Allegheny county's hundred years

Index

Chapter, Page.

IX. Boat Building in Allegheny County, 99^

X. Coal and Coke Trade, ........ 121

XI. Iron and Steel Trade, . . . . . . . . .136

XII. Glass Manufacturing, 179

XIII. Natural Gas, 202

XIV. Oil Trade in Allegheny County, . . . . . . 210

XV. Copper, Lead, Brass and Tin, 218

XVI. Mercantile Interests, . . 224

XVII. From Pack Horse to Railroads, 241

XVIII. Financial Institutions, 251

XIX. Insurance Companies, ......... 280

XX. Electrical Appliances, . 286

XXI. Churches, Schools and Newspapers, . . . . . . 289

XXII. Music, Art and Benevolent Institutions, 305

Preface

This volume is not published as an elaborate history of a hundred years. It, is simply intended as a handy book of the more prominent and leading events in Allegheny county during that period. '^^^^

Nor is the narration of the growth of its industries designed to be an exhaustive account of them, which of themselves would far outrun the pages to which the piu|)- lisher proposed limiting this volume. As it is, the impossibility of confining within that scope even such a condensed exhibit of Allegheny county's manufacturing progress and commercial interest, has caused it to overrun the limit prescribed. Even then much has been omitted that there was every temptation to dilate upon, although it is hoped that sufficient has been said to present such an account as will render the book an acceptable souvenir of the celebration of the county's centennial

It is believed that the statistics of the various interests are nearly accurate, although the extreme difficulty of obtaining them, from indifference or procrastination of those that should be interested therein, has caused some of the more important industries and mercantile interests to be incomplete in their exhibit. This, especially, in biographical data, has been discouraging. Rip Van Winkle is made to say, in Jefferson's play of that name, when he wanders back to the village of Falling Water after his twenty year's sleep, " How soon we are forgot when we are dead." Poor old " Rip's " reflections have arisen often in the compiler's thoughts while preparing this volume, and a sad amazement at the rush and roar and exacting demands of the business life of to-day, sweeping with its furious current details of the lives of those who, from family, social, or business relations should be remembered, from the minds of those who might be expected to hold them in remembrance.

It is well for the human race, if the records of the past are of any value, that the ait of printing was invented, for it is only in books that the lives of men, the records of industrial progress, and the lessons of political events are preserved. Manuscripts might have done so to some extent, but in this mighty flood of progress they would have been no more than the birch canoe is to the huge steamers and the immense trains of burden Cars in the transportation of the commerce of the world. Such chronological record of successors of firms in the various industries of Allegheny county, and such biographical mention as are contained in this volume are submitted not as all that should be written, or even as in those cases complete, but as so much reserved from the engulfing waves of time.

Keats, in his ode to the Nightingale, writes, " No hungry generations tread thee down." The generations of to-day are hungry, not for food, but for wealth and power, and tread upon another's heels so fast and ruthless that they trample into forgetfulness the acts and lives of their predecessors. Memories fade, monuments decay with years, and even solid edifices are erased before the wave of progress, but books live. Perchance, then, something in these pages will preserve facts and memories, else lost, valuable in the future and of interest now.

The narrator of this panoramic history of Allegheny County's Hundred Years Years lays down his pen wondering at its growth, regretful to leave so much unsaid, impressed with the importance the county has been in the political development of the nation, the settlement of the west, the progress of manufacturing in the past, and convinced, unless there is some radical change in human affairs, that prominent as the county has been it will be more so in the future ; that great as has been its progress in the years that are gone, it will be greater in the years to come. That the elements of manufacturing industry concentrated in and around the county, its geographical location, its transportation advantages, and the knowledge and skill acquired by its great army of mechanics, must result in a development as great in the next hundred years as in those past, unless all the factors now potent in the progress of the world cease.

CHAPTER I. From 1754 to 1788

From 1788 to 1888, comprises a wonderful century in the development of the industrial arts, and the commercial faculties of the world. The century that has witnessed the birth of the steamboat, the locomotive, the telegraph, and its cognate electrical appliances. The hundred years in which man has demonstrated his power of self government ; and a nation, that stands now the foremost of the world, has risen to the grandeur of a leader of the nations in all that points to a higher civilization, and a broader Christianity and the equality of man before law and his fellows. Allegheny County has, in that century, made a marked impress and contributed its full share in the development of the arts whereby men earn their bread, and attain wealth. First and foremost in many of the advances in commercial facilities it has been no laggard in those that opened the way to a broader civilization, and the elevation of men, nor has its voice been silent where political rights were to be maintained, or wrongs righted.

To sketch the story of Allegheny County's hundred years is to paint the panorama of the march of civilization into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Through her territory marched the advance columns of emigrants, and for years and years the wharves of her great city, Pittsburgh, witnessed the embarkation of thousands and thousands, who laid the foundation of the great western States. Her soil is classic ground in the nation's history. On it France and England strove to hold, the empire. On it the footsteps of men grand in history have left their impress. To tell of the development of the industries of the nation is to describe the growth of Allegheny County's mills, furnaces, and forges ; the progress of transportation facilities ; and the emancipation of the nation in steel and glass and copper, froma tributary condition to Europe. In the latter half of the eighteenth century a most important point in the view of rival European nations, Allegheny County, as it rounds her hundred years, is the most prominent county in the nation of sixty millions of people, and of marked interest to every manufacturing community in the old world. Well may her citizens celebrate with pride her centennial year.

To establish the date at which the history of Allegheny County considered as an integral portion of Pennsylvania begins, is difficult. Remotely it is not unconnected with the arrival of William Penn in the new world, late in the fall of 1682, as from that time gradually cumulated the events that led up to the more striking incidents in the earlier historic annals of the country. It is in 1744, when hostilities were declared between France and Great Britain, that the more salient points became apparent that tended so directly to render the territory, out of which was finally formed Allegheny County in 1788, an important center.

To the natural transportation facilities afforded by the Ohio and its confluents at the point of land now occupied by the city of Pittsburgh, is largely to be attril)!!ted to tlie tendency of events thither. In 1744, a treaty was made witli the Delaware Indians, by which they ceded to the king of Great Britain all the hinds in the bounds of Virginia. In 1748, Thos. Lee, one of his Majesty's council in Virginia, proposed forming a settlement in the wild lands west of the Allegheny mountians, and he associated with himself Thomas Hanbury, a merchant of London, and twelve other persons in Virginia and Maryland, among whom were Lawrence and Augustus Washington, brothers of George Washington. They formed "The Ohio Land Company," to which was ceded by the King one half million acres of land to be taken chiefly from the territory on the south side of the Ohio river, between the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers. Before this- date no English residents occupied this region A few traders mingled with the tribes, but neither occupied nor cultivated the lands. These lands were ceded on very easy terms, which were that 200,000 acres should be immediately selected and be held for ten years free from any quit-rent or tax to the King, on condition that 100 families should be seated upon them within seven years, at the company's expense, a fort built, and a garrison maintained to protect the settlement. The Ohio Company appear to have erected a storehouse at Redstone creek, now Brownsville, and to have made a small establishment at the forks of the Ohio ; but the disturbed state of the frontier prevented them from bringing any large amount of goods beyond the Allegheny mountains. The French war interrupted their oj^erations entirely, and the company was, in 1770-72, merged in a more extensive one in which Thos. W^alpole, Dr. Franklin, and Gerge Pounal were interested.

The Revolution breaking out about that time put an end to the company, and the title to their lands was never perfected. The formation of this company is closely allied with and provocative of some of the early events in the territory that subsequently became Allegheny County, a portion of the lands of the Ohio Company being now within its bounds. In 1752, Mr. Christopher Gist was sent to explore the county. In his journal he states that he went from Virginia to the Juniata, which he ascended, and descended the Kiskiminitis to the Allegheny. This latter river he crossed a little below where Sharpsburg now is, and passed on to the Ohio, and around the county on the south side of the Ohio as far as the Kanawha. In 1752 a treaty was held with the Indians at a point called Logstown, about fourteen miles below the present city of Pittsburgh. Soon after this treaty Gist was directed to lay off a town and a fort near the mouth of the Chartiers creek.

In the fall of 1753, Major George Washington was sent by Governor Danwiddie to report on the lands held by the vState of Virginia on the Ohio, and those ceded in 1748 to the Ohio Company.

In his report Washington writes :

"The excessive rains and the qviantitiesof snow which had fallen prevented our reaching Mr. Fraziers, an Indian trader at the mouth of Turtle creek on the Monongahela river, till Tuesday, the 22d, (November.) We were informed here that our expresses had been sent a few days before to the traders down the river, to acquaint them with the death of the French General and the return of the major part of the Frencli army to winter quarters. Tlie waters were quite impassable, without swimming our horses, wliicli obliged us to get the loan of a canoe from Frazier, and to send Barnaby Currin and Harry Stewart down the Monongaliela with our baggage to meet us at the forks of the Ohio, about ten miles, there to cross the Allegheny. As I got down some time before the canoe, I spent some time in viewing the rivers and the land in the forks, wiiich I think extremely well situated for a fort, as it has absolute command of both rivers. The land at the point is twenty to twenty-five feet above the common surface of the waters, and a considerable bottom of flat, ivell timbered land all around it, very convenient for building. The rivers are each a quarter of a mile or more across, and run here very near at right angles. The former of the two is a very swift and rapid running water, the other deep and still without any preceptible fall. -^ * ^ * * About two miles from this on the south east side of the river at the place where the Ohio Company intend to erect a fort, lives Shingiss, King of the Delawares."

Of this residence of Shingiss, Neville B. Craig says in the Pittsburgh Gazette, in 1841, "Our late esteemed friend, John McKee, Esq., has often pointed out the place where Shingiss resided. It was near the river and near McKee's Rocks."

The prominence of George Washington in the history of the nation, gives an interest to any location in'Allegheny County where he stood. On November 22d, 1753, he was at the mouth of Turtle creek, on the 23d, at the point where the Allegheny and the Monongaliela unite. A month later, returning from his visit to Fort Le Boeuf, in w'hat is now ^^enango County, on foot with his guide, Mr. Gist, he was thrown from a raft while crossing the Allegheny, on December 26tli, 1753, and narrowly escaped drowning in ten feet of [water running thick with ice. Extracting himself with great difficulty he managed to reach an island, where he and his companion remained until morning. That island is now part of the bank of the river, through the filling up of river channel between it and what was at that time the shore. It was what was called " Wainright's Island" opposite the foot of Eoptlfe^ig^ht-h 'street of the present city of Pittsburgh.

The next morning they crossed on the ice to the main land. Current old time authorities indicate that they landed near where the Sixteenth street bridge now stands.

At the time of the battle of Braddock's Fields, in 1755, Washington was again an actor in the historical incidents of x4.11egheny County, and in 1770, on his return from an examination of lands on the Kanawha, appropriated among the soldiers who served in the French war, he spent all of the 22d of November at Fort Pitt.

From 1753, the historical events that cluster around the territory that was, in 1788, organized as Allegheny County, began to thicken. In 1753 the French were busy in carrying out their scheme of uniting Canada and Louisiana by a line of forts. One of these was to be located at the present site of Pittsburgh, and one at Logstown. The one at Logstown it would appear the French had erected before, or about the time of the building of Captain Trent's stockade at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongaliela rivers, as the following entry in the records at Harrisburg would indicate :

" March the 12, 1754, evidence sent to the House that Venango and Logstown, where the French Forts are built, are m the province of Pennsylvania."

At this date there was a controversy be+ween the States of Virginia and Pennsylvania about the ownej'ship of the territories at and around the forks of the Ohio. Under date of March 21, 175- Governor Dunwiddie, of Virginia, writes to Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania — "I am misled by our surveyors if the forks of the Monongahela be within the bounds of Pennsylvania."

This claim was probably, in some measure, based on the ceding of lands to the Ohio Company, composed principally of citizens in Virginia, by the King in 1748^ A double contest for that portion of territory was beginning. The French and English were about to cross swords for it, and Virginia and Pennsylvania were contending for it. This latter claim lasted for nearly twenty years, and was the occasion of much angry feeling.

The letter of Governor Dunwiddie, before quoted, was dated March 21, 1754^ but a month earlier Captain Trent had begun the erection of a stockade for the defence of the point against the threatened occupation of the territory by the French, and possibly in protection of the Ohio Company grant, by which they were to erect a fort for the protection of the settlers. This movement resulted from the visit of Washington, in November of the preceding year, to examine the lands of the Ohio Company. On his report to Governor Dunwiddie, two companies were immediately, on Washington's return to Williamsburg, Va., ordered to the "forks" to erect a fort. One company under the command of Captain Trent, being ready, marched promptly, and on the 17tli of February, 1754, they were busy erecting the little stockade which was, on the 24th of April, surrendered to Captain Contrecoeur by Ensign W^ard, then in command — Captain Trent being away at Wills Creek, near Cumberland, and Lieutenant Frazier at his residence^ near Turtle Creek.

As mentioned previously, Mr. Gist and Col. Fry, on the part of Virginia, had concluded a treaty with the Indians at Logstown, by which the Indians agreed not to molest the settlements of the English on the south-east of the Ohio, but refused to recognize any English title to the land, denying that a previous treaty at Lancaster had been made with their consent, or that it conveyed any land west of the Allegheny mountains. The Ohio Company made an attempt to settle their lands with German emigrants in an effort to carry out the condition by which the lands were ceded to them.

The system of English episcopacy which prevailed in Virginia, and demanded church rates from dissenters, was repulsive to the Germans, and they preferred to settle in the province of William Penn. To the understanding at the present day, of this apparent confusion as to the territory of Pennsylvania, it should be remembered that the whole valley of the Monongahela, including the country around the forks of the Ohio, was for many years supposed to be in Virginia. A great part of the land titles in this region originated from patents granted by the Governors of that State.

In October, 1753, Major George Washington, then twenty-one years of age, while on his way to the commandment of the French forces at Le Bceuf, called at

Mr. Gist's plantation, who had built himself a cabin soon after the Logstown treaty, at a point since called Mount Braddock. Keceiving to his inquiries unsatisfactory information as to the designs of the French, he made a report to Governor Dunwiddie, of Virginia, who made preparations to repel their encroachments. A regiment was raised under the command of Col. Joshua Fry, for the purpose of ■erecting a fort at the forks, of which Washington was appointed Lieutenant Colonel, and Captain Trent's company was hurried forward to erect tlie fort, which, as previously narrated surrendered to the French under Captain Contrecoeur, with a force of one thousand French and Indians, he having also eighteen pieces of artillery.

Captain Contrecoeur at once began the erection of Fort Duquesne, a plan of which is one of the illustrations of this volume. This sketch was made by Captain Strobo, who, at the surrender of Fort Necessity, at Great Meadows, by Washington, July 3d, 1754, was detained as a hostage by the French. The drawing was made on the back of a letter written July 29th, 1754, by Captain Strobo to Governor Morris, of Pennsylvania, and sent by an Indian, urging an attack on the fort.

In that letter Strobo writes : " There are but two hundred men here at this time, two hundred more are expected in a few days; the rest went off in several detachments to the amount of one thousand, besides Indians. The Indians have great liberty here, and go in and out when they please without notice. If one hundred trusty Shawnees and Mingoes and Delawares were picked out they might surprise the fort, lodging themselves under the platform behind the palisades by day, and at night secure the guard with their tomahawks. The guard consists of forty men only and five officers. None lodge in the fort but the guard, except Contrecoeur, the rest in bark cabins around the fort. All this you have more particularly in yesterday's account. La Force is greatly needed here. Let the good of the expedition be considered before our safety. Haste to strike."

On July 9, 1755, occurred the battle between the French under Dumas and Bsaujeu, with their Indian allies, and the English under Gen. Edward Braddock, with which was inaugurated the effort of Great Britain to wrest from the French the control of the west. Four days previous, on July the 5th, the French and the Indians at Fort Diiquesne were thrown into a state of great excitement by the report brought by out-lying scou.ts that Braddock with a formidable army was approaching. The French commandant's force was small, and the fort incapable of resisting the lightest field-pieces. The commandant had abandoned the idea of resistance, when Capt. Beaujeu proposed to take a detachment of French and Inlians and intercept Braddock on his march. The Indians declared the project foolhardy, and declined to go. After repeated urging by Beaujeu they consented. On the 7th of July Braddock was but eighteen miles distant, and on the morning of the 9th the French and Indians marched on what was thought by nearly all to be a hopeless expedition. This force ambushed themselves at the point now occupied by the town of Braddock. At that time the ground was completeiy covered with forest, whicli hid from view deep ravines of ten to twelve feet depth, in which the Frencli force conceafed themselves. Of tluir nnmbers, JSTevilie B, Craig', in his mention of this event, while giving no account of the battle, says: ''The lowest estimate reduces the number of white men to tv.'o hundred and thirty-live, and the number of Indians to six hundred."

Gen. Braddock, with 1,200 men and officers, moved from the north side of the Youghiogheny on the morning of the 9th. Of this Washington, who had been ill with a fever and joined the forces on the 8th, writes in a letter written after the battle: "On the 9th, the day of the battle, I, although very low and weak, attended the General on horseback. The army crossed the left bank of the Monongahela a little below the mouth of the Yorghiogheny, being prevented by rugged hills from continuing along the right bank to the fort."

Sparks, in his "Life and Writings of General Washington," writes: "Washington was often heard to say during his lifetime that the most beautiful s]^ectacle he had ever beheld was the display of the British trcops on this eventful morning. Every man was dressed in full uniform ; the soldiers were arranged in^ columns, marching in exact order." Captain Orme, an aid of Braddock's, in a letter dated at Fort Cumberland, July 18, says: "The 9th inst. we passed and repassed the Monongahela by advancing, first a party of three hundred men^ which was immediately followed by another of two liundred. The General, with the column of artillery, baggage and main body of the army, passed the river the last time about one o'clock. As scon as the whole had arrived on ilie fort side of the Monongahela we heard heavy and quick firing in our front."

Colonel Burd, who leceived his information from Colonel Dunbar at P^ort Cumberland, writes : "The brittle began at one o'clock of the neon aid ccntinued three hours. The enemy kept behind trees and logs of wood, and cut down our troops as fast as they could advance. The soldiers insisted ujucli to be allowed to take to the trees, which the General denied, and stf rmed nnich, calling them cowards, and even went so far as to strike th.tm with his own swoid ftr attempting (o take to the trees. Our flankers and many of our soldiers that did tt.ke to the trees were cut off from the fire of our own line, as they nred their platoons wherever they saw a smoke or (ire. One-half of the army engaged never saw ihe enemy, --s- -^ * * The General had with him all liis papers, which are entirely fallen into the hands of the enemy, and likewise twenty-five thousand pounds in cash. The loss of men, as nigh as Colonel Dunbar can compute at that time, is seven hundred killed and wounded (about one-half killed) and forty officers."

Colonel Washington writes to his mother, m July 18, from Fort Cumberland : "We were attacked by a party of French aiul Indians, whose number did not, I •am fnlly persuyded, exceed 300 men, while ours consif-ted of about 1,300 wellarn^icd trocps, cliie'ly regular soldiers, who were seized with a panic and beliaved witli more cowardice than it is possible to conceive. The soldiers behaved gallantly, * * "^ there being ne:n-ly sixty killed and vroun'.ied. The A'irginia troops showed a good deal of bravery, and were nearly all killtd. * "^ ^" The General was wonnded and died three days after. I luckily escaped without a wound, though I had four ballets through my coat and two horses shot under me." It has always been a tradition that General Braddock was killed by one of his own men. On that point, the Hon. Andrew Stewart, of Uniontown, said in his lifetime that he knew and often conversed with Tom Fausett (who was supposed to have shot Braddock), and that he did not hesitate to avow in the presence of his friends that he had shot the General. Fausett was a man of gigantic frame, of uncivilized, half savage propensities, and spent most of his life among the mountains. He would occasionally come into town and get drunk.

Sometimes he would repel inquiries into tlie affair of Braddock's death by putting liis tinger to his lips and uttering a buzzing sound; at others he would burst into tears. In spite of Braddock's orders that the troops should not protect themselves behiud the trees, Joseph Fausett had taken such a position, when Braddock rode up in a passion and struck him down with his sword.

Tom Fausett, who was but a short distance from his brother, seeing the transaction, immediately drew up liis rifle and sliot Braddock through the lungs, partly in revenge of his brother, and, as he always alleged, to get the General out of the way and save the remainder of the band, who were being sacrificed through his obstinacy.

On the side of the French it is to be I'ecorded that Beaujeu fell at the first fire, and under Captain Dumas the victory was gained.

These are the main incidents of the battle of Braddock's Field, as the scene thereof was long called, but is now known as Braddock, the title of a borough of sonje 9,000 or 10,000 inhabitants, wlio;re dwellings and workshops cover the area of the fight, and where the largest steel works in the United States is situated. The forest and the ravines where tlie French troops ambushed have been obliterated by the impi'ovements.

From the date of this battle there aie few or no records that are germane to the public history of Fort Diiquesne, or of the territory that became organized or incorporated as Allegheny county until 1758. At that date the whole area w^est of the Alleghenies was a vast wilderness, having no governmental bounds or government, except such as might be claimed by the Provinces of Pennsylvania or Virginia under quasi-treaties with the Indian tribes who still asserted their territorial rights and disputed the accessation of their lands. Therefore, in sketching what may be termed the period of gestation of Allegheny county, it is difficult to avoid touching upon occurrences and movements in what are now Westmoreland, Fayette and Washington counties. In the area within which are now embraced those counties, transpired or arose inci<lenfs which, while they are not within the strict history of Allegheny county, were incidental to its final settlement, and a necessary adjunct in the narration of its story.

Previous to the year 178S Westmoreland County, out of which Allegheny County was taken, was a wilderness without mads otiier tlian Indian trails, as was also Fayette, which was also taken from Westmoreland, that county originally including the whole south-western corner of the State. The access to the "Forks," as the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela was designated, was up the Juniata, thence by water down the Kiskiminitis to the Allegheny, or by Braddock's road from Virginia. This latter road did not run in the same course as the one opened afterwards by Ck)lonel Burd to Redstone creek, now the site of the town of Brownsville.

"The course of Braddock's road was N. N. E." says Colonel Burd in his journal, "turning much to ye eastward." It crossed the Youghiogheny a little below the residence of Colonel William Crawford, on the left bank of the river, and the place is still called Braddock's Fort.

Colonel Crawford was an intimate friend of Washington, and a captain in Forbes' expedition in 1758. He was the Colonel Crawford who was burned to death by the Indians in 1782, on the Muskingum, having been captured in an expedition to destroy the Indians on that river.

Colonel Burd's road, according to his journal, "began a quarter of a mile from the camp (Dunbars), the course N. N. W." He says — "Marked two trees at the place of beginning, thus — ' The road to Bedstone, Col. J. Burd, 1759 ;' ' The road to Pittsburgh, 1759.' "

From this it would appear that Fort Pitt was at that early date known as Pittsburgh, although there was at that time, by best accounts, only a few bark and log cabins scattered around the fort.