CHAPTER I
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD
Until all fear of Indian troubles had ceased, there was practically no social life in American pioneer communities. As long as marauding bands of Indians appeared on the outskirts of the settlements, the laws were but a loose net with large meshes, thrown out from the longer-settled country whence they emanated. In the numerous interstices the laws were ineffective. In this Pittsburgh was no exception. The nominal reign of the law had been inaugurated among the settlers in Western Pennsylvania as far back as 1750, when the Western country was no man’s land, and the rival claims set up by France and England were being subjected to the arbitrament of the sword. In that year Cumberland County was formed. It was the sixth county in the province, and comprised all the territory west of the Susquehanna River, and north and west of York County—limitless in its westerly extent—between the province of New York on one side, and the colony of Virginia and the province of Maryland on the other. The first county seat was at Shippinsburg, but the next year, when Carlisle was laid out, that place became the seat of justice.
After the conclusion of the French and Indian War, and the establishment of English supremacy, a further attempt was made to govern Western Pennsylvania by lawful methods, and in 1771 Bedford County was formed out of Cumberland County. It included nearly all of the western half of the province. With Bedford, the new county seat, almost a hundred miles away, the law had little force in and about Pittsburgh. To bring the law nearer home, Westmoreland County was formed in 1773, from Bedford County, and embraced all of the province west of “Laurel Hill.” The county seat was at Hannastown, three miles northeast of the present borough of Greensburg. But with Virginia and Pennsylvania each claiming jurisdiction over the territory an uncertainty prevailed which caused more disregard for the law. The Revolutionary War came on, with its attendant Indian troubles; and in 1794 the western counties revolted against the national government on account of the imposition of an excise on whisky. It was only after the last uprising had been suppressed that the laws became effective and society entered upon the formative stage.
Culture is the leading element in the formation and progress of society, and is the result of mental activity. The most potent agency in the production of culture is education. While Pittsburgh was a frontier village, suffering from the turbulence of the French and Indian War, the uncertainty of the Revolution, and the chaos of the Whisky Insurrection, education remained at a standstill. The men who had blazed trails through the trackless forests, and buried themselves in the woods or along the uncharted rivers, could usually read and write, but there were no means of transmitting these boons to their children. The laws of the province made no provision for schools on its frontiers. In December, 1761, the inhabitants of Pittsburgh subscribed sixty pounds and engaged a schoolmaster for the term of a year to instruct their children. Similar attempts followed, but, like the first effort, ended in failure. There was not a newspaper in all the Western country; the only books were the Bible and the almanac. The almanac was the one form of secular literature with which frontier families were ordinarily familiar.
In 1764, while Pittsburgh was a trading post, the military authorities caused a plan of the village to be made by Colonel John Campbell. It consisted of four blocks, and was bounded by Water Street, Second Street, now Second Avenue, Market and Ferry Streets, and was intersected by Chancery Lane. The lots faced in the direction of Water Street. In this plan most of the houses were built.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, the proprietors of the province were the cousins, John Penn, Jr., and John Penn, both grandsons of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Being royalists, they had been divested of the title to all their lands in Pennsylvania, except to a few tracts which had been surveyed, called manors, one of them being “Pittsburgh,” in which was included the village of that name. In 1784 the Penns conceived the design of selling land in the village of Pittsburgh. The first sale was made in January, when an agreement to sell was entered into with Major Isaac Craig and Colonel Stephen Bayard, for about three acres, located “between Fort Pitt and the Allegheny River.” The Penns determined to lay out a town according to a plan of their own, and on April 22, 1784, Tench Francis, their agent, employed George Woods, an engineer living at Bedford, to do the work. The plan was completed in a few months, and included within its boundaries all the land in the triangle between the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, extending to Grant Street and Washington, now Eleventh, Street. Campbell’s plan was adopted unchanged; Tench Francis approved the new plan and began to sell lots. Major Craig and Colonel Bayard accepted, in lieu of the acreage purchased by them, a deed for thirty-two lots in this plan.
Until this time, the title of the occupants of lands included in the plan had been by sufferance only. The earlier Penns were reputed to have treated the Indians, the original proprietors of Pennsylvania, with consideration. In the same manner John Penn, Jr., and John Penn dealt with the persons who made improvements on the lands to which they had no title. They permitted the settlement on the assumption that the settlers would afterwards buy the land; and they gave them a preference. Also when litigation arose, caused by the schemes of land speculators intent on securing the fruits of the enterprise and industry of squatters on the Penn lots, the courts generally intervened in favor of the occupants.[1] The sale was advertised near and far, and immigrants and speculators flocked into the village. They came from Eastern Pennsylvania, from Virginia, from Maryland, from New York, and from distant New England. The pack trains carrying merchandise and household effects into Pittsburgh became ever longer and more numerous.
Once that the tide of emigration had set in toward the West, it grew constantly in volume. The roads over the Alleghany Mountains were improved, and wheeled conveyances no longer attracted the curious attention that greeted Dr. Johann David Schoepf when he arrived in Pittsburgh in 1783, in the cariole in which he had crossed the mountains, an achievement which until then had not been considered possible.[2] The monotonous hoof-beats of the pack horses became less frequent, and great covered wagons, drawn by four horses, harnessed two abreast, came rumbling into the village. But not all the people or all the goods remained in Pittsburgh. There were still other and newer Eldorados, farther away to the west and the south, and these lands of milk and honey were the Meccas of many of the adventurers. Pittsburgh was the depository of the merchandise sent out from Philadelphia and Baltimore, intended for the western and southern country and for the numerous settlements that were springing up along the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers.[3] From Pittsburgh trading boats laden with merchandise were floated down the Ohio River, stopping at the towns on its banks to vend the articles which they carried.[4] Coal was cheap and emigrant and trading boats carried it as ballast.[5] In Pittsburgh the immigrants lingered, purchasing supplies, and gathering information about the country beyond. Some proceeded overland. Others sold the vehicles in which they had come, and continued the journey down the Ohio River, in Kentucky flat or family boats, in keel boats, arks, and barges. The construction and equipping of boats became an industry of moment in Pittsburgh.
The last menace from the Indians who owned and occupied the country north of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers was removed on October 21, 1784, when the treaty with the Six Nations was concluded at Fort Stanwix, by which all the Indian lands in Pennsylvania except a tract bordering on Lake Erie were ceded to the State. This vast territory was now opened for settlement, and resulted in more immigrants passing through Pittsburgh. The northerly boundary of the village ceased to be the border line of civilization. The isolation of the place became less pronounced. The immigrants who remained in Pittsburgh were generally of a sturdy class, and were young and energetic. Among them were former Revolutionary officers and soldiers. They engaged in trade, and as an adjunct of this business speculated in lands in the county, or bought and sold town lots. A few took up tavern keeping. From the brief notes left by Lewis Brantz who stopped over in Pittsburgh in 1785, while on a journey from Baltimore to the Western country, it appears that at this time Fort Pitt was still garrisoned by a small force of soldiers; that the inhabitants lived chiefly by traffic, and by entertaining travellers; and that there were but few mechanics in the village.[6] The extent of the population can be conjectured, when it is known that in 1786 there were in Pittsburgh only thirty-six log buildings, one of stone, and one of frame; and that there were six stores.[7]
Religion was long dormant on the frontier. In 1761 and 1762, when the first school was in operation in Pittsburgh, the schoolmaster conducted religious services on Sundays to a small congregation. Although under the direction of a Presbyterian, the services consisted in reading the Prayers and the Litany from the Book of Common Prayer.[8] During the military occupation, a chaplain was occasionally stationed at Fort Pitt around which the houses clustered. From time to time missionaries came and tarried a few days or weeks, and went their way again. The long intervals between the religious services were periods of indifference. An awakening came at last, and the religious teachings of early life reasserted themselves, and the settlers sought means to re-establish a spiritual life in their midst. The Germans and Swiss-Germans of the Protestant Evangelical and Protestant Reformed faiths jointly organized a German church in 1782; and the Presbyterians formed a church organization two years later.