Brant - Christopher - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Waynetown, Ind May 30 – Back in 1840, 68 years ago, “Old Gran-daddy Chris” Brant died at the old Brant homestead over on the Wesley Chapel hill.  He was buried in the old Brant buri8al ground and over the grave was erected a square, thin stone slab on which was chiseled:  

In Memory of

CHRSTIOPHER

Brant, Sr.

Died

March 6, 1840

Aged: 85 Yrs 10 Mo.

It still stands, proclaiming in terse summary the span of life of a man who was either one of two things – a revolutionary soldier on the American side or a revolutionary soldier on the B ritish side. Colonial or Tory – if Tory soldier, probably the only one buried in Indiana – that is the perplexing question that cause the Waynetown GAR< Memorial day grave-decorating committee to pause and generally to pass by the grave without dropping on it a floral tribute on May 30.  

It was in 1863 that the late Capt. BF Hegler, who commanded one of the companies in the 15th Indiana came to Waynetown to deliver the Memorial Day address.  According to Robert Ray, who is now a mine of interesting remembrances to the Attica Saturday Press and also to others, the day was a typical Memorial day – gloomy and rainy.  A number of old soldiers had gathered in a Waynetown store to commiserate over the unpromising weather. Hegler happened to be in the store and overheard the grave-decoration committee going over the lists to see that they were complete.  “Why, you hain’t got old gran-daddy Chris Bra

nt,” interrupted, someone in the crowd.  “Old Gran’daddy fought in the revolution and his grave has allays be’n overlooked.”

“Yes,” said Joseph M. Harvey, the official walking local history that is found scrambulating around in every community and who has since died, “granddaddy Chris Brant was in the revolutionary war all right, but he was on the wrong side”  

“A Tory grave?” broke in Capt. BF Hegler – “don’t believe there’s another one in the state of Indiana.

It seems that in years before 1888 ((6? 5? Hard to read) thought there are no records – the grave had been passed by the official decorators of soldier graves.

According to the local traditions – rather than records “old Gran-daddy Chris” confided to several people that he had been with the Six Nations Indian allies and in the regular British ranks during the Revolutionary war. These alleged statements were brought down more or less first-handed by Harvey and others. According to these authorities, Brant’s was a story remarkable in more ways than simply that of an isolate Tory soldier – if such he was – out here in Indiana.

Story of his celebrated half brother – More or less uncertain history has it that King George Third’s superintendent of Indiana affairs in America – one sir William Johnson – though a brilliant man was somewhat loose in his habits.  He lived much with the Indians and it long ha been asserted, both in American and British history that he became the father of a remarkable lot of half-breek children born of Indian women.  Several of these children whose paternal ancestry was attributed to Sir William made dents in colonial and Indian history, most noted among them being the celebrated Thayendanega, who  as chief of the Six National wrote his Anglicized name, Joseph Brant into the Indian and the British American war history in a sickening red – wrote it with the blood of the Wyoming massacre and that of the tortures of the Mohawk valley.

Joseph Brant, no matter what his ancestry may have been, was not only the most terrible and most distinguished Indian war chief of his day – the head and brains of the great Six Nations, federated all of the British, that worried, tortured and scalped the country from the Wyoming to Niagra – but was a red statesman without current peer, a scholar in both English and French, a traveler who had crossed the ocan and been entertained by British royalty and the associate of some of the most eminent men of the new American republic and of ebullient France, among them Col. Aaron Burr and Tallyrand.

Joseph Brant, Warrior, statesman –