Jan 21, 2019 2 min read

During his life, Col. Anthony Wayne earned praise for his military brilliance and the bold and daring nature of his tactics against the British. Believing “head-to-head” combat was the only way to defeat the Redcoats, he tirelessly drilled his men to fight with their bayonets. In 1792, Wayne was called back into service as the commander-in-chief of the American armies. Indian wars in the Northwest Territory had decimated frontier settlements and defeated two military campaigns. It was due to Wayne’s victory at Fallen Timbers and his subsequent signing of the Treaty of Greenville that the Pennsylvania Frontier was made safe. On December 15, 1796, Wayne would die in Erie on his way home following the signing of the treaty.

“Mad” Anthony Wayne gained much of his fame after his untimely death. Twelve years after his burial in Erie, his daughter, wanting to relocate her father’s body to the family’s burial plot in Radnor, asked her brother, Col. Isaac Wayne, to retrieve their father’s remains. Wayne’s body was recovered and, astoundingly, was found to be almost perfectly preserved. Miraculous as this was, it posed a problem for transport. Thus, the decision was made to boil his body and take only his bones to Radnor. His remains attracted spectators; one man even took one of Col. Wayne’s boots, and a lady reported cutting locks of hair from the colonel’s head. The hair pictured here is one of the locks cut from Wayne’s head. This lock eventually found its way to Washington and into the time capsule placed in the cornerstone of the Town Hall built in 1869.

Clay Kilgore is executive director of Washington County Historical Society.