Who was Michael Cresap?

Michael Cresap (April 17, 1742 – October 18, 1775) was a frontiersman born in Maryland. He spent part of his adult years in the Ohio Country as a trader and land developer. He led several raids against Indians whom he believed were hostile to white settlement. Chief Logan of the Mingo Indians accused Cresap of murdering the chief's family. In fact, the killings were almost certainly perpetrated by Daniel Greathouse, yet Cresap was immortalized in Logan's speech (quoted in Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia) as the murderer of Logan's family.

As a result of the murders, Logan waged war on the settlements along the Ohio and in western Pennsylvania, killing, perhaps, nearly thirty men, women and children. Lord John Murray Dunmore, the British Royal Governor of Virginia, raised an army and appointed Cresap to the rank of captain. The decisive battle of Dunmore's War was the Battle of Point Pleasant. Here Dunmore's forces defeated a band of Shawnee Indians led by Cornstalk.

After Lord Dunmore's War, Cresap returned to Maryland and subsequently raised a company of riflemen for the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He died from illness in New York City while in the service of the army; he is interred there in Trinity Church Cemetery.