The first move by Congress was a decision to take Fort Pitt under its care and provide an adequate garrison at the Continental expense. The offer was accepted by Virginia, which colony then claimed the western part of Pennsylvania as its territory, and Captain John Neville was directed to transfer the fort to the United States officer appointed to its command.
General Washington selected Brigadier General Edward Hand, of Lancaster, for this important service. The brave and efficient work of this distinguished officer led the commander-in-chief to believe that he would be an able defender of the border, but fighting British and Hessians along the seaboard and Indians in the woods are two quite different propositions, as General Hand soon discovered.
General Hand was no stranger at Fort Pitt, but during his former service there he had no experience in fighting Indians.
He was a native of Ireland and educated to be a physician. At the age of twenty-three years he was commissioned as assistant surgeon in the Eighteenth Regiment of Foot, known as the Royal Irish, and in the spring of 1767 he accompanied the command to America.
He was stationed for a time in the Illinois country and afterward at Fort Pitt. In 1774 he resigned his commission and took up the practice of medicine in Lancaster, Pa.
Soon after the news of Lexington and Concord he interested himself in raising troops for the cause of the colonists and was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of Thompson’s celebrated regiment of Pennsylvania riflemen, afterward the First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Line.
In March, 1776, Hand succeeded as colonel and under his command the regiment did gallant work in the battles of Long Island, Trenton and Princeton.
On April 1, 1777, Hand was rewarded for his really exceptional services by promotion to the rank of brigadier general and soon thereafter General Washington further evinced his appreciation and confidence by assigning General Hand, then only thirty-three years old, to the defense of the western frontier.
General Hand arrived at Fort Pitt Sunday, June 1, 1777, and took over the property from Captain Neville. He led no forces across the mountains, being accompanied by only a few officers.
The garrison consisted of but two companies of the Thirteenth Virginia, recruited in and about Pittsburgh, and they were shy of discipline. The larger part of these soldiers had been with Washington in New Jersey.