Daniel Bedinger

After seeing his brothers Henry and George M. leave on the Beeline March in 1775, a teenage Daniel Bedinger ran away from Shepherdstown to join Washington’s army the following summer.  The young rifleman’s first and only action, however, was in the ill-judged defense of Manhattan’s Fort Washington that November. One of 2,810 men captured and put on a prison hulk, he was one of only 800 who survived, just barely, to be paroled in January 1777.  After the Revolution, he made use of his army connections and settled in Norfolk, where he became the highest port official. When his ardent and eloquent Jeffersonian Republican writings probably denied him the post of Collector of Customs, Bedinger returned home to Shepherdstown in 1790 and built the three-story corner building that later became part of the Entler Hotel.  This he leased (and eventually sold) to James Brown and Edward Lucas.  He returned to Norfolk when Jefferson’s election in 1802 brought him the post of Commander of the Port, which he held until retiring in 1808.  Though an adventurous man (he was one of the few people to see the Mississippi River run backwards, in 1811 while on a steamboat during the New Madrid Earthquake) his health never recovered from his imprisonment in the Revolution.  He died near Shepherdstown on his estate, Bedford, in 1818.