Michael Cresap

Captain Michael Cresap (April 17, 1742 – October 18, 1775) was a noted frontiersman born in Maryland.

Michael Cresap's gravestone at Trinity Church Cemetery, New York City.

Biography

Cresap was the son of the pioneer Colonel Thomas Cresap (c.1702—c.1790). He spent part of his adult years in the Ohio Country as a trader and land developer. He led several raids against Indians who were hostile to white settlement. The war leader Logan (c. 1723?—1780), of the Mingo Indians, accused Cresap of murdering his family. Logan's wife and pregnant sister were among those murdered.[1] In fact, the killings were almost certainly perpetrated by Daniel Greathouse, yet Cresap was immortalized in Logan's speech — quoted in Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) — as the murderer of Logan's family.

As a result of the murders, Logan waged war on the settlements along the Ohio and in western Pennsylvania, killing, perhaps, nearly thirty men, women and children. Lord John Murray Dunmore, the British Royal Governor of Virginia, raised an army and appointed Cresap to the rank of Captain. The decisive battle of Lord Dunmore's War was the Battle of Point Pleasant (10 October 1774) in Virginia (now West Virginia). Here Dunmore's forces defeated a band of Shawnee Indians led by Cornstalk.

After Lord Dunmore's War, Cresap returned to Maryland and subsequently raised a company of riflemen for the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He died from illness in New York City while in the service of the army; he is interred there in Trinity Church Cemetery. In light of his service, Captain Cresap is eligible for representation by a living descendant in The Society of the Cincinnati.[2]

Legacy

See also

References
  1. Calloway, Colin G. The Indian World of George Washington: First Americans, the First President, and the Birth of the Nation. Oxford University Press, 2018. pp. 207-208
  2. Metcalf, Bryce (1938) Original Members and Other Officers Eligible to the Society of the Cincinnati, 1783-1938: With the Institution, Rules of Admission, and Lists of the Officers of the General and State Societies Strasburg, VA: Shenandoah Publishing House, Inc., p. 97.
  3. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
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