Henry Dearborn Henry Dearborn ( February 23 , 1751 – June 6 , 1829 ) was an American physician , a statesman and a veteran of both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 . Born to Simon Dearborn and Sarah Marston in North Hampton , New Hampshire , he spent much of his youth in Epping , where he attended public schools . He studied medicine and opened a practice on the square in Nottingham in 1772 . When fighting in the American Revolutionary War began , he organized and led a local militia troop of 60 men to Boston where he fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill as a captain in Colonel John Stark ’ s First New Hampshire Regiment . He then volunteered to serve under Benedict Arnold during the difficult American expedition to Quebec . His journal is an important record for that campaign . He was captured on December 31 , 1775 , during the Battle of Quebec and detained for a year . He was released on parole in May 1776 , but he was not exchanged until March 1777 . After fighting at Ticonderoga , Freeman ' s Farm and Saratoga , Dearborn joined George Washington ' s main army at Valley Forge as a lieutenant colonel where he spent the winter of 1777 – 1778 . He fought at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778 , and in 1779 , he accompanied Major General John Sullivan on the Sullivan Expedition against the Iroquois in upstate New York . During the winter of 1778 - 1779 he was encamped at what is now Putnam Memorial State Park in Redding , Connecticut . Dearborn joined Washington ’ s staff in 1781 as deputy quartermaster general with the rank of colonel , and was present when Cornwallis surrendered after the Battle of Yorktown . In June 1783 , he received his discharge from the Army and settled in Gardiner , Maine ( then part of Massachusetts ) . He was an original member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati . He was commissioned as a brigadier general in the Massachusetts Militia in 1787 and was promoted to major general in 1789 . The same year he was appointed as the first U . S . Marshal for the District of Maine under the new Constitution by President Washington . He represented this district as a Democratic - Republican in the Third and Fourth Congresses from 1793 to 1797 . In 1801 , President Thomas Jefferson appointed him Secretary of War , a post he held for eight years until March 7 , 1809 . During his tenure , he helped plan the removal of Indians beyond the Mississippi River . He was appointed collector of the port of Boston by President James Madison in 1809 , a position he held until January 27 , 1812 , when he was appointed as the senior major general in the United States Army . He was given command of the northeast sector from the Niagara River to the New England coast . During the War of 1812 , Dearborn prepared plans for simultaneous assaults on Montreal , Kingston , Fort Niagara , and Amherstburg , but the execution was imperfect . Some scholars believe that he did not move quickly enough to provide sufficient troops to defend Detroit . William Hull , without firing a shot , surrendered the city to British General Isaac Brock . Although Dearborn had minor successes at the capture of York ( now Toronto ) on April 27 , 1813 , and at the capture of Fort George on May 27 , 1813 , his command was , for the most part , ineffective . He was recalled from the frontier on July 6 , 1813 , and reassigned to an administrative command in New York City . Dearborn was honorably discharged from the Army on June 15 , 1815 . President James Madison nominated Dearborn for reappointment as Secretary of War , but the Senate rejected the nomination . He was later appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Portugal by President James Monroe and served from May 7 , 1822 until June 30 , 1824 when , by his own request , he was recalled . He retired to his home in Roxbury , Massachusetts , where he died 5 years later . He is interred in Forest Hills Cemetery , in Jamaica Plain outside of Boston at the time , and later on Jamaica Plain was annexed in 1874 . Dearborn was married three times : to Mary Bartlett in 1771 , to Dorcas ( Osgood ) Marble in 1780 , and to Sarah Bowdoin , widow of James Bowdoin , in 1813 . Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn was his son by his second wife . Legacy . Lewis and Clark , appointed by Thomas Jefferson , named the Dearborn River in west - central Montana after Dearborn in 1803 . Dearborn County , Indiana ; Dearborn , Michigan ; and Dearborn , Missouri were also named for him , as was Fort Dearborn in Chicago , which in turn was the namesake for Dearborn Street , a major street in downtown Chicago . His son , Henry A . S . Dearborn , was a congressman in 1831 - 1833 .