[56] Major Samuel S. Forman. “Autobiography,” The Historical Magazine, Morrisania, N. Y., 1869, vol. vi., PP. 324–325.
[57] S. Jones. Pittsburgh in the Year 1826, Pittsburgh, 1826, pp. 39–41.
CHAPTER III
THE MELTING POT
The population of Pittsburgh was composed of various nationalities; those speaking the English language predominated. In addition to the Germans and Swiss-Germans, there were French and a few Italians. The majority of the English-speaking inhabitants were of Irish or Scotch birth, or immediate extraction. Of those born in Ireland or Scotland, some were old residents—so considered if they had lived in Pittsburgh for ten years or more—while others were recent immigrants. The Germans and French had come as early as the Irish and Scotch. The Italians were later arrivals. There was also a sprinkling of Welsh. The place contained a number of negroes, nearly all of whom were slaves, there being in 1800 sixty-four negro slaves in Allegheny County,[58] most of whom were in Pittsburgh and the immediate vicinity. A majority of the negroes had been brought into the village in the early days by emigrants from Virginia and Maryland. Their number was gradually decreasing. By Act of the General Assembly of March 1, 1780, all negroes and mulattoes born after that date, of slave mothers, became free upon arriving at the age of twenty-eight years. Then on March 29, 1788, it was enacted that any slaves brought into the State by persons resident thereof, or intending to become such, should immediately be free.[59] Also public sentiment was growing hostile to the institution of negro slavery. The few free negroes in Pittsburgh were engaged in menial occupations, and the name of only one, whose vocation was somewhat higher, has been handed down to the present time. This was Charles Richards, commonly called “Black Charley,” who conducted an inn in the log house, at the northwest corner of Second and Ferry Streets.
Among themselves the Germans and the French spoke the language of their fathers, but in their intercourse with their English-speaking neighbors they used English. The language of the street varied from the English of New England and Virginia, to the brogue of the Irish and Scotch, or the broken enunciation of the newer Germans and French. Being in a majority the English-speaking population controlled to a considerable extent the destinies of the community. Their manufactories were the most extensive, the merchandise in their stores was in greater variety, and the stocks larger than those carried in other establishments.
Next in numbers to those whose native language was English, were the German-speaking inhabitants. They constituted the skilled mechanics; some were merchants, and many were engaged in farming in the neighboring townships. They were all more or less closely connected with the German church. Only the names of their leading men have survived the obliterating ravages of time. Among the mechanics of the higher class were Jacob Haymaker, William Eichbaum, and John Hamsher. The first was a boatbuilder, whose boatyard was located on the south side of the Monongahela River at the Middle Ferry; Eichbaum was employed by O’Hara and Craig in the construction and operation of their glass works. John Hamsher was a coppersmith and tin-worker, whose diversion was to serve in the militia, in which he was captain.[60]
Conrad Winebiddle, Jonas Roup, Alexander Negley, and his son, Jacob Negley, were well-to-do farmers in Pitt Township. Winebiddle was a large holder of real estate, who died in 1795, and enjoyed the unique distinction of being the only German who ever owned negro slaves in Allegheny County. Nicholas Bausman and Melchoir Beltzhoover were farmers in St. Clair Township; and Casper Reel was a farmer and trapper in Pine Township, where he was also tax collector. Samuel Ewalt kept a tavern in Pittsburgh in 1775, and was afterward a merchant. He was Sheriff of Allegheny County during the dark days of the Whisky Insurrection, and later was inspector of the Allegheny County brigade of militia. He was several times a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. William Wusthoff was Sheriff of Allegheny County in 1801. Jacob Bausman had a varied career. He was a resident of Pittsburgh as far back as 1771, and was perhaps the most prominent German in the place. As a young man he was an ensign in the Virginia militia, during the Virginia contention. He established the first ferry on the Monongahela River, which ran to his house on the south side of the stream, where the southern terminus of the Smithfield Street bridge is now located. The right to operate the ferry was granted to him by the Virginia Court on February 23, 1775, and was confirmed by the General Assembly of Pennsylvania ten years later. At his ferry house he also conducted a tavern. His energies were not confined to his private affairs. Under the Act of the General Assembly incorporating Allegheny County, he was named as one of the trustees to select land for a court house in the tract reserved by the State, in Pine Township, and was again, under the Act of April 13, 1791, made a trustee to purchase land in Pittsburgh for the same purpose. He was treasurer of the German church and, jointly with Jacob Haymaker, was trustee, on the part of the church, of the land deeded by the Penns to that congregation for church purposes at the northeast corner of Smithfield and Sixth Streets, where the congregation’s second and all subsequent churches were built. Michael Hufnagle was a member of the Allegheny County Bar, being one of the first ten men to be admitted to practice, upon the organization of the county. He was the only lawyer of German nationality in the county. He had been a captain in the Revolution, and prothonotary of Westmoreland County. On July 13, 1782, when the Indians and Tories attacked Hannastown, he occupied a farm situated a mile and a half north of that place, which has ever since been known in frontier history as the place where the townsfolk were harvesting when the attack began.[61]
By their English-speaking neighbors the Germans were generally designated as “Dutch.” In the references to them in the Pittsburgh Gazette and other early publications, they were likewise called “Dutch.” Books printed in the German language were advertised as “Dutch” books. The custom of speaking of the Germans as “Dutch” was however not confined to Pittsburgh, but was universal in America. The Dutch inhabitants of New York and elsewhere, were the first settlers in the colonies, whose language was other than English. The bulk of the English-speaking population, wholly ignorant of any language except their own, were easily led into the error of confusing the newer German immigrants with the Dutch, the only persons speaking a foreign tongue with whom they had come in contact. Nor were the uneducated classes the only transgressors in this respect. The Rev. Dr. William Smith, the scholarly Provost of the College of Philadelphia, writing during the French and Indian War, spoke of the Germans as “the Dutch or Germans.”[62] Also “Dutch” bears a close resemblance to “Deutsch,” the German name for people of the German race, which may account, to some extent, for the misuse of the word.
The Germans were in Pittsburgh to stay. Their efforts were directed largely toward private ends. When men of other blood made records in public life, the Germans made theirs in the limited sphere of their own employment or enterprises. Owing to their inability to speak the English language, their position was more isolated than that of the greenest English-speaking immigrant in the village. That they were clannish was a natural consequence. This disposition was accentuated when a newspaper printed in the German language was established on November 22, 1800, in the neighboring borough of Greensburgh, entitled The German Farmers’ Register, being the first German paper published in the Western country. Subscriptions were received in Pittsburgh at the office of the Tree of Liberty,[63] then recently established, and the effort to acquire a knowledge of English in order to be able to read the news of the day in the Pittsburgh newspapers, was for the time being largely abandoned. As the Germans learned to speak and read English, their social intercourse was no longer restricted to persons of their own nationality. With the next generation, intermarriages with persons of other descent took place. The German language ceased to be cultivated; they forsook the German church for one where English was the prevailing language. It is doubtful if a single descendant of the old Germans is now able to speak the language of his forbears unless it was learned at school, or that he is a member of or attends the services of the German church.
The French element was an almost negligible quantity, yet it exerted an influence far beyond what might be expected when its numbers are considered. So strong was the tide of public opinion in favor of all things French, occasioned by the events of the French Revolution, that Albert Gallatin, a French-Swiss, who had just been naturalized, and still spoke English with a decided foreign accent, attained high political honors. To the people he was essentially a Frenchman, and in 1794, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, from Fayette County where he lived. At the same time he was elected to Congress from the district consisting of Allegheny and Washington Counties; and was twice re-elected from the same district, which included Greene County after the separation from Washington County in 1796, and its erection into a separate county. It was while serving this constituency that Gallatin developed those powers in finance and statesmanship which caused his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury by President Jefferson, and by Jefferson’s successor, President Madison. From the politicians of this Congressional District, Gallatin learned those lessons in diplomacy which enabled him, while joint commissioner of the United States, to secure the signature of England to the Treaty of Ghent, by which the War of 1812 was brought to a close, and which led to his becoming United States Minister to France and to England. The training of those early days finally made him the most famous of all Americans of European birth, and brought about his nomination for Vice-President by the Congressional caucus of the Republican party, an honor which he first accepted, but later declined.[64]