| Notes |
- Source: 'History of the Brodhead Family' by Luke Brodhead
"Daniel married Elizabeth DEPUI, daughter of Samuel DEPUI of Smithfield. After her death, he married Gov. Mifflin's widow. He left several daughters and one son, named Daniel, who died when a young man. He was a general in the army of the Revolution and had command at Fort Pitt in 1780, and after the was, was appointed Surveyor General."
Source: 'Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of The Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania' Published by The Lewis Publishing Company; 1905 (page 230)
"One of the sons, Daniel by name, was colonel of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment in the continental army during the war of the Revolution, and at its close, while colonel commanding the western department with headquarters at Pittsburg, by special act of General Washington, and in the reorganization of the Pennsylvania troops, about 1782, was made colonel of the First Pennsylvania Regiment in the continental establishment. He held several state office, and when the new organization was formed in 1789 became the first surveyor-general of Pennsylvania, which office he held for many years and until his death at Milford, Pike county, in 1809."
Source: Virtual American Biographies
BRODHEAD, Daniel, soldier, born in Virginia in 1736; died in Milford, Pennsylvania, 15 Nov 1809. He raised in 1775 a company of rifleman who served in the battle of Long Island. He was appointed colonel of the 8th Pennsylvania regiment, and in April 1778, led a successful expedition against the Muskingum Indians. He made two important treaties with the Indians, one of them 22 July 1779, with the Cherokees, and received the thanks of congress for his success. He was for many years surveyor-general of Pennsylvania
Source: http://fruitjar.org/Mummey/brodhead.html
Abstracted from Report of the Commission to Locate the Site of the Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania
Volume Two: The Frontier Forts of Western Pennsylvania
by George Dallas Albert, 1896
pages 190-1
Daniel Brodhead was born at Marbletown, Ulster county, New York in 1736. His great grandfather, Daniel Brodhead, was a royalist and captain of the grenadiers in the reign of Charles II. He came with the expedition under Colonel Nichols in 1664, that captured the Netherlands (now New York) from the Dutch, and settle in Marbletown in 1665. His son Richard, and his son Daniel, the father of the subject of this sketch, also resided in Marbletown. Daniel Brodhead, Sr., in 1736, removed to a place called Dansville on Brodhead's Creek, near Stroudsburgh, Monroe county, Pennsylvania, when Daniel Brodhead, Jr., was an infant. The latter and his brothers became famous for their courage in conflicts with the Indians on the border, their father's house having been attacked by the savages December 11th, 1755. Daniel became a resident of Reading in 1771, where he was deputy surveyor. In July, 1775, he was appointed a delegate from Berks county to the provincial convention in Philadelphia. At the breaking out of the Revolution, Daniel was elected a lieutenant-colonel (commissioned October 25, 1776) and subsequently became colonel of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, his promotion was March 12, 1777, to rank from September 29, 1776. He participated in the battle of Long Island, and in other battles in which Washington's army was engaged. He marched to Fort Pitt in the summer of 1778, his regiment forming a part of Brigadier-General Lachlan McIntosh's command in the Western Department. Here he served until the next spring, when he succeeded to the command in the West, headquarters at Fort Pitt. He retained this position until September 17, 1781, making a very efficient and active commander, twice leading expeditions into the Indian country, in both of which he was successful; but was superceded in his command at Pittsburgh by Colonel John Gibson. Brodhead was, at that date, colonel of the First Pennsylvania Regiment, to which position he was assigned January 17, 1781. After the war, he was Surveyor General of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to that office November 3, 1789 and held the place eleven years, he having previously served in the General Assembly. He died at Milford, Pike county, November 15, 1809. He was twice married. By his first wife he had two children; by his second, none. In 1872, at Milford, an appropriate monument was erected in his memory.
From Life Sketch
Daniel Brodhead (October 17, 1736 - November 15, 1809) was an American military and political leader during the American Revolutionary War and early days of the United States.
Biography:
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.
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 regiment PA Colonial Troops. He first participated in the battle of Long Island. Before the close of the 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, 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 August 11 and ended September 14, 1779, between 300 and 400 miles in thirty-three days, through a wilderness without a road. General Brodhead received the thanks of congress for this expedition, and the following acknowledgement 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 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 in Gen. Brodhead's eighth 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 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 waged 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 benefits 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 be 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 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 the 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 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. (Source: History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania (1883) by Robert Walker Smith)
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1736 - 1809 (73 years)
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