Lewis Wetzel

[2][3] Possibly born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1763, or on the South Branch of the Potomac River where his parents had moved before 1770, Lewis was the son of Mary Bonnet (1735–1805; daughter of Jean Jacques Bonnet, Flemish Huguenot) and John Wetzel (1733–1786; indentured servant emigrant from Germany's Palatine region or Friedrichstal, Baden, Germany).

The Wetzel family settled in a fairly isolated location near the Ohio River about 14 miles from Fort Henry (which had been built at the confluence of Wheeling Creek to protect settlers from Indian raids).

Lewis Wetzel's older brother, Martin (1757–1829), a friend of Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, helped his father fight Native Americans in the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774, and defended Fort Henry in 1777 and 1782, although one of his favorite frontier weapons was a tomahawk.

His younger brother Jacob Wetzel (or Whetzel), helped construct a wagon road into central Indiana after fighting Indian wars in western Pennsylvania and the Northwest Territory with Kenton and under Generals Arthur St. Clair and William Henry Harrison.

[4] In 1778, Lewis, then 13, and his brother Jacob, 11, were tending the family's corn field during a raid by Wyandot Native Americans, and taken prisoner but managed to escape two days later.

The boys managed to return to Fort Henry (modern Wheeling, West Virginia), which the Wetzel men also helped defend in September 1782.

Fearing massive losses and an unplanned battle, Brodhead retreated and instead refocused his troops on their initial goal of reaching Coshocton.

He became renowned for an ability to load his rifle while sprinting (perhaps by using smaller shot than other frontiersman as well as for always holding a few bullets in his mouth), and which probably saved his life several times during raids although lead poisoning would have ongoing mental and physical effects.

The most famous incident turning public opinion against him involved the Seneca Chief Tegunteh (whom American soldiers called "George Washington" for his upright character), who had traveled to Fort Harmar, near present-day Marietta, Ohio in 1788.

Wetzel readily admitted the deed on November 6 to Colonel Josiah Harmar, bragging “I´ll shoot ‘em down like the worthless dogs they are long as I live,” but escaped by sprinting away through the woods, and when recaptured two weeks later, clubbed his jailer with his chains and escaped again before trial; when captured in mid-December near Maysville, Kentucky and taken to Fort Washington (now Cincinnati), a 200-man mob led by Kenton threatened the peace and Harmar released Wetzel.