Girty, Simon

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Douglas Leighton, “GIRTY (Geraghty), SIMON,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/girty_simon_5E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Indian Department interpreter; b. 1741 at Chambers’ Mill (near Harrisburg, Pa), son of Simon Girty and Mary Newton; m. August 1784 Catharine Malott, a captive of the Delawares, and they had at least two sons and a daughter; d. 18 Feb. 1818 in Amherstburg, Upper Canada.
    • Simon Girty was born at the beginning of the last great period of Indian-white warfare east of the Mississippi, and his entire life was spent in the vortex of the struggle. His father was evidently killed by an Indian during a drunken fight some time in the 1740s and his mother remarried. The entire family was captured by a war party about 1756 and Girty’s stepfather was burnt at the stake. With his mother and brothers George and James, Simon spent the next three years amongst the Indians.
    • Familiar with Indian ways, Girty, Elliott, and McKee were able to harness native resentment of American expansion to overall British military strategy. In the summer of 1779 a mixed party of Indians accompanied by Girty and Elliott ambushed Captain David Rodgers’s American detachment which was attempting to bring munitions up the Ohio River to Fort Pitt.
    • After the revolution Girty and some other Indian Department officers had obtained a tract of land at what is now Amherstburg. Large numbers of Indians settled near by and worked as hired help on the farms. During the War of 1812 the Indian Department requisitioned some of Girty’s corn to feed its clients, and his claim to the government was one of the last official contacts he had with his former employer.
  • Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=3192
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/17363998/simon-girty