Daniel Brodhead (1736-1809) was a Revolutionary War officer of the Continental Army. Chosen a delegate to the Pennsylvania Convention in 1775, he was commissioned an officer in the same year and became colonel of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment in 1777. In the following year his regiment was assigned to Port Pitt to serve under General Lachlan McIntosh, whom Brodhead succeeded as commandant in April 1779, by appointment from George Washington. Brodhead was an able Indian negotiator who also planned and conducted successful raids against the Mingo, Seneca, and Delaware tribes; but his ambitions and jealousies hampered his relations with militia officers and contributed to the failure of Clark's plan to assault Detroit. Although acquitted of formal charges of misuse of funds and supplies, Brodhead was removed from his post by Washington in September 1781. After the Revolution he served as surveyor-general of Pennsylvania from 1789 to 1800.
With the cooperation of Brodhead's grandson, Congressman Richard Brodhead, and other relatives, in 1845-1846 Draper acquired the papers of Daniel Brodhead documenting his command at Fort Pitt. Many were later published in Louise P. Kellogg, ed., Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio, 1778-1779, and Frontier Retreat on the Upper Ohio, 1779-1781, (both published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, 1916, 1917).
