brodhead


He may have been born at Albany, New York. [CRFP, 908]

He was born in Marbletown, Ulster County, New York, and was brought to Pennsylvania by his parents while he was yet a babe in arms.

In 1737 he removed to Pennsylvania, settling at what is now East Stroudsburg, Monroe County, where he grew up amid the wild surroundings of the frontier, and where on December 11, 1755, he first met the Indians in warfare, when they made a fierce but unsuccessful attack on the Brodhead house. In 1775 he was of Reading, Pennsylvania, and deputy surveyor under John Lukens, surveyor-general of the province. In July, 1775, he was a delegate from Berks county to the provincial convention in Philadelphia, and early in 1776 was lieutenant colonel of a rifle regiment with headquarters at Marcus Hook. Their orders were to support the American vessels on the Delaware in resisting British approach to Philadelphia by water. Later with his command he was sent to join the Continental forces in New York, and after the capture of Colonel Miles at Long Island the command of the remnant of the regiment fell upon Lieutenant Colonel Brodhead. He was home for a time on sick leave and rejoined the army as colonel of the Eighth Regiment. On the organization of the army he was made colonel of the First Regiment, commission dating from September 29, 1776, and later appears to have been commissioned brigadier general. He made many treaties with the Indians, transacted business with heads of the federal and state government, and in every respect proved himself a man of ability, tact and courage. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, and for eleven years, from 1789, was surveyor-general of the state. [CRFP, 908]

General Brodhead first appeared prominently in public life when he was elected a deputy from Berks County, Pennsylvania, to a provincial meeting which met at Philadelphia, July 15, 1774, and served on a committee which reported sixteen resolutions, one of which recommended the calling of a Continental Congress and acts of non-importation and non-exportation from Great Britain. These were among the first steps toward the Revolution which followed. At the beginning of the war of the Revolution he was commissioned by the Assembly of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia as colonel of the 8th Regiment, Pa. Colonial Troops. He first participated in the battle of Long Island. Before the close of this battle he commanded the whole of the Pennsylvania contingent troops, composed of several battalions. He was especially mentioned by Washington in his report to Congress on this battle, for brave and meritorious conduct. He also participated in several other battles of the Revolution. Having received the approbation of Washington he was sent by him, in June, 1778, with his troops to Fort Muncy, where he rebuilt that fort formerly destroyed by the Indians, which command he held until Washington, in the following spring, recommended his selection to Congress for the command of the Western department. Washington, being personally acquainted and warmly attached to him, knew well his qualifications as a brave, judicious and competent general. Washington, with the sanction of Congress, issued an order, dated March 5, 1779, directing him to proceed to Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania, to take charge of the Western department, extending from the British possessions, at Detroit, on the north, to the French possessions (Louisiana) on the south, a command and responsibility equal to any in the Revolutionary army.
General Brodhead established the headquarters of his department at Fort Pitt, now Pittsburgh. He had under his command the posts of Fort Pitt, Fort McIntosh, Fort Laurens, Fort Tuscarora, Fort Wheeling, Fort Armstrong and Fort Holliday's Cove. He made a number of successful expeditions in person against the Indians with a large part of his command. In 1779 he executed a brilliant march up the Allegheny with 605 men, penetrating into New York, overcoming almost insurmountable difficulties, through a wilderness without roads, driving the Indians before him, depopulating and destroying their villages all along his route, killing and capturing many. This expedition began Aug. 11 and ended Sept. 14, 1779, between three hundred and four hundred miles in thirty-three days, through a wilderness without a road. General Brodhead received the thanks of Congress for this expedition, and the following acknowledgment from General Washington: "The activity, perseverance and firmness which marked the conduct of General Brodhead, and that of all the officers and men of every description in this expedition, do them great honor, and their services entitle them to the thanks and to this testimonial of the general's acknowledgment."
A great number of the thrilling Indian stories of which we read in the present day occurred under General Brodhead's command. The famous Captain Brady was a captain in General Brodhead's 8th Regiment, and seldom ever went out on a scout but by orders from the General. General Brodhead's devotion to the cause of liberty was untiring. He never doubted the result of the war, and his letters of encouragement to General Washington and others are part of the history of our country. In one, lamenting the coldness of some former patriots, he writes: "There is nothing I so much fear as a dishonorable peace. For heaven's sake, let every good man hold up his hands against it. We have never suffered half I expected we should, and I am willing to suffer much more for the glorious cause for which I have and wish to bleed."
General Brodhead had a treble warfare to wage-a warfare which required the genius and daring of a soldier, the diplomacy of a statesman and the good, hard sense and clear judgment of an independent ruler over an extensive country composed of a variety of elements. He waged war upon the unfriendly Indians, and held as allies in friendship sev-eral friendly nations. He watched and controlled, to a great extent, the British influence upon the Indians in the direction of Detroit. He kept in subjection a large Tory element west of the mountains in sympathy with Great Britain, and punished them by confiscating their surplus stores and provisions for the benefit of his starving soldiers, when they had refused to sell to his commissary officers on the credit of the government; but he never resorted to this punishment until his starving soldiers paraded in a body in front of his quarters and announced they had had no bread for five days.
On June 24, 1779, General Brodhead issued his famous order directing Colonel Bayard to proceed to Kittanning and erect a fort at that point for the protection of all settlers desiring to settle in that vicinity, and for the better protection of the frontier. After the erection of this fort settlers took up land and built their houses around and in the vicinity of this fort, under its protection, until the accumulation of houses and homes in the vicinity transformed the Indian town of Kittanning into the present thriving capital of Armstrong county, which can only justly and truthfully be acknowledged the result of the fort erected by command of General Brodhead, and which he was too modest to have called after himself, regardless of the importunate efforts of Colonel Bayard, whom history shows to have earnestly entreated Brodhead to permit him to call it Fort Brodhead.
General Brodhead's untiring watchfulness of the settlements along the Allegheny, the building of his fort at Kittanning, his protection of the inhabitants in its vicinity until they became numerous enough to defend themselves, his modesty in not permitting the fort to be called after himself, justly entitle him to the credit of being the founder of Kittanning, just as the erecting of every fort on our western frontier from that day to this has been the foundation of a city or town which invariably sprang from such a planting, as Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Leavenworth, Fort Dodge, Detroit, for never until that time had Kittanning any white inhabitants, and never from that time until the present has it been without white inhabitants.
In 1781 General Brodhead was given command of the 1st Pa. Colonial Regiment, and during that year received his full commission as general. His services extended through the entire war of the Revolution, and at its close he was elected by the officers assembled at the cantonment of the American army on the Hudson river, May 10, 1783, as one of a committee to prepare the necessary papers for the organization of the Society of the Cincinnati. In 1789 General Brodhead was elected by the Pennsylvania Assembly surveyor general of the State of Pennsylvania, which position he held for nearly twelve years.
For his services in the Revolution General Brodhead received several thousand acres of land, which he located in western Pennsylvania. Besides this he purchased largely of land through western Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. He located much land in the vicinity of Kittanning and on the Allegheny, the scenes of his former exploits, which he never ceased to love. To his daughter Ann Garton Heiner and her children General Brodhead left all his lands and property. [HAC 1914, 985]

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Sources


1 Robert Walter Smith, Esq., History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Waterman, Watkins, & Co., 1883), Pg 585.

2 John W. Jordan, LL.D., Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania (New York, Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1911), Pg 908.

3 —, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Her People Past and Present (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1914), Pg 984.

4 Charles A. Babcock, Venango County, Pennsylvania, Her Pioneers and People (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1919), Pg 727.

5 John W. Jordan, LL.D., Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania (New York, Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1911), Pg 907.

6 —, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Her People Past and Present (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1914), Pg 985.

7 Lewis Clark Walkinshaw, A.M, Annals of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Vol. IV (New York, NY: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1939), Pg 405.

8 —, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Her People Past and Present (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1914), Pg 986.


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