NOTE B.
In the ranks of Braddock were two brothers, Joseph and Thomas Fausett,
or Fawcett; the first a commissioned, and the latter a non-commissioned
officer. One of them, ("Tom Fausett,") the Hon. Andrew Stewart of Uniontown,
says he knew very well, and often conversed with him about early
times. "He did not hesitate to own, in the presence of his friends, that he
shot Braddock." The circumstances, perhaps, were briefly these. Regardless
of Genl. Braddock's positive and foolish orders that the troops should
not protect themselves behind trees, Joseph Fausett had so posted himself,
which Braddock discovering, rode up, and struck him down with his sword.
Tom Fausett, who stood but a short distance from his brother, saw the whole
transaction, and immediately drew up his rifle, and shot him through the body.
This, as he afterwards said, was partly out of revenge for B.'s assault upon
his brother, and partly to get the general out of the way, and thus save the
remnant of the army.
In addition to the above, we may give the statement of a correspondent of
the National Intelligencer, who seems to have been familiar with the facts.
"When my father was removing with his family to the West, one of the Fausett's
kept a public-house to the eastward from, and near where Uniontown now
stands. This man's house we lodged in about the 10th of October, 1781,—
twenty-six years, and a few months after Braddock's defeat; and then it
was made anything but a secret, that one of the family dealt the death-blow
to the British general. Thirteen years afterwards, I met Thomas Fausett,
then, as he told me, in his 70th year. To him I put the plain question, and
received the plain reply, `I did shoot him.' I never heard the fact doubted
or blamed, that Fausett killed Braddock."
Mr. Watson (Annals of the Olden Time, vol. i. pp. 141-2,) says, that in
1833, he met William Butler, a private in the Pennsylvania Greens at the
defeat of Braddock. "I asked him particularly, who killed Braddock? and
he answered promptly, one Fausett, brother of one whom Braddock had killed
in a passion." In 1830, Butler saw Fausett near Carlisle, where he had gone
on a visit to his daughter. The Millerstown (Perry county, Pa.,) Gazette,
of 1830, speaks of Butler being there, and in company with an aged soldier
in that town, "who had been in Braddock's defeat, and that both concurred
in saying, that Braddock had been shot by Fausett,"
A Minister of the M. E. Church, writing to the Christian Advocate, says,
"The old man died at the age of one hundred and fourteen years, in 1828,
who killed Braddock." The Newburyport Herald of 1842, declares its
acquaintance with Daniel Adams, an old soldier of that place, aged 82,
who confirmed the shooting of Braddock by one of his own men.
"Braddock wore a coat of mail in front, which turned balls fired in front,
but he was shot in the back, and the ball was found stopped in front by the coat
of mail." The venerable William Darby of Washington City, has recently
stated to the author, that during his early days, he never heard it doubted,
that Fausett had killed Braddock. It seems a generally conceded fact,
and most of the settlers were disposed to applaud the act.
