Doctor John S. Dixon, sworn:
By Mr. Lindsey:
Q. Where do you reside?
A. 273 Penn avenue.
Q. Practicing physician?
A. Yes, sir; for ten years, in the city of Pittsburgh.
Q. State what knowledge you have of the riot, and what was done to suppress it?
A. The first part I took in any suppressing the riot—on Sunday I stayed at home, thought I might be needed, and that that was the best place for me. When it got so bad, and the Union depot had been fired, I thought it was my duty to go to the side of the hill to see what I could do there, and somebody proposed, or said, that as the grain elevator had already been set afire, that the next would be the Duquesne depot, and Mr. Bissell and myself and some others—quite a number started. I think he and I were the only ones of our party that got there. We went down to the Duquesne depot, and met a few persons there we knew and a great many we did not know. I do not know who was in sympathy with us or not. After being there some time, and trying to devise means of preventing the depot from being fired, if an attempt was made, we talked of getting a cable, and shutting off the leading avenues to the depot. There was a man rode up in a buggy and stated there was an attempt to fire the lower end of the depot. We were then at the upper end. We walked down, and there was a party examining a car. I went up and looked into the car, and there was some smoke and embers there, which somebody had scattered before I got there, to prevent it from catching fire. There was a barrel of oil rolled under the car—I do not know for what purpose it was, I suppose to set fire to it, and there was one man in particular by the name of David Carney or Carter. He was arrested afterwards; he was ringleader. I talked to him, and tried to persuade him not to do anything of the kind. He said he had been up all day at the fire above, and that he was one of the advance to set fire to the Duquesne depot. I asked him where he was from. He told me he was first an engineer on the Oil City railroad, and then he said he was from Ohio, then he told me he was from Greene county. He was so drunk and so excited and wild, with the burning, that he didn't know what he was talking about. He was bound to do mischief, and we talked to him one after the other, trying to persuade him, while one was holding him in control, and the party, the rest of the gentlemen, were interested in protecting the depot. They talked to a crowd, trying to persuade the people that lived there, if the Duquesne depot was fired, the whole lower part of the town would be burned, that the fire department were trying to save property on Wilder street on the hill, and that there would be several squares of valuable property destroyed if this depot was set on fire, as it is a mere shell, an old frame building, and very large. This man who was a ringleader of them, he said he didn't care a damn; he said that the property holders would have to pay for it, and the rich would have to pay for it, and he was a friend of the workingman. I told him if he would burn this property the working people, so many of them, would be burned out of house and home. He said there would be good come of it, at any rate, and that he was bound to burn that, and that they would burn the Connellsville depot, and that they would burn the bridges, and then they didn't care a damn what became of the rest of the town. I told him he had better not do that, that it was a very bad thing to do. Mr. Bissell told him, to try and keep him under control, that he had sent for policemen. The policemen came and I made information against him, and as soon as a couple of policemen nabbed him he wilted right away. He was very willing to be marched off to the lock-up. In his testimony at court, he said that he had arrived in the city Saturday afternoon, at two o'clock, from the oil regions, that he had been working that summer on his father's farm, some place up there, I have forgotten where he said—at some place, Parker, Oil City—had been working there during the summer, and heard there was going to be some fun down in Harrisburg, and he was coming down to have some of it, and that he had gotten drunk and didn't know what he was doing—that was according to his own testimony in the criminal court. He was convicted, I believe, for something like four years, that was about the total of my experience. I made an information against him.
Q. How did you learn his name?