Simon Girty

1741–1818

Born 1741 at Chambers’ Mill, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Interpreter for the British Indian Department at Detroit. Married Catherine Malott in 1784. Died 18 February 1818 at Amherstburg, Upper Canada.

Also recorded as Geraghty, possibly the original form of the name

Life events

Born	1741	Chambers’ Mill, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; son of Simon Girty and Mary Newton
Event	about 1756	Captured with his family by a war party; lived about three years among the Senecas (Mingos) of the upper Ohio
Event	spring 1778	Left Pittsburgh with Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliott for Detroit; appointed interpreter to the Six Nations in the British Indian Department
Married	August 1784	near the mouth of the Detroit River, to Catherine Malott
Event	20 August 1794	Present at the battle of Fallen Timbers, near Waterville, Ohio
Event	1800	Broke his leg in a fall from his horse; lame afterwards
Event	1804	Met by William Clark, who found him rheumatic and nearly blind
Event	autumn 1813	Retreated with the British from the Detroit frontier and is said to have sheltered with a band of Mohawks; American troops nearly burned his farm until Simon Kenton stopped them
Event	about 1816	Returned home, nearly blind, cared for by Catherine and their children
Died	18 February 1818	Amherstburg, Upper Canada (now Ontario); buried on his farm
Event	2001	Pennsylvania state historical marker placed near his birthplace

From Douglas Leighton, “Girty (Geraghty), Simon,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5 (1983), and, for the marriage, William P. Marlatt, Families of Peter Malott and Joseph Malott (2002). The events of 1800 to 1816 are from his modern biographers, as summarized in David White, “He Whooped to See Them Burn” (2020).

History and lore

Captured as a boy and raised for three years among the Senecas, Simon Girty grew up between two worlds. During the Revolution he went over to the British at Detroit and served as their interpreter with the Indian nations of the Ohio country, and Americans came to hate him as “the White Savage.” In 1784 he married Catherine Malott, who had been taken captive on the Ohio River with her mother and siblings about 1780. They farmed in Malden Township, near Amherstburg, and had five children. The family remembered him as a hard drinker and a hard husband, and Catherine lived apart from him for some years. Nearly blind in old age, he was cared for by Catherine and their children until his death in 1818. His biographers argue that much of his fearsome reputation was wartime propaganda, and that he saved more prisoners from the stake than he ever helped to kill.

Read the story: Captured on the Ohio: The Malott Family’s Ordeal of 1780

Portraits and a marker

Black-and-white engraving of a frontiersman in a feathered headdress and fringed hunting dress, holding a rifle, standing at the edge of a tent — Simon Girty as a nineteenth-century illustrator imagined him, artist unknown. No portrait of Girty drawn from life is known, and this is not a true likeness. Wikimedia Commons, via the *Dictionary of Canadian Biography*.

Colour illustration labelled Simon Girty: a man in a towering red-and-white feathered headdress and a blue coat with gold braid and red buttons, holding a hatchet — Simon Girty on a vintage trading card. Like the engraving, it is an artist’s invention, not a likeness.

Blue-and-gold Pennsylvania state historical marker titled Simon Girty (1741–1818) — The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s marker for Simon Girty, placed in 2001 near his birthplace. It calls him the “Great Renegade” and says he remains controversial.