Captain John Brady, Noted Hero, Killed by
Indians April 11, 1779
Captain John Brady was foremost in all the expeditions that went out from the West Branch of the Susquehanna settlements, and his untimely death, April 11, 1779, was the worst blow ever inflicted upon the distressed settlers.
John Brady, second son of Hugh and Hannah Brady was born in 1733, near Newark, Delaware. He came with his parents to Pennsylvania, married Mary Quigley, when he was twenty-two years old, and soon thereafter enlisted in the French and Indian War. On July 19, 1763, he was commissioned captain and assigned to the Second Battalion of the Pennsylvania Regiment, commanded by Governor John Penn and Lieutenant[Lieutenant] Colonels Turbutt Francis and Asher Clayton.
The following year his command was with Colonel Henry Bouquet on his expedition west of the Ohio, and was actively engaged against the Indians who made terrible slaughter in Bedford and Cumberland Counties.
Captain Brady was one of the officers who received land grants from the Proprietaries, and, in 1768, he removed his family to Standing Stone, now Huntingdon. The following year he changed his residence to a site opposite the present town of Lewisburg. He was a land surveyor and his note books furnish much valuable land data.
In 1776 Brady removed to Muncy Manor, where he built a semi-fortified log house, known later as Fort Brady. It was in what is now the borough of Muncy, and was a private affair but was classed among the provincial fortifications.
In December, 1775, when Colonel William Plunket made his famous expedition to the Wyoming Valley, Captain John Brady was one of his ablest assistants. When the Twelfth Regiment of the Continental Line was organized under command of Colonel William Cooke, September 28, 1776, Captain Brady was one of the original captains. Two of Captain Brady’s sons married daughters of Colonel Cooke.
At the Battle of Brandywine the Twelfth was engaged under General John Sullivan and was cut to pieces in the desperate fighting near the Birmingham Meeting House. Captain John Brady was among those seriously wounded, and his son, John, a lad of only fifteen, who had come like David of old, with supplies for the camp and had remained for the battle, was also wounded, and only saved from capture by the act of his colonel in throwing the boy upon a horse when the troops retreated. So fierce was the fighting that every officer in Captain Brady’s company was killed or wounded, together with most of his men.