Daniel Brodhead and Dansbury Mission, Monroe County

Well, it's Wednesday, and you know what that means - besides the fact that my vacation is over, that is. (It was a very hot trip. But we had a great time; we visited ancient Mayan ruins, and I even held a sloth!)

This week I'm doing a double quest in the mountains of Monroe County. The two markers are in separate communities, so initially I thought they would each get their own post; but they are so connected that it made more sense to put them together.

I won't lie - this one was tricky to research. Google kept turning up results for the wrong person, or the wrong location, because of similar names. I think all my information is now correct, though, thanks in no small part to the resources of the Monroe County Historical Association. 

This marker stands on East Brown Street
in East Stroudsburg, on the sidewalk in front of the
Pocono Medical Center

The first Daniel Brodhead was an English soldier who served King Charles II; he participated in the capture of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, after which he relocated his family to Marbletown, New York. However, he died in 1667, just a year after the birth of his son Richard. 

Our Daniel Brodhead - that is, the one who is the focus of this post - was the namesake grandson of that first Daniel, and seems to have been familiarly known as "Dan" throughout his life. He was born on April 20, 1693 in Marbletown, New York, to Richard and Magdalena (Jensen) Brodhead. He was their only surviving child; his younger brother Richard died as a toddler. This is the only recorded fact I could find about his early life, as what biographies exist seem to jump directly to his adulthood. In 1719 he married Hester Wyngart, with whom he had at least nine children. Some sources say ten, but I can only find the names of eight sons - Samuel, Thomas, Garrit, Charles, Garret, Daniel, Luke, and Albert - and one daughter, Ann. A number of the sons don't have recorded death dates, but are known to have predeceased their father due to their lack of mention in his last will and testament.

In 1737, Dan bought a large tract of land in what was then Bucks County; over the next few years, this property grew to be 1,500 acres along the Analomink River. Today, that river is known as the Brodhead Creek, the tract is now in Monroe County, and the central part of Dan's property is called East Stroudsburg. But in those days, there were no European settlements in the area, and the Brodhead family's only immigrant neighbors were the DuPuy family, whose patriarch has his own marker. The two families got along very well with each other - Dan's son Daniel married one of the DuPuy daughters - and also with the Native Americans in the region, members of the Delaware tribe. Dan was a licensed trader who conducted business with the Natives, and he also constructed a mill on his property and served as a justice of the peace for Bucks County for a few years. His settlement was named Dansbury.

This marker stands on lower Main Street in Stroudsburg,
just outside the cemetery wall

Our friend Dan was a great admirer of the Moravians, who frequently passed through his lands on their way to and from northern destinations. This included Count Zinzendorf; like I've said in many of my other Moravian posts, he's been everywhere. This includes the Brodhead home, Dansbury Manor, where he was a guest in 1742 while on his way back to Bethlehem from the Wyoming Valley. Dan and Hester eventually converted to the Moravian faith, and gave the church a few acres of their property. In 1744, the Moravian missionary James Burnside (he for whom Burnside Plantation in Bethlehem is named) constructed a log cabin chapel on the property in question, and named it Dansbury Mission.

Within just a few years, the congregation had outgrown the small log cabin. Dan had it torn down and replaced in 1753 with a new chapel and also a parsonage. Another settler, Ephraim Culver, converted to the Moravian faith and, following Dan's example, contributed some of his own property adjoining the mission in order to establish a cemetery. At its outset, the cemetery held just nine graves.

Regrettably, just two years after the chapel and parsonage were built, Dan fell very ill. In June 1755 he traveled to Bethlehem in hopes of receiving treatment, but just a month later he died from his illness. Rather than transport him back to his family's lands, he was buried in the Moravian Cemetery in Bethlehem. He left behind four (some sources say five) of his sons and his only daughter, as well as his wife; Hester followed him in death in 1758 and is buried in what today is Monroe County's Smithfield Township, although the exact location of her grave is unknown.

Dan's personal story ends here, but the story of the Dansbury Mission continues a little longer. It unfortunately does not have a happy ending. Many Natives were disillusioned by the terms of the Walking Purchase, which had stripped them of much of their lands, and as the French and Indian War began the French stirred them into attacking many of the settlers who lived within the confines of the Walking Purchase. In November 1755, they conducted their raid on the ill-fated Gnadenhuetten, in present-day Lehighton; just weeks later, on December 11th, the Dansbury Mission suffered the same way. Eighty-nine residents of the mission were slaughtered, including the Hoeth family, as I mentioned during my post about Fort Norris. Those few who escaped fled to Dansbury Manor, where Dan's family still lived, and the house was fortified. All of Dan's surviving children, even his twelve-year-old daughter Ann, armed themselves and fired guns through the windows of the house to drive away the attackers. Dansbury Manor and those inside were successfully defended, but the chapel and parsonage were burned to the ground and never rebuilt.

Today, nothing remains of the Dansbury Mission except the cemetery, seen at right. Burials have not been conducted within its grounds for some time, but roughly fifty of the area's original settlers are among those laid to rest there. These include Jacob Stroud, for whom both Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg are named, and Dan's son Daniel, who served with distinction in the American Revolution and became a colonel. The cemetery is located on what today is lower Main Street in Stroudsburg. As for the rest of the Brodhead property, it's known that Daniel (the son) sold his share of the land to his brother Garret; today it's the site of the oldest surviving home in East Stroudsburg. 

The fate of most of the Brodhead children seems to be something of a mystery. Apart from Daniel's decorated service under George Washington, he's known to have married twice and had at least one daughter; Charles eventually moved to New York state and had at least one son; and Garret and Luke each married and had several children. Of the rest, nothing more is known. But Dan is said to be the mutual ancestor of all Brodheads in Pennsylvania, so if any of his descendants are reading this, I hope I've done well by your family tree.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Leiser, Amy. "Dansbury Mission spreads Moravian ideals to East Stroudsburg." Pocono Record, September 9, 2009.

Brodhead, Luke. "Daniel Brodhead." From History of the Brodhead Family, made available through Rootsweb.com. Last updated May 22, 2002.

Daniel Brodhead at FindAGrave.com

Daniel Brodhead and Dansbury Mission at the Historical Marker Database

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.