Captain Samuel Brady (1756–1795) was an Irish American Revolutionary War officer, frontier scout, notorious Indian fighter, and the subject of many legends, in the history of western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.

However, according to local historian and author Belle Swope, "We are assured she was a devoted wife, a loving mother, and a wise counselor, or she would not have given to the world such brave and illustrious children.

"[3] In 1738 the log Middle Spring Presbyterian Church was erected three miles (5 km) from their homestead, of which James and Jeanette Quigley became faithful members and in which they along with some of their children came to be buried in its old graveyard.

James Quigley had to be and was ever vigilant to keep hostile Indians from killing his family and burning his home – a fate that befell many of his neighbors in those early days on the Pennsylvania frontier.

In addition to successfully keeping his home and family safe, on March 25, 1756, James Quigley was commissioned ensign in the Cumberland County Colonial Rangers.

There were nine children in the family, their names (and dates of birth) as follows: John (1733), Samuel (1734), Joseph (1735), Hugh II (1738), William (1740), Margaret (1742), Mary (1745), Ebenezer (1750), and James (1753).

The French and Indian War ended on February 10, 1763, with the Treaty of Paris, in which France lost all of its North American territory east of the Mississippi and most of Canada.

In the fall of 1764, Col. Henry Bouquet commanded an army of colonial militia and regular British troops from Fort Pitt that moved into the Ohio Country and forced the Shawnees, Senecas and Delawares to make peace.

The British commander, Lieutenant General William Howe moved his army through Chester County, Pennsylvania towards the Schuylkill River on his advance toward Philadelphia, the Colonial Capital.

Washington deployed Major General Anthony Wayne's Division of Pennsylvania Continentals on the east bank of Schuylkill River to harass British forces from the rear.

He had taken an active part in efforts to subdue their atrocities, and his daring and repeated endeavors intensified their hatred and desire to capture him resulting so fatally on that spring-time morning.

In the anguish of that moment, he raised his hand and vowed, "Aided by Him who formed yonder sun and heaven, I will avenge the murder of my father, nor while I live will I ever be at peace with the Indians of any tribe.

As Belle Swope described it, "Many men would shrink from such a perilous undertaking in those days of bloodshed, knowing not in what bushes might be hiding an Indian who hungered for a scalp to add to his trophies; but her duty to her children led her through all the dangers, and her cheerful courage never flinched, and with her manly sons and helpful daughters took up the burden of life again in her own home.

In June 1779, soon after learning of his father's death, Indians attacked a family near Fort Pitt and killed a settler mother and her four children, taking a boy and his sister as captives.

'"[20] The rescue of these children from this party of Indians likely occurred and just as likely is the incident that gave rise to what one author calls the "pretty romance" about Captain Samuel Brady's encounters with a chief named Bald Eagle.

[21] However, the History of Lycoming County Pennsylvania, edited by John F. Meginness and published in 1892, states that Bald Eagle was already dead at the time of the Indian attack on James Brady.

To avoid capture, Brady leaped across a 22-foot (6.7 m) wide gorge of the river (which was widened considerably in the 1830s for construction of the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal) and fled to a nearby lake where he hid in the water under a fallen tree using a reed for air.

To add to his torture too, the flames were kept in check, and his suffering would have been very severe, had the Indians not made such confusion during the arrival of their friends, that the guard was not vigilant, and he cautiously pulled at the withes which bound his wrists, and slowly, surely they broke beneath the strain.

There was no other ford than Standing Rock for miles, and the Indians felt assured of their prize, but faint heart was not known to the Captain of the Rangers, and even a rushing torrent of water did not stop him in his course.

Across the expanse of water, at a height of probably twenty or twenty-five feet, he bounded, and with the eye of a practiced marksman, struck the bank on the other side, and stood on the cliff, as the wild yell and wilder appearance of the first pursuer denoted his disappointment and rage.

With even his legendary strength near exhaustion, he slipped into present day Brady Lake, where he hid underwater among the lilies and breathed through a hollow reed.

[Samuel Brady] was compelled to keep such a sharp lookout for Indian trails, that he was not surprised to meet a warrior on horseback, with a woman in front of him on the saddle, and two children running beside them.

"[32] According to Belle, Brady and Wetzel disguised themselves as Shawnees and, as such, went to the grand council of the Indian alliance, located at present day Sandusky, Ohio on Lake Erie.

Captain Samuel Brady clung to its back, while Wetzel hung to its tail and struggling and swimming they gained the other side, leaving the Indians to give up the chase.

[35] Samuel Brady met his wife Drusilla Swearingen, the daughter of his commanding officer, at Holliday's Cove Fort (the present downtown Weirton, West Virginia) located along the Ohio River midway between Ft. Pitt at the great confluence and south to Ft. Henry in Wheeling.

Two years earlier, Colonel Van Swearingen led a dozen soldiers by longboat down the Ohio to help rescue the inhabitants of Ft. Henry in Wheeling in a siege by the British and Indian tribes in 1777.

Samuel Brady was charged with killing Indians after the war was over, tried for that crime in Pittsburgh in a "bar" and a jury of his frontier peers acquitted him, even after he defiantly admitted in open court that he had done it.

To make sure no juror missed her presence, she walked up to where Samuel was seated and placed a flask of brandy on the table in front of him and a pitcher of water on top of that "for his personal refreshment".

[39] From the Indian point of view, the British had been their allies during the American Revolution in their war to stop settler expansion into their lands bordering on the Great Lakes in parts of present-day Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Not surprisingly the Indians, not having been made a party to the Treaty of Paris, did not recognize this land grant and actively fought the efforts of the United States to claim its prize.