OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 35 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 April 17, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits -- part 35. notes by S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Part 35. Captain Brady's Leap The famous leap of Captain Samuel Brady across the Cuyahoga is only a sliver of history of the historic challenges that befell the early pioneer in the early Ohio settlements. Brady's leap changed no boundaries, won no wars, but it did save his life. Beyond that, however, he set an example of what endurance a threatened man can muster. In 1780, General Brodhead, charged with defense of the northwest fontier, received a letter at Fort Pitt from General Washington instructing him to select a suitable officer to lead a patrol to Lower Sandusky in the Ohio country to spy out the strength of British and Indians assembling there. Brodhead chose Captain Samuel Brady. Brady was a noted Ohio Indian fighter. Brady chose four soldiers and four Chickasaw guides. They arrived at Lower Sandusky, west of the Cuyahoga, where they did get a good look at the enemy strength. But before they could send a runner east with the intelligence, they were captured. Brady escaped and was pursued. But it was not the tactical situation which made Brady's leap more famous than any other single historical event on the Cuyahoga, it was men's curious nature , to want to know if it could be done. Over the many years between Brady's leap and to the present day, men have measured the width of the Cuyahoga at the point where Brady jumped to see if that in certain crucial moments in life, when everything is at a make or break situation, a man could jump further than he can jump. But when visitors to Kent, Ohio look at the place where the accounts say Capt Samuel Brady jumped, they now find a distressing amount of water. They now wonder if that leap is not history, but just a legend. They are eager and willing to grant three or four extra feet, if it could be proved. Perhaps Brady had wind at his back. Many just shrug their shoulders and walk away. Further study of the Brady leap does show that under certain conditions and pressures a man can jump farther than he can jump. Brady was not a tall man, but was an extremely powerful man. He was plank flat but broad, big boned and had much muscle. As a Captain of Rangers under Colonel Brodhead at Fort Pitt, Brady's missions were mostly those of an Indian scout, but as a man, it must be said he was an Indian hunter. Lonely, self-contained, self-reliant, useful to the Republic, such men stalked along the national fringe; intelligent predatory animals, reporting to Philadelphia via their army units anything moving on the frontier. These were giant loners like Boone, Brady, Girty, William Hogland, Lou Wetzel, Adam Poe. They reported agressions and alliances of the English, French, Spanish, and other flags, but especially the Indians. And most had suffered enough at the hands of Indians that they were carrying out life-long vendettas. This required a superior physical condition. Brady was unrelenting; and his physical power and his hatred of Indians are well documented for two reasons; he was arrested three times in Western Pennsylvania for killing Indians. In all three arrests proof was positive, but he was allowed to escape. These escapes became notorious. As the story goes, when Brady was a young boy and growing up in his uncle's cabin, he returned from hunting one day to to find the cabin burning and his uncle's family slain. People said that young Brady promised himself a lifetime of revenge. More documation of Brady's immense physical power is available to all of us wherever his name still appears on the land. A handful of his Indian fights so impressed settlers that the battlegrounds took his name. In Beaver County, Pennsylvania, we find Brady's Run and Brady's Hill in Freemont, Ohio, Brady's Island; in Portage County, Ohio, Brady's Lake. In all these areas local histories abound and speak of Brady's physical power. The last such place to be named was Brady's Leap. Now the question arises-- did he or didn;t he? In Brady's day the river was not so wide as it is today. In fact it flowed in a narrow gorge about 30 feet deep, with 20 feet of rushing water at the bottom. Three quarters of a mile upstream it widened some. And in the wearing-in of the gorge the waters left standing in midsteam one piller of rock as big around as a desperate hope and topped with a growth of small brush. Hearing of this, the doubting person takes hope. Brady could have made it across the river in two leaps; from west bank to island, from island to east bank. But this was not the case. Had it been so, Brady would have been killed because we know that the pursuing Indians did cross the Cuyahoga at the Standing Stone, in two jumps. Brady made it in one. It was not at the Standing Stone, but at Brady's Leap. In 1840, the engineers building the Ohio-Pennsylvania turned this part of the Cuyahoga into a slack water by widening and damming the river. Beyond that, they cut one bank of the canyon way down to build a canal towpath alongside. So one must measure the river's width before the canal was built. Now, moving backwards, in 1812, a brdige was built about 40 rods from Brady's Leap, and we find that the stringers for the bridge was only 44 feet. In assuming the stringers needed to overlap the land on each end, this would bring us to 24 feet, a stiff amount for a superb leap for a man already exhausted from his escape. Now having looked at Brady and the river, perhaps we than should review his story. After his three arrests and being allowed to escape in the summer of 1780 from Lower Sandusky, Brady raced from there out of Indian country toward the American border which was the Cuyahoga. Running by day, and resting and eating and repairing his shoes by night, he ran over 100 miles, sometimes being no more than 20 rods ahead of the red man. Most of the way he was using the Indian trail that ran east out of Sandusky toward Salt Springs, south of Warren in Trumbull county. He was making for the famous place were the trail crossed the major Indian trail which came north from the spot where the Beaver enters the Ohio River. His stated reason was that this intersection was at Standing Stone which stuck up in the center of a narrow place in Cuyahoga in Franklin Township, now Kent. One mile above Franklin Village, it would be easy crossing. Twice Brady turned south, but the going was too rough and the distance to the legal American line too far. Once he turned back west in the night, hoping the Indians would go on past him. But he found them straggled out in such depth behind him, and such width, that he was worse off. He escaped from the Indian box, only by waiting for the following night. Brady learned to use heel when he left the trail through soft uneven footing. He found that landing on his heels saved him from turing his ankles, and it was a safer way to run in the dark. and as he ran, his eyes searched ravines for hiding places. Several times he felt he had passed a good hiding place, but was afraid to turn back, lest he be wrong. Th slightest rise in the ground on the trail came to feel like a mountain until he he literally stumbled upon a way to run uphill at less expense of strength. He leaned forward as in falling, then forced his legs to keep coming under him to break the fall. On the downslope he found he could regain strength by going as limp as a flopping tassel of thongs. He learned in the hollows that a sudden cold air rasped his hot throat, and he ran with his hand over his open mouth. Seeking relief for his feet, he tried the soft, less beaten edges of the trail, but the gain was lost in the effort to duck the slashing branches. When the hot air scorched his throat, he got some comfort by arching his neck forward and holding his mouth downward and only a riged crack. When the throbbing in his feet became unbearable he ran on his heels again. Brady assumed that the further east he moved, the clearer his destination would be to the Indians. The worst part of his ordeal was deciding whether to stop and regain his strength or continue at a constantly fading pace, hoping the Wyandots would turn back. But as it turned out, he never had to make the descision. Stopping after dark, he fell asleep and did not wake until he heard the chatter of human voices. Witout time to repair foot leather this time, he forced himself up. Moving his legs was like breaking dried branches. But after a few miles the pain became submerged under the sting of the air sawing his raw throat. The Wyandots guessed Brady's plan; some went cross-country to cut him off. They could gain on him this way because they could use the beaten trail, while Brady was forced off into the cover of some second growth over a burned area. As he ran now, he knew he was bracketed; Indians were upstram of him at the Standing Stone; a few were below him at the shallows; some were behind him combing him east toward the Cuyahoga. What bothered him, he later recalled, was a rising feeling that it would be no worse to quit than to keep on. Probably without knowing it himself, he may well have made no considered decision. His jump may have been the desperate reaction of any cornered animal. He was surrounded on three sides, and if he waited much longer the Indians could string men all along the river. They might already have done so. Suddenly, even to the Indians surprise, Brady broke out of cover. Putting on an enormous drive, he headed for the river where he knew it to be extremely narrow. To his surprise, the Indians wer suddenly numerous there, and were converging toward the spot where he must cross or die. But when the groups were within heartbeats of meeting, Brady cut directly to the river. He later recalled there was no thought of turning back or studing the riverbank. When he hit the escarpment, he sprang. The Indians stood stunned. None followed. The leap was not level. In the jump from the high west bank Brady dropped some. He landed on a shelf of rock about five feet below the top of the embankment, brabbed some brushes and began scrambling up the bank. By now several Indians recovered from amazement and aimed rifles. One shot hit Brady in the right thigh, but he pumped his legs unmercifully, cleared the top, and dropped out of their sight. He stumbled now over familiar ground to a place he knew which already bore his name from a previous Indian fight. Brady Lake. It was only minutes away. When the Indians shook off their tranced surprise, about a half ran upstream to cross at the Standing Stone, the others downstream to cross at the shallows. Brady left a trail of blood the whole mile and a half to Brady Lake. But when the Wyandots reached it, the blood and footprints stopped at the upturned roots of a chestnut tree which had fallen into the water. They combed the woods for the rest of the day and far into the night. After dark, Captain Samuel Brady came out of the water where the top of the fallen chestnut tree floated. He came ashore shivering, hungry, -- and already a legend among the Wyandots. Still we wonder - how long was this leap? A famous chapter by Geneal L.V. Bierce held in the publications of the old Western Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society is the one titled Tract Twenty nine., and in it, it includes in part a letter from an F. Wadsworth of Wadsworth to Seth Day. Day had asked for proof of Brady's leap. He knew that Wadsworth had lived in Pittsburg among Brady's friends who would have told all versions of the tale. One especially close was Brady's friend, John Summerall. He confirmed the story. He said the Cuyahoga at the place of the leap was very narrow, between 25 and 40 feet wide. The water was 20 feet deep and the banks rose another 30 feet above water. But Wadsworth went beyond Summerall's story. He says; " I went with a man who lived in Franklin, by the name of Haymaker, to examine and satisfy myself if I could, where Brady had jumped across the Cuyahoga. Mr. Haymaker was personally acquainted with Brady and often heard the story, which agreed wit what Summerall had told me. We measured the river where we supposed the leap was made, and found it between 24 and 26 feet; my present impression is that it was a few inches less than 25 feet." The Drapper Manuscripts, now in the Wisconsin Historical Society, include a letter from General Sam C.D. Harris who arrived at Ravenna, Ohio, and, knowing the story, went to te Cuyahoga to measure Brady's leap. Harris was a practical surveyor. He recorded the leap as 22 feet. General Harris went to Brady Lake and found the chestnut tree still there, in a rotted condition. Let us concude, however, that 22 feet is jumped only by highly trained athletes who carefully rehearse every move, but beyond Brady's jump was a lifetime of physical training, a hundred mile approach and a pack of Indians who considered his scalp a prize. Ahead of him was no mere blue ribbon, but survival. This writer does believe it is true that Brady did make that leap. He lived on to tell the tale -----. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid Bits continued in part 36.