Fort Duquesne and Fort Pitt; Early Names of Pittsburgh Streets

Chapter II: Part 2

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Fort Pitt at that time was under the command of Capt. John Neville, and was the center of government authority. Just two days after the Declaration of Independence, but long before the news of it could have crossed the mountains, we read of a conference at Fort Pitt between Maj. Trent, Maj. Ward, Capt. Neville and other officers of the garrison, with the famous Pontiac, Guyasuta, Capt. Pipe and other representatives of the Six Nations. Guyasuta was the chief speaker. He produced a belt of wampum, which was to be sent from the Six Nations to other western tribes, informing them that the Six Nations would take no part in the war between England and America and asking them to do the same. In his address Guyasuta said: "Brothers:--We will not suffer either the English or the Americans to pass through our country. Should either attempt it, we shall forewarn them three times, and should they persist they must take the consequences. I am appointed by the Six Nations to take care of this country; that is, of the Indians on the other side of the Ohio" (which included the Allegheny) "and I desire you will not think of an expedition against Detroit, for, I repeat, we will not suffer an army to pass through our country." The Six Nations was the most powerful confederacy of Indians in America, and whichever side secured their allegiance might count on the other tribes following them.

Instigated by the agents of Great Britain, it was not long before a deadly struggle began. Scalping parties of Indians ravaged the frontier, sparing neither age nor sex, and burning and destroying all that came in their path. Companies were formed to protect the settlements, whose headquarters were at Fort Pitt, and expeditions were made into the enemy's country, but with no very great success.

On June 1, 1777, Brig. Gen. Edward Hand took command of the post and issued a call for two thousand men. He did not receive a very satisfactory response to this call. After considerable delay, he made several expeditions against the Indians, but was singularly unfortunate in his attempts. These fruitless efforts only emboldened the savages to continue their ravages.

In 1778, Gen. Hand, at his own request, was recalled, and Brig. Gen. McIntosh succeeded him. Gen. McIntosh planned a formidable expedition into the enemy's country. He marched to the mouth of the Beaver, where he built a fort and called it Fort McIntosh; then he advanced seventy-five miles farther, built another fort, and called it Fort Laurens; but on hearing alarming reports of the Indians and for want of supplies, he left Col. John Gibson with one hundred and fifty men there and returned to Fort Pitt. The depredations of the Indians continued, and Gen. McIntosh, utterly disheartened from the want of men and supplies, asked to be relieved of his command. He was succeeded by Col. Daniel Brodhead, who, like his predecessor, planned great things, but never had the means of carrying out his plans.

By this time Fort Pitt was badly in need of repairs, and the garrison, half-fed and badly equipped, was almost mutinous. In November, 1781, Gen. William Irvine took command of the post. He describes the condition of the fort and of the soldiers as deplorable. He writes: "The few troops that are here are the most licentious men and worst behaved I ever saw, owing, I presume, in a great measure to their not hitherto being kept under any subordination or tolerable degree of discipline." The firmness of the commander soon restored order, but not without the free application of the lash and the execution of two soldiers.

The winter of 1782 and 1783 was comparatively quiet, and October 1st, 1783, Gen. Irvine took his final leave of the western department. The State of Pennsylvania acknowledged her gratitude for this service by donating him a valuable tract of land.

In 1790 there was another Indian outbreak. Maj. Isaac Craig was then acting as Quartermaster in Pittsburgh. On May 19th, 1791, he wrote to Gen. Knox, representing the terror occasioned by the near approach of the Indians, and asking permission to erect another fortification, as Fort Pitt was in a ruinous condition. This request was granted, and Maj. Craig erected a fortification occupying the ground from Garrison Alley to Hand (now Ninth) Street, and from Liberty to the Allegheny River. This he named Fort Lafayette.

The expeditions of Gen. Harmar and of Gen. St. Clair against the Indians had been ineffectual and disastrous. In 1794, Gen. Anthony Wayne was more successful, and defeated and scattered the Indians so effectually that they never again gave trouble in this region.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] There is a wide discrepancy in the authorities as to the cost of Fort Pitt; some state the cost as six hundred pounds, others give it as sixty thousand pounds.

THE OLD BLOCK HOUSE

Mrs. Mary E. Schenley's Gift to the Daughters of the American Revolution of Allegheny County.

The close of the century found Port Pitt in ruins, and this spot over which had waved the flags of three nations, and the banners of two States, was left to the peaceable possession of the mechanic and artisan, the trader and farmer. The little Redoubt built by Col. Bouquet in 1764, and the names of the streets in Pittsburgh, are all that is left as reminders of the struggle for the "Forks of the Ohio,"--the only relics of the contest of the courtly Frenchman with the intrepid British, of the daring of the indomitable colonist and the craft and cruelty of the Indian. This Redoubt was not built by Gen. Stanwix when the Fort was erected in 1759 and 60, but by Col. Bouquet in 1764. At the time of Pontiac's War, when Col. Bouquet came to Pittsburgh, he found that the moat which surrounded the fortifications were perfectly dry when the river was low, so that the Indians could crawl up the ditch and shoot any guard or soldier who might show his head above the parapet. To prevent this, Col. Bouquet ordered the erection of the Redoubt, or Block House, which completely commanded the moat on the Allegheny side of the fort. The little building is of brick, five-sided, with two floors, having a squared oak log with loop holes on each floor. There were two underground passages, one connecting it with the Fort, and the other leading to the Monongahela River.

The ground from Fort Pitt to the Allegheny River was sold in 1784 to Isaac Craig and Stephen Bayard, and, after passing through various hands, was purchased by Gen. James O'Hara, September 4, 1805. When Gen. O'Hara died in 1819, the property passed to his daughter Mary, who in 1821 married William Croghan. Mrs. Croghan died in 1827, and her daughter, Mary Elizabeth, an infant barely a year old, became her sole heir. She married Capt. E. W. H. Schenley, of the English army, and to Mrs. Mary E. Schenley, who might be called Pittsburgh's "Fairy Godmother," the Daughters of the American Revolution of Allegheny County are indebted for the gift of the old Block House and surrounding property.

While the property was in possession of Craig and Bayard, a large dwelling house was built and connected with the Block House. This was occupied one year by Mr. Turnbull, and for two years subsequently by Maj. Craig. From that time, 1785, until it came into the possession of the Daughters of the American Revolution, April 1, 1894, it continued to be used as a dwelling house. Time and decay had done their work in one hundred and thirty years, and the "Daughters" found the old Block House fast crumbling away. If it had been left much longer without repairs it would soon have been nothing but a heap of broken brick. Mrs. Schenley's gift to the Daughters of the American Revolution was the Block House, with a plot of ground measuring one hundred by ninety feet, and a passageway leading to Penn Avenue of ninety feet by twenty.

As soon as the Daughters of the American Revolution received the deed for the property, the work of clearing away the tumble-down tenements which covered the ground was commenced. It was not without great difficulty, and no little expense, that the occupants of these houses were induced to give them up.

While the Block House was used as a dwelling the stone tablet placed over the door with the inscription,

COLL. BOUQUET
1764

was removed and inserted in the wall of the staircase of the City Hall. The Daughters of the American Revolution petitioned Councils for permission to restore it to its original position. The petition was granted, and the tablet now fills the space which it occupied one hundred and thirty-eight years ago.

"I do love these ancient ruins.
We never tread upon them but we set
Our foot upon some rev'rend history."

Pittsburgh
September 1898.

MATILDA WILKINS DENNY.

NAMES OF PITTSBURGH STREETS.

Their Historical Significance.

By Julia Morgan Harding. (From the Pittsburgh Bulletin, February 15, 1893.)

We are told in his Autobiography that Benjamin Franklin "ever took pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of his ancestors," and in these days of reawakened interest in things of the past, many people may be found who, like the great prototype of American character, Pennsylvania's apostle of common sense, take pleasure in looking into the old records of their family history. A still richer inheritance is the story of the lives of the men who conquered the wilderness and subdued the Indians, French and British; and this inheritance is held in common by all good citizens of Pittsburgh, whether or not their ancestors fought with Braddock or Bouquet, or marched with Forbes. In the stir and bustle of the busy city, above the noise of the trolley and the iron wagon, one faintly hears the names of streets whose unfamiliar sound recalls to our minds these illustrious dead. With but little effort the inward eye quickly sees an impenetrable forest clothing hills and river banks--dark, mysterious, forbidding, crossed by occasional narrow and obstructed paths; war parties of painted savages; a few scattered settlers' and traders' cabins; here and there a canoe on the swift and silent rivers; a silence too often broken by the war whoop of the Indian and the scream of his tortured victim.

From the eastern slopes of the Endless Hills to the unknown and unbounded "Indian Country" that lay beyond the Forks of the Ohio, such was the region into which Washington, Braddock, Forbes and Bouquet led their "forlorn hopes," In days when a less utilitarian spirit prevailed, and association was still powerful, the City of Pittsburgh acknowledged its debt of gratitude to the soldiers, statesmen and early settlers who made its unexampled prosperity possible, by naming for them many of its streets and suburbs. Its early history can be traced thereby, much as the historian and archaeologist discovers the successive Roman, Saxon, Danish and Norman occupations of London and other English towns. Aliquippa, Mingo, Shannopin, Shinghiss, Guyasuta and Killbuck recall the Indian tribes and chiefs who once possessed the country; Gist, Montour, Girty, McKee, Chartiers, and Van Braam the guides and traders who first penetrated the wilderness. Dinwiddie brings to mind the crusty but far-seeing Scotch Governor of Virginia, who first comprehended the value of the disputed land. Forbes, Bouquet, Ligonier, Halket, Grant, Stanwix, Neville, Crawford, Hay, Marbury, Ormsby, Tannehill, O'Hara, Butler, Wayne, Bayard, Stobo, Steuben, St. Clair, Craig, Smallman and Irwin recall, or did recall, the soldiers and commandants who won the West. Duquesne, St. Pierre, and Jumonville speak of the French governor of Canada, the officer who received Washington at Fort Le Boeuf, and the Captain who fell at Great Meadows. Smithfield owes its name to Devereaux Smith, prominent in colonial and revolutionary days; and Wood Street was called for George Woods, surveyor.

In Penn avenue, or street, as it used to be and still ought to be called, the name of the founder of the Commonwealth, the Quaker feudal proprietor, is preserved; and the great city itself, as well as two shabby, sooty little streets, forever immortalizes William Pitt, the friend of America, and makes him a splendid and enduring monument.

But let us dig into the lowest historical stratum, and discover the real local relationships of names and places with the first occupants of the land. Aliquippa tells of the great queen of the Delawares, who lived at the mouth of the Youghiogheny, where McKeesport now is, and whom it must be remembered Washington visited on his first memorable journey to the Ohio. From what he relates to us she could not have been a very temperate sovereign lady, but she was a celebrity and a power in her day, with a prestige that long survived her; and when, in full savage regalia, surrounded by her warriors, she granted an audience to the young Virginian, she was doubtless most impressing and condescending.

Shinghiss, who bore a name that suggests a subject of Queen Wilhelmina rather than a North American Indian was a mighty warrior in his day, and a king of the Delawares. Some of the chroniclers give him a very bad name and tell us that his exploits in war would "form an interesting though shocking document"; others, among them Christian Post, give him a much better character. Nevertheless, it is true that the colony of Pennsylvania offered a thousand dollars for his scalp. Washington met him on his first visit to Ohio, and speaks of him in his Journal. This brave and much-feared chief was small in stature for an Indian and lived near the Ohio on Chartiers Creek.

THE BLOCK HOUSE OF FORT PITT
A REDOUBT BUILT BY
COLONEL HENRY BOUQUET
OF THE BRITISH ARMY IN 1764,
PURCHASED WITH THE SITE OF FORT PITT BY
GENERAL JAMES O'HARA
SEPTEMBER 4th 1805.
INHERITED THROUGH HER MOTHER
MARY O'HARA CROGHAN
BY HIS GRANDDAUGHTER
MARY ELIZABETH SCHENLEY
AND BY HER PRESENTED TO
THE DAUGHTERS OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
JUNE 10th 1892]

A chieftain as renowned as Shinghiss, and more frequently mentioned in the histories of the olden time, was Guyasuta, or Kiashuta, a Seneca, who first appears on the scene as one of the three Indians who accompanied Washington to Fort Le Boeuf. He was a conspicuous figure in all the Indian wars and treaties which followed that event, and was present at the treaty Col. Bouquet held with the Shawnees, Delawares and Senecas on the Muskingum. We hear of him again in Lord Dunmore's war. He was frequently at or in the neighborhood of Fort Pitt, and had unbounded influence with his people, an influence he generally exerted for good and in the interest of the colonies, though finally won over to the British during the Revolution. His speeches at the various councils he attended were eloquent, and his language that of an autocrat who had unquestioning confidence in the power of his people and in his own might. He was deeply concerned in the conspiracy of Pontiac, and is believed to have inspired the attack on Hannahstown. Guyasuta found his last resting place near the banks of the Allegheny on Gen. O'Hara's farm, which is still called by his name.

The stray visitor who from time to time threads his devious way through the alleys and courts which surround the Block House may find himself perhaps in Fort Street, on historic ground once trodden by Washington, Forbes, Bouquet and the Indian kings of whom we have just been speaking. The echoes of the English drums, Scottish bagpipes and clash of arms have long since died away from the scarred sides of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights, and in their stead we hear the steam whistle and hollow reverberations from neighboring boiler shops. Hibernians and Italians inhabit the fields and the river banks where Killbuck, White Eyes, Shinghiss and Cornstalk once lit their camp-fires and held eloquent councils with Jumonville, De Ligneris and Bouquet. Squalid tenements crowd the narrow promontory where Robert de la Salle stood at the headwaters of the Ohio, in all probability the discoverer of the three rivers. The fort that Pontiac besieged has disappeared. The painted post to which the Indian tied his victim, the wigwam, the wampum belts, have vanished; the tomahawk is buried forever, though the readiness once observed among the residents of the "Point" to draw knives on each other on occasions of superhilarity may be but the survival of the good old customs which prevailed in that neighborhood more than one hundred years ago.

Inspired by the suggestion of hereditary, the imaginative mind turns to the past for other instances. On any pleasant Monday morning during the spring or summer months the thrifty housekeepers in Fort Street or Point Alley, and in the shadow of the Block House itself, may be seen doing their week's washing in front of their houses. But little are they thinking of those Monday mornings in the middle of the eighteenth century when the women of the fort were escorted by bands of soldiers to the banks of the Allegheny, where laundry work was carried on under rather embarrassing circumstances. For Indians were dodging about behind trees and bushes, and dancing in full view on the opposite shore, with threatening cries, and only kept at a distance by the presence of a guard. The custom seems still to prevail on this classic ground, but do the conveniences of soap and hydrant water make up for the spice and variety that characterized the lives of colonial laundresses?

Pittsburgh has always been preeminently a hospitable city, and it is possible that in no other town of its size is there as much entertaining. At weddings, too, the display of presents is an object of surprise to the out-of-town guests, unused to such lavishness. Tracing our Provincial characteristics back to their remote origins, we discover that Pittsburgh at the end of the nineteenth century, in the grip of hereditary, imitates the traders and early settlers in this region, who were in the habit of entertaining whole tribes of Indians, and of making them frequent gifts. Gay blankets, red paint, strings of wampum and barrels of whiskey are not now exchanged at Christmas and on New Year's Day, or shown at wedding feasts, as we have improved somewhat upon the primitive customs of our forefathers, but the instinct is unchanged.

Noted for the beauty and brilliancy of our balls, and the excellence of our dinners, it may be interesting to know something of our first attempts in the art of social entertaining. In a letter from Capt. Ecuyer, commandant at Fort Pitt, dated January 8th, 1763, written to Col. Bouquet, he informs the latter that they have a ball every Saturday evening, graced by the presence of the most beautiful ladies of the garrison. No mention is made of any solid refreshment, but we are informed that "the punch was abundant," and it is also intimated that if the fair sex did not find it strong enough for their taste, they knew where the whiskey was kept and how to remedy the fault. Gay indeed must have been the dancing and the merriment inspired by the frontier punch and the shrieks of the Indians outside the stockade, for at that very time hostile savages surrounded and threatened the lonely fort. No wonder the revellers needed strong drinks to keep up their spirits! It is indeed very doubtful if the very strongest ever brewed would give nerve enough to Pittsburgh belles of today to enable them to dance a cotillon to the tune of Indian whoops and yells.

As to more intellectual pursuits, it would at first seem impossible to discover what our frontier ancestors did in the way of reading. News from the outside world was not to be depended upon, and books a rare article, one would presume; but information often comes from unexpected sources, and in an edition of Robertson's "Charles Fifth," "printed for the subscribers in America in 1770," is "a list of subscribers whose names posterity may respect, because of their seasonable encouragement the American edition hath been accomplished at a price so moderate that the man of the woods, as well as the man of the court, may solace himself with sentimental delight." In this list we find the name of "Ensign Francis Howard, of the Royal Irish at Fort Pitt," the only subscriber west of the mountains.

We can imagine the young soldier, far from home and friends, reading of those far-off times of war and peril, the winter wind howling up and down the river and beating against the Block House, carrying with it the echo, perhaps, of an Indian death halloo! Doubtless he wondered what the stern Spanish campaigner would have done if brought to the western wilderness to fight the red man, and, if he lived to return to his English home with his scalp intact, it is more than probable that Ensign Francis Howard's tales of America warfare and adventure were the delight of many a hunting dinner or evening fireside.

Few indeed are the tangible relics of the most romantic period of our local history. The writer owns a copy of the edition of "Charles Fifth," and in all probability it is the one that the English ensign read at Fort Pitt. A few old letters, maps and account books, some cannon balls, rusty swords and bayonets, the handsome carved stone sun dial which the Chapter has placed for safe keeping in Carnegie Museum until its own home is built, are about all we can show of the works and possessions of the men who made our early history.

Here was the scene of a mighty struggle for empire, a struggle of which the only vestiges left are the Block House and the names of our streets, too many of which have been changed in recent years to suit the vulgar needs of convenience and at the cost of our historical identity.

JULIA MORGAN HARDING.

Postscript.

1914.

Much water has run under the bridges of the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers, since the sketch, "The Names of Pittsburgh Streets" was written, and changes as radical as those that took place between the first years of the Nineteenth Century and the early days of the twentieth, have revolutionized the historic "Point" in the last decade.

Just as the French and Indians stole down the river before the advance of Gen. Forbes and his British and Colonial troops in 1758, so did the denizens of the aforesaid "Point" melt away in every direction before the steam shovels, creaking derricks and snorting engines of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1904-05.

With the consolidation of Pittsburgh and Allegheny into one city came other changes. Some of the old streets whose names commemorated dead patriots associated with Colonial and Revolutionary Pittsburgh, are buried under embankments, concrete walls and brick warehouses. Other names have been dropped and certain etymological curiosities have been put in their places. Still others have been transferred to distant and irrelevant localities, and an old resident, returning from the world of shades would be sadly confused if looking for old landmarks, Fort Pitt and all pertaining to it, excepting only the Block House, vanished long ago. There is nothing left of the later age which saw "Rice's Castle" in its glory. The new industrialism is steadily and rapidly blotting out the picturesque and historic all around us. Let all good Pittsburghers unite to preserve the little that is left, the Redoubt built by Col. Bouquet in 1764.

JULIA MORGAN HARDING.

1914.

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