A Short History Of Pittsburgh, 1758-1908 - free ebook by Samuel Harden Church

1758-1908

George Washington, the first Pittsburgher George Washington, the first Pittsburgher...

3 minute read

Read Chapter

SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH

AUTHOR OF "OLIVER CROMWELL: A HISTORY," "PENRUDDOCK OF THE WHITE LAMBS," "JOHN MARMADUKE," "BEOWULF: A POEM," ETC. logo...

5 minute read

Read Chapter

PRINTED AT THE DE VINNE PRESS NEW YORK 1908

Copyright, 1908, by Samuel Harden Church...

10 minute read

Read Chapter

1758-1908

banner...

2 minute read

Read Chapter

HISTORICAL I

Letter G eorge Washington, the Father of his Country, is equally the Father of Pittsburgh, for he came thither in November, 1753, and established the location of the now imperial city by choosing it as the best place for a fort. Washington was then twenty-one years old. He had by that time written his precocious one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior; had declined to be a midshipman in the British navy; had made his only sea-voyage to Barbados; had surveyed the estates of Lord

1 minute read

Read Chapter

II

As early as 1728, a daring hunter or trader found the Indians at the head waters of the Ohio,—among them the Delawares, Shawanese, Mohicans, and Iroquois,—whither they tracked the bear from their village of Logstown, seventeen miles down the river. They also employed the country roundabout as a highway for their march to battle against other tribes, and against each other. At that time France and England were disputing for the new continent. France, by right of her discovery of the Mississippi,

1 minute read

Read Chapter

III

Washington's first visit to Pittsburgh occurred in November, 1753, while he was on his way to the French fort at Leboeuff. He was carrying a letter from the Ohio Company to Contrecœur, protesting against the plans of the French commander in undertaking to establish a line of forts to reach from Lake Erie to the mouth of the Ohio River. The winter season was becoming very severe, in despite of which Washington and Gist were forced to swim with their horses across the Allegheny River. On the way t

3 minute read

Read Chapter

IV

As soon as Washington's advice as to the location of the fort was received, Captain William Trent was despatched to Pittsburgh with a force of soldiers and workmen, packhorses, and materials, and he began in all haste to erect a stronghold. The French had already built forts on the northern lakes, and they now sent Captain Contrecœur down the Allegheny with one thousand French, Canadians, and Indians, and eighteen pieces of cannon, in a flotilla of sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes. Trent h

1 minute read

Read Chapter

V

The next year (1755) General Edward Braddock came over with two regiments of British soldiers, and after augmenting his force with Colonial troops and a few Indians, began his fatal march upon Fort Duquesne. Braddock's testy disposition, his consuming egotism, his contempt for the Colonial soldiers, and his stubborn adherence to military maxims that were inapplicable to the warfare of the wilderness, alienated the respect and confidence of the American contingent, robbed him of an easy victory,

4 minute read

Read Chapter

VI

Despondency seized the English settlers after Braddock's defeat. But two years afterward William Pitt became prime minister, and he thrilled the nation with his appeal to protect the Colonies against France and the savages. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham William Pitt, Earl of Chatham William Pitt, the great Earl of Chatham, the man for whom our city is named, was one of the most indomitable characters in the statesmanship of modern times. Born in November, 1708, he was educated at Eton and at Oxf

2 minute read

Read Chapter

VII

Pitt's letters inspired the Americans with new hope, and he promised to send them British troops and to supply their own militia with arms, ammunition, tents, and provisions at the king's charge. He sent twelve thousand soldiers from England, which were joined to a Colonial force aggregating fifty thousand men, the most formidable army yet seen in the new world. The plan of campaign embraced three expeditions: the first against Louisburg, in the island of Cape Breton, which was successful; the s

3 minute read

Read Chapter

VIII

As a place of urgent shelter the English proceeded to build a new fort about two hundred yards from the site of Fort Duquesne, which is traditionally known as the first Fort Pitt, and was probably so called by the garrison, although the letters written from there during the next few months refer to it as "the camp at Pittsburgh." This stronghold cut off French transportation to the Mississippi by way of the Ohio River, and the only remaining route, by way of the Great Lakes, was soon afterward c

2 minute read

Read Chapter

IX

Washington made his last visit to Pittsburgh in October, 1770, when, on his way to the Kanawha River, he stopped here for several days, and lodged with Samuel Semple, the first innkeeper, whose hostelry stood, and still stands, at the corner of Water and Ferry Streets. This house was later known as the Virginian Hotel, and for many years furnished entertainment to those early travelers. The building, erected in 1764 by Colonel George Morgan, is now nearly one hundred and forty years old, and is

1 minute read

Read Chapter

X

With the French out of the country, and with William Pitt out of office and incapacitated by age, the Colonies began to feel the oppression of a British policy which British statesmen and British historians to-day most bitterly condemn. America's opposition to tyranny found its natural expression in the Battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775. The fires of patriotism leapt through the continent and the little settlement at Pittsburgh was quickly aflame with the national spirit. On May 16th a convent

4 minute read

Read Chapter

XI

The whisky insurrection demands a brief reference. Whisky seems to be a steady concomitant of civilization. As soon as the white settlers had planted themselves securely at Pittsburgh, they made requisition on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs of flour and three thousand kegs of whisky—a disproportion as startling as Falstaff's intolerable deal of sack to one half-penny-worth of bread. Congress, in 1791, passed an excise law to assist in paying the war debt. The measure was very unpopular, and

1 minute read

Read Chapter

XII

It was not long after the close of the Revolutionary War before Pittsburgh was recognized as the natural gateway of the Atlantic seaboard to the West and South, and the necessity for an improved system of transportation became imperative. The earliest method of transportation through the American wilderness required the eastern merchants to forward their goods in Conestoga wagons to Shippensburg and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Hagerstown, Maryland, and thence to Pittsburgh on packhorses, whe

3 minute read

Read Chapter

XIII

View of Old Pittsburgh, 1817 View of Old Pittsburgh, 1817 In 1784 the town was laid out and settlers, among whom were many Scotch and Irish, came rapidly. The town was made the county seat in 1791, incorporated as a borough in 1794, the charter was revived in 1804, and the borough was chartered as a city in 1816. The first charter granted to Pittsburgh in 1816 vested the more important powers of the city government in a common council of fifteen members and a select council of nine members. In 1

3 minute read

Read Chapter

XIV

The first national convention of the Republican party was held in Pittsburgh on February 22 and 23, 1856. While this gathering was an informal convention, it was made for the purpose of effecting a national organization of the groups of Republicans which had grown up in the States where slavery was prohibited. Pittsburgh was, therefore, in a broad sense, the place where the birth of the Republican party occurred. A digression on this subject, in order that the record may be made clear, will prob

5 minute read

Read Chapter

XV

Among the eminent men who visited Pittsburgh in bygone days we find record of the following: In 1845 (April 10th), a great fire destroyed about one third of the total area of the city, including most of the large business houses and factories, the bridge over the Monongahela River, the large hotel known as the Monongahela House, and several churches, in all about eleven hundred buildings. The Legislature appropriated $50,000 for the relief of the sufferers. In 1889, the great flood at Johnstown,

1 minute read

Read Chapter

XVI

In 1877, the municipal government being, in its personnel, at the moment, incompetent to preserve the fundamental principles on which it was established, permitted a strike of railroad employees to grow without restriction as to the observance of law and order until it became an insurrection. Four million dollars' worth of property was destroyed by riot and incendiarism in a few hours. When at last outraged authority was properly shifted from the supine city chieftains to the indomitable State i

14 minute read

Read Chapter

XVII

The Homestead strike and riot of 1892 is another incident of false leadership in industrial life which must be chronicled here. For many years the Carnegie Steel Company, whose principal works were situated at Homestead, just outside the present boundaries of the city, had employed a large number of skilled workmen who belonged to the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, and had contracted for their employment with the officers of that Association. On July 1, 1889, a three years' c

7 minute read

Read Chapter

INDUSTRIAL I

Pittsburgh has thus passed through many battles, trials, afflictions, and adversities, and has grown in the strength of giants until it now embraces in the limits of the county a population rapidly approaching one million. This seems a proper moment, therefore, turning away from the romantic perspective of history, to attempt a brief description of Pittsburgh as we see her to-day. In order to give value to the record it will be necessary to employ certain statistics, but the effort will be to ma

1 minute read

Read Chapter

II

It has already been said that the city is a gateway from the East to the West and South, and as such it is the center of a vast railway system. The principal railroads serving Pittsburgh are the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio, the New York Central Lines, and the Wabash System, and she has also a numerous fleet of boats plying the three rivers. Coal is brought to the city by boats as well as by rail, and great fleets of barges carry it and other heavy freight down the Ohio. A ship canal for the

5 minute read

Read Chapter

III

The tax valuation of Pittsburgh property is $609,632,427. She mines one quarter of the bituminous coal of the United States. With an invested capital of $641,000,000, she has 3,029 mills and factories with an annual product worth $551,000,000, and 250,000 employees on a pay-roll of about $1,000,000 a day, or $350,000,000 a year. Her electric street-railway system multiplies itself through her streets for four hundred and ninety-two miles. Natural-gas fuel is conveyed into her mills and houses th

1 minute read

Read Chapter

INTELLECTUAL I

But while these stupendous industries have given Pittsburgh her wealth, population, supremacy, and power, commercial materialism is not the ultima thule of her people. Travelers who come to Pittsburgh, forgetting the smoke which often dims the blue splendor of its skies, are struck with the picturesque situation of the town, for they find rolling plateaus, wide rivers, and narrow valleys dropping down from high hills or precipitous bluffs throughout the whole district over which the city extends

1 minute read

Read Chapter

II

In Schenley Park is the Carnegie Institute, with its new main building, dedicated in April (11, 12, and 13), 1907, with imposing ceremonies which were attended by several hundred prominent men from America and Europe. This building, which is about six hundred feet long and four hundred feet wide, contains a library, an art gallery, halls of architecture and sculpture, a museum, and a hall of music; while the Carnegie Technical Schools are operated in separate buildings near by. It is built in th

5 minute read

Read Chapter

III

The University of Pittsburgh was opened about 1770 and incorporated by the Legislature in 1787 under the name Pittsburgh Academy. In 1819 the name was changed to the Western University of Pennsylvania, but, holding to the narrower scope of a college, it did not really become a university until 1892, when it formed the Department of Medicine by taking over the Western Pennsylvania Medical College. In 1895 the Departments of Law and Pharmacy were added and women were for the first time admitted. I

1 minute read

Read Chapter

IV

The author ventures to repeat in this little book a suggestion which has been made by him several times, looking to a working coöperation or even a closer bond of union between the Carnegie Institute and the University of Pittsburgh. In an address delivered at the Carnegie Institute on Founder's Day, 1908, the author made the following remarks on this subject: The Carnegie Institute The Carnegie Institute...

2 minute read

Read Chapter

V

In the East End is the Pennsylvania College for Women (Presbyterian; chartered in 1869), which has one hundred and two students. On the North Side (Allegheny) are the Allegheny Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian; founded in 1825), which has six instructors and sixty-one students; the Western Theological Seminary (Presbyterian; opened in 1827), with sixty-four students and twelve instructors, and a library of 34,000 volumes; and the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (founded in 18

3 minute read

Read Chapter

VI

Pittsburgh maintains by popular support one of the four symphony orchestras in America. She has given many famous men to science, literature, and art. Her astronomical observatory is known throughout the world. Her rich men are often liberal beyond their own needs, particularly so William Thaw, who spent great sums for education and benevolence; Mrs. Mary Schenley, who has given the city a great park, over four hundred acres in the very heart of its boundaries; and Henry Phipps, who erected the

1 minute read

Read Chapter

VII

And how about letters? Has Pittsburgh a literature? Those rolling clouds of smoke, those mighty industries, those men of brawn, those men of energy, that ceaseless calculation of wages and dividends—can these produce an atmosphere for letters? It seems unthinkable. Yet hold! Only the other day on the train a man who has been a resident of New York for thirty-five years remarked in this author's presence that "Pittsburgh is the most intellectual city in America." He had never visited Pittsburgh a

1 minute read

Read Chapter

VIII

Perhaps the most important piece of literature from a local pen is Professor William M. Sloane's "Life of Napoleon." This is a painstaking and authoritative record of the great Frenchman who conquered everybody but himself. Dr. William J. Holland, once chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, now director of the Carnegie Museum, has given to the field of popular science "The Butterfly Book"—an author who knows every butterfly by its Christian name. Then Andrew Carnegie's "Triumphant Democracy

1 minute read

Read Chapter

IX

The first Pittsburgh book that I can find in my hurried review of the field is "Modern Chivalry," by Hugh Henry Brackenridge. The third volume of this book was printed in Pittsburgh in 1796, the first two having been published in Philadelphia. This writer's son, Henry M. Brackenridge, was also an author, having written "History of the Late War between the United States and Great Britain," "History of the Western Insurrection called the Whisky Insurrection, 1794," "Journal of a Voyage up the Rive

8 minute read

Read Chapter

X

One word more before leaving this subject. Literature has not until recently enjoyed that degree of attention from the public press of Pittsburgh which it deserves. It ought to be the concern of every human unit in the nation to receive honest guidance in the development of literature; for literature, once again, is the written record of thought and action. Mobs will melt away when the units in the mob begin to think, and they will think when they read. Then will the law be paramount, and then w

1 minute read

Read Chapter

XI

And so my little story of Pittsburgh comes to an end. It is the story of a great achievement in the building of a city, and the development of a community within its boundaries. I have sometimes heard a sneer at Pittsburgh as a place where undigested wealth is paramount. I have never beheld the city in that character. On the contrary, I have, on frequent occasions, seen the assemblage of men native here where a goodly section of the brain and power of the nation was represented. There is much we

5 minute read

Read Chapter