In 1809, a bizarre burial for a 'mad' general

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | 10/24/2009 | Marylynne Pitz

[Saije]

As American colonists battled for independence, Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne captured a British fort in New York at midnight, earning a reputation as a brilliant strategist in the chaos of battle.

George Washington rode on horseback to congratulate him in person. Soldiers who noticed his reckless bravery gave him his nickname.

Later, the fiery leader trained a fearsome army outside of Pittsburgh in 1792, conquered the Indians and negotiated a treaty with them so the Northwest Territory could be settled.***

After he died at age 51 from an attack of gout, his body rested for 12 years in an oak coffin at Presque Isle, a peninsula off Lake Erie. In 1809, his only son, Isaac, journeyed 900 miles round-trip from Eastern Pennsylvania to Western Pennsylvania to return his father's remains to the family plot in Wayne, Chester County, at Old St. David's...Unable to face the exhumation, Isaac Wayne rested at a hotel while his famous father was dug up. The general's friend, Dr. J.C. Wallace, was amazed to find the general well preserved.

Embalming was not possible so Wallace dissected the body and boiled the flesh from the bones in an iron kettle.

..."Mad" Anthony Wayne, who distinguished himself in the American War for Independence and at the decisive Battle of Fallen Timbers, may be the only general buried in two places. His flesh remained in Western Pennsylvania while his bones were interred in his native Chester County soil, not far from his family's ancestral home, a Georgian mansion called Waynesborough.

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the burial of Wayne's remains near his family members. At noon, an honor guard of about 20 men, including Western Pennsylvania re-enactors, will carry a casket across the property of Old St. David's and stop at the churchyard gate.

[Tallguy]

RTE 322 passes by State College (PA), home of Penn State. It occurs to me that JoePa & the boys just had a big victory in Michigan.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	The moral of the story is, don't send some fetishist nutjob to exhume the remains of a family member. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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