By Julia Morgan Harding.M
(From the Pittsburgh Bulletin, February 15, 1893.)
We are told in his Autobiography that Benjamin Franklin "ever took pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of his ancestors," and in these days of reawakened interest in things of the past, many people may be found who, like the great prototype of American character, Pennsylvania's apostle of common sense, take pleasure in looking into the old records of their family history. A still richer inheritance is the story of the lives of the men who conquered the wilderness and subdued the Indians, French and British; and this inheritance is held in common by all good citizens of Pittsburgh, whether or not their ancestors fought with Braddock or Bouquet, or marched with Forbes. In the stir and bustle of the busy city, above the noise of the trolley and the iron wagon, one faintly hears the names of streets whose unfamiliar sound recalls to our minds these illustrious dead. With but little effort the inward eye quickly sees an impenetrable forest clothing hills and river banks—dark, mysterious, forbidding, crossed by occasional narrow and obstructed paths; war parties of painted savages; a few scattered settlers' and traders' cabins; here and there a canoe on the swift and silent rivers; a silence too often broken by the war whoop of the Indian and the scream of his tortured victim.
From the eastern slopes of the Endless Hills to the unknown and unbounded "Indian Country" that lay beyond the Forks of the Ohio, such was the region into which Washington, Braddock, Forbes and Bouquet led their "forlorn hopes," In days when a less utilitarian spirit prevailed, and association was still powerful, the City of Pittsburgh acknowledged its debt of gratitude to the soldiers, statesmen and early settlers who made its unexampled prosperity possible, by naming for them many of its streets and suburbs. Its early history can be traced thereby, much as the historian and archaeologist discovers the successive Roman, Saxon, Danish and Norman occupations of London and other English towns. Aliquippa, Mingo, Shannopin, Shinghiss, Guyasuta and Killbuck recall the Indian tribes and chiefs who once possessed the country; Gist, Montour, Girty, McKee, Chartiers, and Van Braam the guides and traders who first penetrated the wilderness. Dinwiddie brings to mind the crusty but far-seeing Scotch Governor of Virginia, who first comprehended the value of the disputed land. Forbes, Bouquet, Ligonier, Halket, Grant, Stanwix, Neville, Crawford, Hay, Marbury, Ormsby, Tannehill, O'Hara, Butler, Wayne, Bayard, Stobo, Steuben, St. Clair, Craig, Smallman and Irwin recall, or did recall, the soldiers and commandants who won the West. Duquesne, St. Pierre, and Jumonville speak of the French governor of Canada, the officer who received Washington at Fort Le Boeuf, and the Captain who fell at Great Meadows. Smithfield owes its name to Devereaux Smith, prominent in colonial and revolutionary days; and Wood Street was called for George Woods, surveyor.
In Penn avenue, or street, as it used to be and still ought to be called, the name of the founder of the Commonwealth, the Quaker feudal proprietor, is preserved; and the great city itself, as well as two shabby, sooty little streets, forever immortalizes William Pitt, the friend of America, and makes him a splendid and enduring monument.
But let us dig into the lowest historical stratum, and discover the real local relationships of names and places with the first occupants of the land. Aliquippa tells of the great queen of the Delawares, who lived at the mouth of the Youghiogheny, where McKeesport now is, and whom it must be remembered Washington visited on his first memorable journey to the Ohio. From what he relates to us she could not have been a very temperate sovereign lady, but she was a celebrity and a power in her day, with a prestige that long survived her; and when, in full savage regalia, surrounded by her warriors, she granted an audience to the young Virginian, she was doubtless most impressing and condescending.
Shinghiss, who bore a name that suggests a subject of Queen Wilhelmina rather than a North American Indian was a mighty warrior in his day, and a king of the Delawares. Some of the chroniclers give him a very bad name and tell us that his exploits in war would "form an interesting though shocking document"; others, among them Christian Post, give him a much better character. Nevertheless, it is true that the colony of Pennsylvania offered a thousand dollars for his scalp. Washington met him on his first visit to Ohio, and speaks of him in his Journal. This brave and much-feared chief was small in stature for an Indian and lived near the Ohio on Chartiers Creek.
Bronze Tablet at Entrance to Block House Grounds.