Meshach Browning

Meshach Browning (1781, Damascus, Montgomery County, Maryland - 19 November 1859, Garrett County, Maryland) was an early backwoodsman, hunter and explorer of the watersheds of the North Branch Potomac and Youghiogheny Rivers. His memoir is Forty-Fur Years of the Life of a Hunter (1859). He has been celebrated as Maryland's most famous frontier hunter. Browning's memoir of his "hunting-fever" years (1795–1839) and other activities was originally penned with a turkey quill. Half backwoods history, half heroic adventure story, it recounts his hunting expeditions and life-threatening encounters while stalking game and records details of life in early frontier America, western Maryland folkways and early settlement life.