This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show.

Up next, a story about a famous general of the American Revolution, Mad Anthony Wayne.

Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story.

Chances are if you're from the Midwest, you've probably heard of Matt Anthony Wayne before.

Fort Wayne is named after him. Wayne County,

where Detroit is located, is too. And there's a bridge bearing his name in Toledo, Ohio. But he's a lot more

than just his namesakes. Here's Dr. Mary Stockwell, author of Unlikely General, Man Anthony Wayne

in the Battle for America, with why that is.

I can tell you my own experience when I would tell people I'm writing a book about Anthony Wayne and they would say, why?

Why are you bothering? He was mad. He was a madman. And his name is everywhere out here.

We don't just have a bridge about Anthony Wayne.

We have Anthony Wayne vet clinics and Anthony Wayne plumbing and Anthony Wayne roofing and all kinds of

things.

But in the mind of most people, I started to ask them, what do you think about him?

And they would say, well, he was this wild madman and he loved war and all these things. And that's kind of who he is. Within the last century, Wayne has kind of come into the memory of the American Revolution. It's just a wild man who loved to kill the British, and then he came out here and he just loved to kill the Indians.

None of this is true. There's no resemblance to the real Anthony Wayne.

He was born on New Year's Day, 1745, just outside of Philadelphia. He was very wealthy.

Might have been one of the wealthiest young man who would participate in the revolution. His father trained him to be a lawyer, but Wayne wanted

to be a soldier. And his father said, we're in the British Empire. You're a young colonial.

You're never going to make it in the British Army.

But he had a vivid imagination, and from the time he was little, he was swept up in stories

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