A Short History of Pittsburgh

Short History of Pittsburgh, by
Samuel Harden Church

Project Gutenberg's A Short History of Pittsburgh, by Samuel Harden
Church This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: A Short History of Pittsburgh
Author: Samuel Harden Church
Release Date: November 16, 2007 [EBook #23507]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT
HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH ***

Produced by Bruce Thomas, Curtis Weyant and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by Case Western Reserve
University Preservation Department Digital Library)

A SHORT HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH 1758-1908

[Illustration: George Washington, the first Pittsburgher]
A SHORT HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH 1758-1908
BY SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH
AUTHOR OF "OLIVER CROMWELL: A HISTORY,"
"PENRUDDOCK OF THE WHITE LAMBS," "JOHN
MARMADUKE," "BEOWULF: A POEM," ETC.
PRINTED AT THE DE VINNE PRESS NEW YORK 1908
Copyright, 1908, by SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH

CONTENTS
PAGE HISTORICAL 13
INDUSTRIAL 79
INTELLECTUAL 89
INDEX 127

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
George Washington, the first Pittsburgher Frontispiece PAGE William
Pitt, Earl of Chatham 26
Plan of Fort Pitt 31
Henry Bouquet 32
Block House of Fort Pitt. Built in 1764 33
Anthony Wayne 41

Conestoga wagon 44
Stage-coach 46
Over the mountains in 1839; canal boat being hauled over the portage
road 47
View of Old Pittsburgh, 1817 50
Pittsburgh, showing the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela
Rivers 80
The Pittsburgh Country Club 88
Panther Hollow Bridge, Schenley Park 93
Entrance to Highland Park 97
The Carnegie Institute 101
Court-house 104
Zoölogical Garden in Highland Park 107
Carnegie Technical Schools (uncompleted) 111
Margaret Morrison Carnegie School for Women 115
Design of University of Pittsburgh 119
Allegheny Observatory, University of Pittsburgh 123
Phipps Conservatory, Schenley Park 125

PREFACE
Some ten years ago I contributed to a book on "Historic Towns,"
published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, of New York and London, a brief

historical sketch of Pittsburgh. The approach of the one hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh, and the elaborate
celebrations planned in connection therewith, led to many requests that
I would reprint the sketch in its own covers as a souvenir of the
occasion. Finding it quite inadequate for permanent preservation in its
original form, I have, after much research and painstaking labor,
rewritten the entire work, adding many new materials, and making of it
what I believe to be a complete, though a short, history of our city. The
story has developed itself into three natural divisions: historical,
industrial, and intellectual, and the record will show that under either
one of these titles Pittsburgh is a notable, and under all of them, an
imperial, city.
S. H. C.
Lake Placid Club, Adirondack Mountains, August 25, 1908.
A SHORT HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH 1758-1908

A SHORT HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH

HISTORICAL
I
George Washington, the Father of his Country, is equally the Father of
Pittsburgh, for he came thither in November, 1753, and established the
location of the now imperial city by choosing it as the best place for a
fort. Washington was then twenty-one years old. He had by that time
written his precocious one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good
behavior; had declined to be a midshipman in the British navy; had
made his only sea-voyage to Barbados; had surveyed the estates of
Lord Fairfax, going for months into the forest without fear of savage
Indians or wild beasts; and was now a major of Virginia militia. In
pursuance of the claim of Virginia that she owned that part of

Pennsylvania in which Pittsburgh is situated, Washington came there as
the agent of Governor Dinwiddie to treat with the Indians. With an eye
alert for the dangers of the wilderness, and with Christopher Gist beside
him, the young Virginian pushed his cautious way to "The Point" of
land where the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers
forms the Ohio. That, he declared, with clear military instinct, was the
best site for a fort; and he rejected the promontory two miles below,
which the Indians had recommended for that purpose. Washington
made six visits to the vicinity of Pittsburgh, all before his presidency,
and on three of them (1753, 1758, and 1770), he entered the limits of
the present city. At the time of despatching the army to suppress the
whisky insurrection, while he was President, in 1794, he came toward
Pittsburgh as far as Bedford, and then, after planning the march,
returned to Philadelphia. His contact with the place was, therefore,
frequent, and his information always very complete. There is a