Armstrong County PA Archives Biographies.....Brodhead, General Daniel 1736 - November 15, 1809
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Source: History of Armstrong County, Chicago: Waterman, Watkins and Co. 1883.
Author: Robert Walter Smith, Esq.

GENERAL DANIEL BRODHEAD

  ...of revolutionary fame, whose portrait appears elsewhere 
in this volume, was born in Marbletown, Ulster county, New 
York, in 1736, and died and was buried in Milford, 
Pennsylvania, November 15, 1809.  He was the great-grandson 
of Capt. Daniel Brodhead, of the English army, who came to 
this country in 1664, as a member of the expedition 
commanded by Col. Richard Nichols, in the service of King 
Charles II, after the Restoration.  After the surrender of 
Stuyvesant Capt. Brodhead was sent up to Albany, in 
September, 1664, and was a witness to the treaty made with 
the Indians there in that month.  He was afterward promoted 
to the command of the military forces of Ulster county, by 
commission from King Charles, dated September 14, 1665, 
which position he held till his death in 1670.  He left one 
daughter and two sons - Ann Brodhead, Charles Brodhead and 
Richard Brodhead.  The latter was born at Marbletown, New 
York, in 1666, and was the grandfather of General Brodhead.  
Richard Brodhead had two sons, Richard Brodhead, Jr., and 
Daniel Brodhead, born in Marbletown, Ulster county, New 
York, in the year 1698, and died at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 
in the year 1755.  This Daniel Brodhead, the father of the 
subject of this biography, removed with his family from 
Ulster county, New York, in the year 1737, to Danville, 
Pennsylvania, while the subject of this biography was but an 
infant.  Inured to the dangers of the Indian frontier from 
his very cradle, the impression made as he grew up among the 
scenes of Indian barbarities, and the outrages of the 
savages, helped to form his future character and to mold him 
into the grand, successful soldier and Indian fighter which 
his subsequent history proved him to be.  

  General Brodhead first appeared prominently in public life 
when he was elected a deputy from Berks county 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 regt. 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, on 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, by sanction of congress, issued an 
order, dated March 5, 1779, directing him to proceed to Fort 
Pitt, Pennsylvania, and 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. Gen. Brodhead established the 
headquarters of his department at Fort Pitt, now Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania.  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, over-coming 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 August 11 and ended September 154, 
1779, between 300 and 400 miles in thirty-three days, 
through a wilderness without a road.  Gen. Brodhead received 
the thanks of the congress for this expedition, and the 
following acknowledgment from Gen. Washington:  "The 
activity, perseverance and firmness which marked the conduct 
of Gen. 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 acknowledgement." A great 
number of the thrilling Indian stories of which we read in 
the present day occurred under Gen. Brodhead's command.  The 
famous Capt. Brady was a captain Gen. Brodhead's eighth 
regiment, and seldom ever went out on a scout but by orders 
from the general.  Gen. Brodhead's devotion to the cause of 
liberty was untiring.  He never doubted the result of the 
war, and his letters of encouragement to Gen. 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."

  Gen. 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 wages war upon the 
unfriendly Indians, and held as allies in friendship several 
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, Gen. Brodhead issued his famous order 
directing Col. 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 by acknowledged 
the result of the fort erected by command of Gen. Brodhead, 
and which he was too modest to have called after himself, 
regardless of the importunate efforts of Col. Bayard, whom 
history shows to have earnestly entreated Brodhead to permit 
him to call it Fort Brodhead. Gen. B'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 Gen. B. was given command of the 1st Pa. Colonial 
regt., 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 Gen. 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 Gen. B. 
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.  His second marriage was to the widow 
of Gen. Samuel Mifflin. He had but one child, Ann Garton 
Brodhead.  She married Casper Heiner, of Reading, 
Pennsylvania, a surveyor by profession and an author of a 
series of mathematics. To Ann Garton Heiner and her children 
Gen. Brodhead left all his lands and property.  Ann Garton 
Heiner had but one son, John Heiner, who removed to 
Kittanning in 1812, and took possession of all the lands 
left him by his grandfather, Gen. Brodhead.

  Captain John Heiner died and was buried in Indiana, 
Pennsylvania, in 1833.  He left but one son, Daniel Brodhead 
Heiner, late of Kittanning, Pennsylvania, and three 
daughters, Ann Eliza, who married John Mechling, sheriff of 
Armstrong county from 1845 to 1848; Margaret Heiner 
(Carson), of Sidney, Illinois, and Catherine Heiner Smith, 
wife of Gov. George W. Smith, of Lawrence, Kansas. Ann 
Garton Brodhead Heiner had, beside her son John Heiner, four 
daughters, Rebecca Heiner, who was the mother of the Hon. 
Henry Johnson, of Muncy, Pennsylvania, presidential elector 
in 1848 on the whig ticket; state senator of Pennsylvania, 
from 1861 to 1864, and chairman of the judiciary committee 
and author of the bill to entitle soldiers to vote in the 
field (after the supreme court of Pennsylvania had decided 
their voting unconstitutional).  She was the grandmother of 
Hon. Henry John Brodhead Cummings, colonel of the 39th Ia., 
Inf during the war of the rebellion, and member of congress 
from the Des Moines district from 1877 to 1879.  Ann Gorton 
Brodhead Heiner's second daughter (Margaret Heiner) married 
John Faulk, and was the mother of Hon. Andrew J. Faulk, 
governor of Dakota, from August 4, 1866, to May 1, 1869, 
also superintendent of Indian affairs for Dakota, and member 
of the committee, with Gen. William T. Sherman, Gen. Stanley 
and others, which made the famous treaty with the Sioux 
Indians at Fort Sully, Dakota, in 1868.  Ann Garton Brodhead 
Heiner's third daughter (Catherine Heiner) married Col. 
Brodhead, a distant cousin, descended of a brother of Gen. 
Daniel Brodhead.  Gen. Brodhead's descendants by this 
marriage are the children of Geo. Brodhead, of Kittanning; 
Mark Brodhead, of Washington; Mrs. Kate Van Wyke, wife of 
United States Senator Van Wyke, of Nebraska, and Mrs. Van 
Auken, wife of John Van Auken, member of congress from Pike 
county from 1867 to 1871, and Ann Gorton Brodhead Heiner's 
fourth daughter (Mary Heiner), married John Weitzel, late of 
Reading, Pennsylvania.

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