â€Mad†Anthony Wayne
"Mad" Anthony Wayne (January 1, 1745 - December 15, 1796), was a United States Army general and statesman. Wayne adopted a military career at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, where his military exploits and fiery personality quickly earned him a promotion to the rank of brigadier general and the sobriquet of "Mad Anthony."
Wayne was born to Isaac Wayne in Chester County, near present-day Paoli, Pennsylvania and educated as a surveyor at his uncle's private academy in Philadelphia. He was sent by Benjamin Franklin and some associates to work for a year surveying land they owned in Nova Scotia, after which he returned to work in his father's tannery, while continuing his surveying. He became a leader in Chester County and served in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1774-1775.
At the onset of the war in 1775, Wayne raised a militia and, in 1776, became colonel of the Fourth Regiment of Pennsylvania troops. He and his regiment were part of the Continental Army's unsuccessful invasion of Canada, during which he commanded the distressed forces at Fort Ticonderoga. His service resulted in the promotion to brigadier general on February 21, 1777.
Later, he commanded the Pennsylvania line at Brandywine, Paoli, and Germantown. After winter quarters at Valley Forge, he led the American attack at the Battle of Monmouth. During this last battle, Wayne's forces were pinned down by a numerically superior British force, and was abandoned by General Lee. However, Wayne held out until relieved by reinforcements sent by Washington. This scenario would play out again years later, in the Southern campaign.
The highlight of Wayne's Revolutionary War service was probably his victory at Stony Point. On July 15, 1779, in a nighttime, bayonets-only assault lasting thirty minutes, light infantry commanded by Wayne overcame British fortifications at Stony Point, a cliffside redoubt commanding the southern Hudson River. The success of this operation provided a boost to the morale of an army which had at that time suffered a series of military defeats. Congress awarded him a medal for the victory.
Subsequent victories at West Point and Green Spring in Virginia, increased his popular reputation as a bold commander. After the British surrendered at Yorktown, he went further south and severed the British alliance with Native American tribes in Georgia. He then negotiated peace treaties with both the Creek and the Cherokee, for which Georgia rewarded him with the gift of a large rice plantation. He was promoted to major general on October 10, 1783.
After the war, Wayne returned to Pennsylvania and served in the state legislature for a year in 1784. He then moved to Georgia and settled upon the tract of land granted him by that state for his military service. He was a delegate to the state convention which ratified the Constitution in 1788.
In 1791, he served a year in the Second United States Congress as a U.S. Representative of Georgia but lost his seat during a debate over his residency qualifications and declined running for re-election in 1792. United States Congressional Elections, 1788-1997: The Official Results confirms the seat was declared vacant on March 21, 1792.
President George Washington recalled Wayne from civilian life in order to lead an expedition in the Northwest Indian War, which up to that point had been a disaster for the United States. Many American Indians in the Northwest Territory had sided with the British in the Revolutionary War. In the Treaty of Paris (1783) that had ended the conflict, the British had ceded this land to the United States. The Indians, however, had not been consulted, and resisted annexation of the area by the United States. A confederation of Miami, Shawnee, Delaware (Lenape), and Wyandot Indians achieved major victories over U.S. forces in 1790 and 1791 under the leadership of Blue Jacket of the Shawnees and Little Turtle of the Miamis. They were encouraged (and supplied) by the British, who had refused to evacuate British fortifications in the region, as called for in the Treaty of Paris.
Washington placed Wayne in command of a newly-formed military force called the "Legion of the United States." Wayne established a basic training facility at Legionville to prepare professional soldiers for his force. He then dispatched a force to Ohio to establish Fort Recovery as a base of operations.
Chief Little Turtle, presumed leader of the Native American coalition, warned that General Wayne "never sleeps" and that defeat by him was inevitable. He counseled negotiation rather than battle. Perhaps for this reason, Blue Jacket was chosen to lead the Native warriors in battle. On August 20, 1794, Wayne mounted an assault on Blue Jacket's confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in modern Maumee, Ohio (just south of present-day Toledo), which was a decisive victory for the U.S. forces, ending the war. Although a relatively small skirmish, many warriors were disheartened and abandoned the camp. Soon after, the British abandoned their Northwest Territory forts in the Jay Treaty. Wayne then negotiated the Treaty of Greenville between the tribal confederacy and the United States, which was signed on August 3, 1795.
Wayne died of complications from gout during a return trip to Pennsylvania from a military post in Detroit, and was buried at Fort Presque Isle (now Erie, Pennsylvania). His body was disinterred in 1809 and, after boiling the body to remove the remaining flesh where the modern Wayne Blockhouse stands, was relocated to the family plot in St. David’s Episcopal Church Cemetery in Radnor, Pennsylvania. A legend says that many bones were lost along the roadway that encompasses much of modern PA-322, and that every January 1st (Wayne's birthday), his ghost wanders the highway searching for his lost bones. Wayne's flag
the medal awarded to Wayne by Congress
Wayne's home
The
The Bizarre Case of “Mad†Anthony’s Bones
On November 19, 1796 General Wayne arrived, by boat, at Presque Isle, now Erie, Pennsylvania from Detroit. He was suffering from what has been described as "a severe fit of the gout." He was taken to the quarters of the commander of the military post, Captain Russell Bissell, for medical treatment. General Wayne asked that Dr. J.C. Wallace, stationed at Pittsburgh 100 miles away, be summoned. The General was attended by Dr. George Balfour who on December 10th "dispairs of his recovery." The gout reached his stomach and caused Wayne to suffer agony for several weeks. At 2 a.m. on December 15, 1796, at the age of 51, General Wayne died in the arms of Dr. Balfour. Dr. Wallace had not yet arrived. The General had requested that his burial take place two days after his death and that he be buried, wearing his uniform, in a plain wooden coffin at the foot of the flagstaff of the post's blockhouse. The top of the coffin was marked with his initials, his age and the year of his death in brass tacks.
And thus his body remained for 12 years. In the fall of 1808, however, General Wayne's daughter, 38 year old Margaretta, while seriously ill, suggested that her brother, 37 year old Colonel Isaac Wayne, bring their father's remains back to the family burial plot in Radnor, Pennsylvania. The following spring, Colonel Wayne made his way, traveling by sulky, a light two wheeled cart, to Erie, Pennsylvania in the northwestern corner of the state. He enlisted the services of Dr. Wallace, the same man who had been summoned at his father's final illness, to handle the arrangements of disinterring the remains. Colonel Wayne, preferring to remember his father as he had been in life, did not attend the disinterment.
What happened next is a series of events that can only be described as bizarre. The General's coffin was opened and to the surprise of all it was discovered that his body had not decomposed. It was in an excellent state of preservation with the exception on one leg and foot that were partially gone. Clearly, the body could not be removed to Radnor, Pennsylvania in a sulky. Dr. Wallace's solution to the problem was to boil the body in water thus enabling him to separate the flesh from the bones, then they easily packed the bones in a trunk for their journey to the new burial location in Radnor.
Dr. Wallace had the help of at least four assistants as well as the company of other spectators. The wife of Captain Dobbins and her family were living at the Garrison at the time and she, along with several of her lady friends, observed the body. She took a lock of the General's hair. Apparently, many years later, as she neared her hundredth year she had a clear recollection of the event. She said that the hair pulled out of the head had the appearance of plaster of paris. The body was not hard, she said, but rather more the consistency of soft chalk. Henry Whitney, in his letter of October 24, 1809, said that he was told, "the flesh on his back bone was 4 inches thick solid and firm like new pork."
One of the General's boots had disintegrated along with most of the foot and leg. The other boot was in good condition. One James Duncan noticed that the boot would fit his own foot so he took possession of the boot and had a boot maker make a match for it. He wore his "new" boots until they wore out.
A large kettle was procured and as the body could not be boiled in one piece it was cut into convenient pieces and dropped into the boiling water. As the flesh separated from the bones it was carved away by Dr. Wallace and his assistants who scraped the bones clean. The bones were then packed in a trunk. The water in the kettle, along with the flesh, knives and instruments used in the operation, were put back into the coffin in the original grave.
Colonel Isaac Wayne then returned the bones of his father to Radnor, Pennsylvania where they were interred at St. David's Episcopal church. Or at least some of them were. According to legend, the trunk in which the bones were packed was shaken loose on the journey, and bones fell out or were lost along the way. Now every January 1st, the ghost of Anthony Wayne makes a mad dash across the state searching for his lost bones.
Erie blockhouse where Wayne was originally buried
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