Major Thomas Forsyth (December 5, 1771 – October 29, 1833)
Major Thomas Forsyth (December 5, 1771 – October 29, 1833) was a 19th-century American frontiersman and trader who served as a U.S. Indian agent to the Sauk and Fox during the 1820s and was replaced by Felix St. Vrain, prior to the Black Hawk War. His writings, both prior to and while an Indian agent, provided an invaluable source of the early Native American history in the Northwest Territory. His son, Robert Forsyth, was a colonel in the United States Army and an early settler of Chicago, Illinois. Thomas Forsyth was born in Detroit to William Forsyth, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian who immigrated from Ireland around 1750. A veteran of the French and Indian War, his father was twice wounded, while fighting under General Wolfe at the capture of Quebec in 1759. The elder Forsyth had married the widow of another trader, so he was raised alongside his half-brother John Kinzie, with whom he would also later work. Shortly after Thomas Forsyth was born, his father was imprisoned as a loyalist d...