a compendium of facts about Ohio history
by Dan Chabek
Brady's Leap
Captain Samuel Brady was a noted Ohio Indian fighter who had many hairbreadth escapes.
The most celebrated took place about 1780 near Kent in Portage County, Ohio, where Brady's men in a skirmish were outnumbered four to one. The captain finally ordered his men to split and each to take care of himself.
The Indians responded by deciding to zero in on Brady since he, with his courageous leadership over the years, had become their most dangerous adversary.
They pursued Brady alone until they reached an upstream part of the Cuyahoga River that was confined to a narrow chasm, 22 feet from one bank to the other.
There, Brady, blessed with exceptional athletic ability, jumped the gap in a single bound. This temporarily stymied his awestruck pursuers who were unable to duplicate the white man's remarkable feat.
Though they fired their rifles across the stream and wounded him in the hip, Brady managed to reach a nearby pond before the warriors again closed in. He plunged into the pond, swam underwater a considerable distance and came up under the floating hollow trunk of a fallen oak tree.
There he hid until the Indians, thinking he had probably drowned, departed.
Later Brady returned to safety -- bleeding and barely able to stand, but still very much alive.
The pond eventually became known as "Brady's Lake," a summer resort, and the chasm, "Brady's Leap."
© 1997 Dan Chabek
Captain Samuel Brady by Brad Bolton
Captain Samuel Brady - From Caldwell's Illustrated Historical Combination Atlas of Clarion Co., Pennsylvania
DID SAM BRADY JUMP? by James Raymond Warren, Milestones Vol. 4. No. 3--Summer 1978
Samuel Brady - An account from Ed Sanders who posts "interesting historical accounts...from books printed in the mid 1800's before "history" was watered down and re-written." The source of this account is not given.
Kent Remembers Brady Lake Electric Park