David Bradford (lawyer)

He was infamous for his association with the Whiskey Rebellion, and his fictionalized escape to the Spanish-owned territory of West Florida (modern-day Louisiana) with soldiers at his tail.

A brilliant young lawyer, he quickly established a very successful practice, and by 1783 he had been appointed deputy attorney-general for Washington County.

[1] Bradford also became active in political affairs, and by 1791 he was becoming more and more absorbed in the escalating protest over a whiskey tax which had been levied by the federal government that year, and the general treatment of Western Pennsylvanians by the East.

With the soldiers in hot pursuit of him (there was a price of $500 on his head), Bradford made it to McKees Rocks, where he traded his "faithful grey horse" for a skiff and set out down the Ohio River.

A touch-and-go gun battle with his pursuers went on all night but he managed to slip through by staying close to the opposite shore of the river.

The crew of the keelboat helped to disarm the troops and throw them in the river, pelting them with lumps of coal from the cargo aboard the boat.

According to the former historical collections director at Washington and Jefferson College, Charles M. Ewing, Federal authorities were most likely not too anxious to catch Bradford, as they did not want a difficult situation on their hands.

I have hereto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed this ninth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thou.

John Adams, By the President, Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State.Bradford built the first stone house on South Main Street in Washington, Pennsylvania in 1788, which, by frontier standards, ranked as a mansion.

The handsome stairway was solid mahogany; the mantel-pieces and other interior furnishings, imported from Philadelphia, were transported across the Alleghenies at considerable expense.