At the conflux of the rivers Allegheny and Monongahela, the French when possessed of Canada, had the principal of a line of posts extending from that country round the back frontier of the British settlements, for the purposes of awing the aborigines and commanding their trade, and to prevent the spreading of the Anglo-American colonization beyond these limits. It was named Fort Du Quesne, after the Marquis Du Quesne, a governour of Canada. It was always kept well garrisoned by European troops, and in time of war, was never without an army of auxiliary Indians encamped under its protection. This continual state of preparation cost the British much blood. In the year 1757, general Grant, with a regiment of eight hundred Scotch highlanders, arrived without discovery on a hill immediately commanding the fort, since named after him Grant’s hill, where thinking himself secure of conquest, he alarmed the enemy by beating the reveille at sunrise. The garrison, without awaiting {220} to be attacked in the fort, which would not have been tenable, and reinforced by a strong body of Indians, stole out under the high river banks, and divided itself into two parties, one of which took the route upwards of the Monongahela, and the other that of the Allegheny, until they flanked Grant’s little army, when profiting by the woods, with which the hill and surrounding country were then covered, they suddenly attacked it in flanks and rear, cut to pieces, tomahawked and scalped the greater number, while the rest with the general saved their lives by becoming prisoners to the French, on whose mercy they threw themselves.[154]
The following year 1758, was productive of greater slaughter to the British, by the defeat of general Braddock’s army of five thousand men, being surprised by the French and Indians in great force on the banks of the Monongahela, when within eight miles of Fort Du Quesne, then a wilderness, but now well inhabited and ornamented on the very spot by the handsome brick house and fine farm of judge Wallace.[155] The general and three-fourths of the army, were shot down from behind trees, while in the parade of European tacticks, presenting four bold open fronts to the enemy, being formed in a hollow square. The few who escaped, did so under the protection of Col. since Gen. Washington’s provincial militia, who by opposing a similar warfare against the savage enemy, covered the retreat of the few remaining regulars.
Some time afterwards in the same year, the fort capitulated to general Forbes, and the river Allegheny having made some encroachment on it by undermining its banks, a new and more extensive fortification of a square with four bastions was erected by general Stanwix just above, and named Fort Pitt, in honour of the then prime minister of England.—It cost government £60,000 sterling. A garrison {221} was kept here for several years after the peace of 1763, but it was withdrawn on the commencement of the disputes between Britain and America, and the inhabitants of the surrounding settlement, which had not yet taken the form of a town, occasionally forted themselves for defence against the Indians, and so late as the year 1781, there were only a few small houses and cabins on the banks of the two rivers, under protection of the fort, a noble row of brick and stone houses built by the French Indian traders on the banks of the Allegheny, having been undermined and swept away by that river since 1766, in the memory of some of the present inhabitants of Pittsburgh.[156] After 1781, Pittsburgh began to improve slowly, and in 1784 a gazette[157] was established in it.[158] In 1783 Fort Pitt was repaired by general Irwin, but was afterwards neglected, and a stoccado fort called Fort Fayette, was erected on the bank of the Allegheny, half a mile above Fort Pitt.[159] Fort Fayette is now used as a barrack and place of deposit of stores, but is useless for either offence or defence. The surrounding grounds were handsomely laid out, planted, and ornamented by general Wilkinson[160] some years ago, and considering the smallness of the field he had to work on, shew much taste, and are an ornament to the eastern and principal approach to the town, in which situation the fort stands.
The town or borough, as it now is, has increased in a very rapid degree both in size and consequence since the last ten years. The plan, by its being designed to suit both rivers, is rather irregular, Penn and Liberty streets which are very fine streets, running parallel to the Allegheny, while the principal {222} part of the town is parallel and at right angles with the Monongahela.
In seventeen streets and four lanes or alleys in March 1808, were two hundred and thirty-six brick houses, of which forty-seven were built in the last twelve months, and three hundred and sixty-one wooden ones, seventy of which were added last year. There are fifty stores generally well assorted and supplied, and which divide the retail business of the town and adjacent country in tolerably good proportion. Some however have rather a superiority of custom, the owner of one of which, a man of veracity, assured me that he received in ready money, one market day with another, one hundred and fifty dollars, and that he had once taken one hundred and eighty besides the credit business. Either as a trading or a manufacturing town, I think Pittsburgh for situation, is not excelled in the United States, and that it bids fair to become the emporium of the centre of the federal union. There are 24 taverns, four or five of which are excellent ones, and the rest of every grade. An account of the manufacturies and tradesmen was taken in the fall of 1807, the result of which was—A cotton manufactury, having a mule of 120 threads, a spinning jenny of 40 threads, 4 looms and a wool carding machine under the same roof; a glasswork for green glass on the opposite side of the Monongahela, and another just erected for white glass on the town side of the same river; two breweries, where are made excellent beer and porter, equal to any in the United States; an air furnace, where all sorts of hollow iron utensils are cast; four nail facturies, at one of which one hundred tons of cut and hammered nails are made annually; seven coppersmiths, tinplate workers and japanners; one wire weaving and riddle factury; one brass foundery; six saddlers and harness-makers; two gun-smiths; two tobacconists; one bell-maker; three tallow-chandlers; {223} one brush maker; one trunk-maker; five coopers; thirteen weavers; ten blue-dyers; one comb-maker; seven cabinet-makers; one turner in brass, ivory and wood; six bakers; eight butchers; two barbers; six hatters; two potteries of earthen ware; eight straw bonnet-makers; four plane-makers; six milliners; twelve mantua-makers; one stocking weaver; two book-binders; four house and sign painters; two portrait painters; one mattress-maker; three wheelwrights; five watch and clock-makers and silversmiths; five bricklayers, five plasterers; three stonecutters; eight boat, barge and ship builders; one pump-maker; one looking-glass plater and maker; one lock-maker; seven tanners; two rope-makers; one spinning wheel maker; seventeen blacksmiths; one machinist and whitesmith; one cutler and tool-maker; thirty-two house carpenters and joiners; twenty-one boot and shoemakers; five windsor chair-makers; thirteen tailors; one breeches-maker and skin-dresser; twelve school-masters; four schoolmistresses; four printing offices; six brick yards; three stone masons; two book-stores; four lumber yards; one maker of machinery for cotton and woolen manufacturies; one factury for clay smoking-pipes; and one copper-plate printing press.
The tradesmen above mentioned are all master-workmen, who employ more or less assistants in proportion to their business.
Besides the fine situation of Pittsburgh for manufacturies, another circumstance encourages much the settlement of industrious tradesmen in it, which is the cheap, plentiful and various market. There are two market days weekly, and the common prices of necessaries are,—good beef, from 2½ to 4 cents per lb., pork 3½, mutton 4, veal 3, venison 3 to 4, bacon 6 to 10, butter 10 to 18, cheese 8 to 12, hogs lard 8, {224} fowls each 10 to 12, ducks 25, geese 33 to 37, turkies 40 to 75, flour $1 75 to 2 50 per cwt. or from 3 50 to 4 50 per barrel, corn 33, potatoes 40, turnips 18, Indian meal 40 cents per bushel, onions a dollar, white beans a dollar, dried apples and peaches a dollar, and green 40 cents per bushel, eggs 10 to 18 cents per dozen, fresh fish 3 to 6 cents per lb., maple sugar, very good, made in the country, 10 to 12 cents a pound, whiskey 30 to 40 cents per gallon, peach brandy 75 to 80, beer 5 to 7 dollars a barrel, and cider 3 to 4, 700 country linen 40 cents, and tow cloth 33 cents per yard;[161] but salt comes high, being generally 2½ dollars per bushel, which is occasioned by its being supplied from the Onondago salt works, in the upper part of the state of New York, from whence it is brought by water with a few portages, through part of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and down French creek and the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, where it is a great article of trade, giving employment to several keel boats on the river.
The situation of Pittsburgh is unrivalled with respect to water communication, with a great extent and variety of country; and would also be so in beauty was it not hemmed in too closely by high and steep hills. It may notwithstanding be called a beautiful situation, as there is a variety in those very hills, which all differ in appearance from each other, and admit between them fine vistas up the Allegheny and Monongahela, and down the Ohio, which river is formed by the confluence of the other two, and which after flowing eleven hundred miles through all its sinuosities, is itself lost in the Mississippi, at a point about W. S. W. from Pittsburgh, from whence eleven hundred miles more carry that chief of Atlantick rivers (whether with regard to unimpeded navigation, or the immense body of water discharged through it) into the ocean below New Orleans, in {225} about a south direction from its confluence with the Ohio.
Standing on the point which was the scite of the old French Fort Du Quesne, about the middle of the last century, and of which there is now no vestige, and looking up the Allegheny to the northward, a chain of hills, with a narrow bottom partially cultivated between the hills and the river, bound the view on the left, while two beautiful little islands, the uppermost one cultivated, and owned by a Mr. Wainwright from England, terminate the water prospect in front.
Turning gradually to the right, the eye looks over the dry ditch and old ramparts of the former English Fort Pitt, which succeeded Fort Du Quesne, beyond which are a few straggling apple and pear trees, being all that remains of the king’s and artillery gardens, planted and cultivated by the first British garrison, and now laid out in streets and town lots. Looking onward up the bank of the river, which is about thirty feet above the surface, when the water is lowest, houses, trees, and cultivated fields, are seen for three miles to Mr. Davis’s large, and handsomely situated house, about half a mile beyond the race course, and the same distance above Wainwright’s island. Hills covered with wood, rising amphitheatre-like behind Davis’s, terminate the view that way.