Samuel Brady
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Captain Samuel Brady (1756-1795) was a famed frontier scout and the subject of many legends in the history of western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.[1] At Brady's Bend, Pennsylvania on the Allegheny River in June 1779—in what was then Seneca territory—Brady led a force seeking to redress the killing of a settler and her four children, and the taking of two children as prisoners. The force surrounded a party of seven Indians—apparently both Seneca and Munsee—killing their leader (a Munsee warrior) and freeing the two children.
The stories about Samuel Brady talk about his many encounters with Indians and reprisals for their attacks on settlers.[1] There are also references to Brady's encounters with a chief named Bald Eagle. During the Revolutionary War a Munsee Delaware chief named Bald Eagle led war parties from Bald Eagle's Nest (now Milesburg, Pennsylvania) against white settlements in the West Branch Valley of the Susquehanna. He is said to have killed James Brady near Williamsport in August 1778 and to have been killed himself by James' elder brother Samuel near Brady's Bend, Clarion County, in June 1779. [2]
[edit] Brady's Leap
Samuel Brady also gained notoriety for his famous leap over the Cuyahoga River around 1780 in what is now Kent, Ohio. After following a band of Indians into the Ohio country, a failed ambush attempt resulted in the band chasing Brady near the Cuyahoga River. To avoid capture, Brady leaped across a 22-foot wide gorge of the river (which was widened considerably in the 1830's for construction of the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal) and fled to a nearby lake where he hid in the water under a fallen tree using a reed for air. The lake, originally known as "Brady's Lake", is now known as Brady Lake and is the location of a village of the same name, Brady Lake, Ohio, which celebrated "Captain Brady Day" each summer from 1972 to 2006. The site of Brady's leap is today a park known as "Brady's Leap Park" just north of downtown Kent, Ohio. [2][3]
