Pittsburgh

The population of Pittsburgh was composed of various nationalities; those speaking the English language predominated. In addition to the Germans and Swiss-Germans, there were French and a few Italians. The majority of the English-speaking inhabitants were of Irish or Scotch birth, or immediate extraction. Of those born in Ireland or Scotland, some were old residents—so considered if they had lived in Pittsburgh for ten years or more—while others were recent immigrants. The Germans and French had come as early as the Irish and Scotch. The Italians were later arrivals. There was also a sprinkling of Welsh. The place contained a number of negroes, nearly all of whom were slaves, there being in 1800 sixty-four negro slaves in Allegheny County,58 most of whom were in Pittsburgh and the immediate vicinity. A majority of the negroes had been brought into the village in the early days by emigrants from Virginia and Maryland. Their number was gradually decreasing. By Act of the General Assembly of March 1, 1780, all negroes and mulattoes born after that date, of slave mothers, became free upon arriving at the age of twenty-eight years. Then on March 29, 1788, it was enacted that any slaves brought into the State by persons resident thereof, or intending to become such, should immediately be free.59 Also public sentiment was growing hostile to the institution of negro slavery. The few free negroes in Pittsburgh were engaged in menial occupations, and the name of only one, whose vocation was somewhat higher, has been handed down to the present time. This was Charles Richards, commonly called “Black Charley,” who conducted an inn in the log house, at the northwest corner of Second and Ferry Streets.

Among themselves the Germans and the French spoke the language of their fathers, but in their intercourse with their English-speaking neighbors they used English. The language of the street varied from the English of New England and Virginia, to the brogue of the Irish and Scotch, or the broken enunciation of the newer Germans and French. Being in a majority the English-speaking population controlled to a considerable extent the destinies of the community. Their manufactories were the most extensive, the merchandise in their stores was in greater variety, and the stocks larger than those carried in other establishments.

Next in numbers to those whose native language was English, were the German-speaking inhabitants. They constituted the skilled mechanics; some were merchants, and many were engaged in farming in the neighboring townships. They were all more or less closely connected with the German church. Only the names of their leading men have survived the obliterating ravages of time. Among the mechanics of the higher class were Jacob Haymaker, William Eichbaum, and John Hamsher. The first was a boatbuilder, whose boatyard was located on the south side of the Monongahela River at the Middle Ferry; Eichbaum was employed by O’Hara and Craig in the construction and operation of their glass works. John Hamsher was a coppersmith and tin-worker, whose diversion was to serve in the militia, in which he was captain.60

Conrad Winebiddle, Jonas Roup, Alexander Negley, and his son, Jacob Negley, were well-to-do farmers in Pitt Township. Winebiddle was a large holder of real estate, who died in 1795, and enjoyed the unique distinction of being the only German who ever owned negro slaves in Allegheny County. Nicholas Bausman and Melchoir Beltzhoover were farmers in St. Clair Township; and Casper Reel was a farmer and trapper in Pine Township, where he was also tax collector. Samuel Ewalt kept a tavern in Pittsburgh in 1775, and was afterward a merchant. He was Sheriff of Allegheny County during the dark days of the Whisky Insurrection, and later was inspector of the Allegheny County brigade of militia. He was several times a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. William Wusthoff was Sheriff of Allegheny County in 1801. Jacob Bausman had a varied career. He was a resident of Pittsburgh as far back as 1771, and was perhaps the most prominent German in the place. As a young man he was an ensign in the Virginia militia, during the Virginia contention. He established the first ferry on the Monongahela River, which ran to his house on the south side of the stream, where the southern terminus of the Smithfield Street bridge is now located. The right to operate the ferry was granted to him by the Virginia Court on February 23, 1775, and was confirmed by the General Assembly of Pennsylvania ten years later. At his ferry house he also conducted a tavern. His energies were not confined to his private affairs. Under the Act of the General Assembly incorporating Allegheny County, he was named as one of the trustees to select land for a court house in the tract reserved by the State, in Pine Township, and was again, under the Act of April 13, 1791, made a trustee to purchase land in Pittsburgh for the same purpose. He was treasurer of the German church and, jointly with Jacob Haymaker, was trustee, on the part of the church, of the land deeded by the Penns to that congregation for church purposes at the northeast corner of Smithfield and Sixth Streets, where the congregation’s second and all subsequent churches were built. Michael Hufnagle was a member of the Allegheny County Bar, being one of the first ten men to be admitted to practice, upon the organization of the county. He was the only lawyer of German nationality in the county. He had been a captain in the Revolution, and prothonotary of Westmoreland County. On July 13, 1782, when the Indians and Tories attacked Hannastown, he occupied a farm situated a mile and a half north of that place, which has ever since been known in frontier history as the place where the townsfolk were harvesting when the attack began.61

By their English-speaking neighbors the Germans were generally designated as “Dutch.” In the references to them in the Pittsburgh Gazette and other early publications, they were likewise called “Dutch.” Books printed in the German language were advertised as “Dutch” books. The custom of speaking of the Germans as “Dutch” was however not confined to Pittsburgh, but was universal in America. The Dutch inhabitants of New York and elsewhere, were the first settlers in the colonies, whose language was other than English. The bulk of the English-speaking population, wholly ignorant of any language except their own, were easily led into the error of confusing the newer German immigrants with the Dutch, the only persons speaking a foreign tongue with whom they had come in contact. Nor were the uneducated classes the only transgressors in this respect. The Rev. Dr. William Smith, the scholarly Provost of the College of Philadelphia, writing during the French and Indian War, spoke of the Germans as “the Dutch or Germans.”62 Also “Dutch” bears a close resemblance to “Deutsch,” the German name for people of the German race, which may account, to some extent, for the misuse of the word.

The Germans were in Pittsburgh to stay. Their efforts were directed largely toward private ends. When men of other blood made records in public life, the Germans made theirs in the limited sphere of their own employment or enterprises. Owing to their inability to speak the English language, their position was more isolated than that of the greenest English-speaking immigrant in the village. That they were clannish was a natural consequence. This disposition was accentuated when a newspaper printed in the German language was established on November 22, 1800, in the neighboring borough of Greensburgh, entitled The German Farmers’ Register, being the first German paper published in the Western country. Subscriptions were received in Pittsburgh at the office of the Tree of Liberty,63 then recently established, and the effort to acquire a knowledge of English in order to be able to read the news of the day in the Pittsburgh newspapers, was for the time being largely abandoned. As the Germans learned to speak and read English, their social intercourse was no longer restricted to persons of their own nationality. With the next generation, intermarriages with persons of other descent took place. The German language ceased to be cultivated; they forsook the German church for one where English was the prevailing language. It is doubtful if a single descendant of the old Germans is now able to speak the language of his forbears unless it was learned at school, or that he is a member of or attends the services of the German church.

The French element was an almost negligible quantity, yet it exerted an influence far beyond what might be expected when its numbers are considered. So strong was the tide of public opinion in favor of all things French, occasioned by the events of the French Revolution, that Albert Gallatin, a French-Swiss, who had just been naturalized, and still spoke English with a decided foreign accent, attained high political honors. To the people he was essentially a Frenchman, and in 1794, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, from Fayette County where he lived. At the same time he was elected to Congress from the district consisting of Allegheny and Washington Counties; and was twice re-elected from the same district, which included Greene County after the separation from Washington County in 1796, and its erection into a separate county. It was while serving this constituency that Gallatin developed those powers in finance and statesmanship which caused his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury by President Jefferson, and by Jefferson’s successor, President Madison. From the politicians of this Congressional District, Gallatin learned those lessons in diplomacy which enabled him, while joint commissioner of the United States, to secure the signature of England to the Treaty of Ghent, by which the War of 1812 was brought to a close, and which led to his becoming United States Minister to France and to England. The training of those early days finally made him the most famous of all Americans of European birth, and brought about his nomination for Vice-President by the Congressional caucus of the Republican party, an honor which he first accepted, but later declined.64

Another prominent Frenchman was John B. C. Lucus. In 1796, he lived on a farm on Coal Hill on the south side of the Monongahela River, in St. Clair Township, five miles above Pittsburgh. It was said of him that he was an atheist and that his wife plowed on Sundays, in spite of which he was several times elected to the General Assembly.65 In 1800, he was appointed an associate judge for the county. He quarrelled with Alexander Addison, the president judge of the judicial district to which Allegheny County was attached, yet he had sufficient standing in the State to cause Judge Addison’s impeachment and removal from the Bench. In 1802, Lucus was elected to Congress and was re-elected in 1804. In 1805, he was appointed United States District Judge for the new Territory of Louisiana, now the State of Missouri.

Dr. Felix Brunot arrived in Pittsburgh in 1797. He came from France with Lafayette and was a surgeon in the Revolutionary War and fought in many of its battles. His office was located on Liberty Street, although he owned and lived on Brunot Island. An émigré, the Chevalier Dubac, was a merchant.66 Dr. F. A. Michaux, the French naturalist and traveler, related of Dubac:67 “I frequently saw M. Le Chevalier Dubac, an old French officer who, compelled by the events of the Revolution to quit France, settled in Pittsburgh where he engaged in commerce. He possesses very correct knowledge of the Western country, and is perfectly acquainted with the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, having made several voyages to New Orleans.” Morgan Neville a son of Colonel Presley Neville, and a writer of acknowledged ability, drew a charming picture of Dubac’s life in Pittsburgh.68

Perhaps the best known Frenchman in Pittsburgh was John Marie, the proprietor of the tavern on Grant’s Hill. Grant’s Hill was the eminence which adjoined the town on the east, the ascent to the hill beginning a short distance west of Grant Street. The tavern was located just outside of the borough limits, at the northeast corner of Grant Street and the Braddocksfield Road, where it connected with Fourth Street. The inclosure contained more than six acres, and was called after the place of its location, “Grant’s Hill.” It overlooked Pittsburgh, and its graveled walks and cultivated grounds were the resort of the townspeople. For many years it was the leading tavern. Gallatin, who was in Pittsburgh, in 1787, while on the way from New Geneva to Maine, noted in his diary that he passed Christmas Day at Marie’s house, in company with Brackenridge and Peter Audrian,69 a well-known French merchant on Water Street. Marie’s French nationality naturally led him to become a Republican when the party was formed, and his tavern was long the headquarters of that party. Numerous Republican plans for defeating their opponents originated in Marie’s house, and many Republican victories were celebrated in his rooms. Also in this tavern the general meetings of the militia officers were held.70 Michaux has testified that Marie kept a good inn.71 The present court house, the combination court house and city hall now being erected, and a small part of the South School, the first public school in Pittsburgh, occupy the larger portion of the site of “Grant’s Hill.”

Marie’s name became well known over the State, several years after he retired to private life. He was seventy-five years of age in 1802, when he discontinued tavern-keeping and sold “Grant’s Hill” to James Ross, United States Senator from Pennsylvania, who was a resident of Pittsburgh. Marie had been estranged from his wife for a number of years and by some means she obtained possession of “Grant’s Hill,” of which Ross had difficulty in dispossessing her. In 1808, Ross was a candidate for governor against Simon Snyder. Ross’s difference with Mrs. Marie, whose husband had by this time divorced her, came to the knowledge of William Duane in Philadelphia, the brilliant but unscrupulous editor of the Aurora since the discontinuance of the National Gazette, in 1793, the leading radical Republican newspaper in the country. The report was enlarged into a scandal of great proportions both in the Aurora and in a pamphlet prepared by Duane and circulated principally in Philadelphia. The title of the pamphlet was harrowing. It was called “The Case of Jane Marie, Exhibiting the Cruelty and Barbarous Conduct of James Ross to a Defenceless Woman, Written and Published by the Object of his Cruelty and Vengeance.” Although Marie was opposed to Ross politically, he defended his conduct toward Mrs. Marie as being perfectly honorable. Nevertheless, the pamphlet played an important part in obtaining for Snyder the majority of twenty-four thousand by which he defeated Ross.

Notwithstanding the high positions which some of the Frenchmen attained, they left no permanent impression in Pittsburgh. After prospering there for a few years, they went away and no descendants of theirs reside in the city unless it be some of the descendants of Dr. Brunot. Some went south to the Louisiana country, and others returned to France. Gallatin, himself, long after he had shaken the dust of Western Pennsylvania from his feet, writing about his grandson, the son of his son James, said: “He is the only young male of my name, and I have hesitated whether, with a view to his happiness, I had not better take him to live and die quietly at Geneva, rather than to leave him to struggle in this most energetic country, where the strong in mind and character overset everybody else, and where consideration and respectability are not at all in proportion to virtue and modest merit.”72 And the grandson went to Geneva to live, and his children were born there and he died there.73

The United States Government was still in the formative stage. Until this time the men who had fought the Revolutionary War to a successful conclusion, held a tight rein on the governmental machinery. Now a new element was growing up, and, becoming dissatisfied with existing conditions, organized for a conflict with the men in power. The rise of the opposition to the Federal party was also the outcome of existing social conditions. Like the modern cry against consolidated wealth, the movement was a contest by the discontented elements in the population, of the men who had little against those who had more. Abuses committed by individuals and conditions common to new countries were magnified into errors of government. Also the people were influenced by the radicalism superinduced by the French Revolution and the subsequent happenings in France. “Liberty, fraternity, and equality” were enticing catchwords in the United States.

Thomas Jefferson, on his return from France, in 1789, after an absence of six years, where he had served as United States Minister, during the development of French radicalism, came home much strengthened in his ideas of liberty. They were in strong contrast with the more conservative notions of government entertained by Washington, Vice-President Adams, Hamilton, and the other members of the Cabinet. In March, 1790, Jefferson became Secretary of State in Washington’s first Cabinet, the appointment being held open for him since April 13th of the preceding year, when Washington entered on the duties of the Presidency. Jefferson’s views being made public, he immediately became the deity of the radical element. At the close of 1793, the dissensions in the Cabinet had become so acute that on December 31st Jefferson resigned in order to be better able to lead the new party which was being formed. By this element the Federalists were termed “aristocrats,” and “tories.” They were charged with being traitors to their country, and were accused of being in league with England, and to be plotting for the establishment of a monarchy, and an aristocracy. The opposition party assumed the title of “Republican.” Later the word “Democratic” was prefixed and the party was called “Democratic Republican,”74 although in Pittsburgh for many years the words “Republican,” “Democratic Republican,” and “Democratic” were used interchangeably.

Heretofore Pennsylvania had been staunchly Federal. On the organization of the Republican party, Governor Thomas Mifflin, and Chief Justice Thomas McKean of the Supreme Court, the two most popular men in the State, left the Federal party and became Republicans. There was also a cause peculiar to Pennsylvania, for the rapid growth of the Republican party in the State. The constant increase in the backwoods population consisted largely of emigrants from Europe, chiefly from Ireland, who brought with them a bitter hatred of England and an intense admiration for France. They went almost solidly into the Republican camp. The arguments of the Republicans had a French revolutionary coloring mingled with which were complaints caused by failure to realize expected conditions. An address published in the organ of the Republican party in Pittsburgh is a fair example of the reasoning employed in advocacy of the Republican candidates: “Albert Gallatin, the friend of the people, the enemy of tyrants, is to be supported on Tuesday, the 14th of October next, for the Congress of the United States. Fellow citizens, ye who are opposed to speculators, land jobbers, public plunderers, high taxes, eight per cent. loans, and standing armies, vote for Mr. Gallatin!”75

In Pittsburgh the leader of the Republicans was Hugh Henry Brackenridge, the lawyer and dilettante in literature. In the fierce invective of the time, he and all the members of his party were styled by their opponents “Jacobins,” after the revolutionary Jacobin Club of France, to which all the woes of the Terror were attributed. The Pittsburgh Gazette referred to Brackenridge as “Citizen Brackenridge,” and after the establishment of the Tree of Liberty, added “Jacobin printer of the Tree of Sedition, Blasphemy, and Slander.”76 But the Republicans gloried in titles borrowed from the French Revolution. The same year that Governor Mifflin and Chief Justice McKean went over to the Republicans, Brackenridge made a Fourth of July address in Pittsburgh, in which he advocated closer relations with France. This was republished in New York by the Republicans, in a pamphlet, along with a speech made by Maximilien Robespierre in the National Convention of France. In this pamphlet Brackenridge was styled “Citizen Brackenridge.”77 The Pittsburgh Gazette and the Tree of Liberty, contained numerous references to meetings and conferences held at the tavern of “Citizen” Marie. On March 4, 1802, the first anniversary of the inauguration of Jefferson as President, a dinner was given by the leading Republicans in the tavern of “Citizen” Jeremiah Sturgeon, at the “Sign of the Cross Keys,” at the northwest corner of Wood Street and Diamond Alley, at which toasts were drunk to “Citizen” Thomas Jefferson, “Citizen” Aaron Burr, “Citizen” James Madison, “Citizen” Albert Gallatin, and “Citizen” Thomas McKean.78

In 1799, the Republicans had as their candidate for governor Chief Justice McKean. Opposed to him was Senator James Ross. Ross was required to maintain a defensive campaign. The fact that he was a Federalist was alone sufficient to condemn him in the eyes of many of the electors. He was accused of being a follower of Thomas Paine, and was charged with “singing psalms over a card table.” It was said that he had “mimicked” the Rev. Dr. John McMillan, the pioneer preacher of Presbyterianism in Western Pennsylvania, and a politician of no mean influence; that he had “mocked” the Rev. Matthew Henderson, a prominent minister of the Associate Presbyterian Church.79 Although Allegheny County gave Ross a majority of over eleven hundred votes, he was defeated in the State by more than seventy-nine hundred.80 McKean took office on December 17, 1799,81 and the next day he appointed Brackenridge a justice of the Supreme Court. All but one or two of the county offices were filled by appointment of the governor, who could remove the holders at pleasure. The idea of public offices being public trusts had not been formulated. The doctrine afterward attributed to Andrew Jackson, that “to the victors belong the spoils of office,” was already a dearly cherished principle of the Republicans, and Judge Brackenridge was not an exception to his party. Hardly had he taken his seat on the Supreme Bench, when he induced Governor McKean to remove from office the Federalist prothonotary, James Brison, who had held the position since September 26, 1788, two days after the organization of the county.

Brison was very popular. As a young man, he had lived at Hannastown, and during the attack of the British and Indians on the place had been one of the men sent on the dangerous errand of reconnoitering the enemy.82 He was now captain of the Pittsburgh Troop of Light Dragoons, the crack company in the Allegheny County brigade of militia, and was Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Academy. He was a society leader and generally managed the larger social functions of the town. General Henry Lee, the Governor of Virginia, famous in the annals of the Revolutionary War, as “Light-Horse Harry Lee,” commanded the expedition sent by President Washington to suppress the Whisky Insurrection, and was in Pittsburgh several weeks during that memorable campaign. On the eve of his departure a ball was given in his honor by the citizens. On that occasion Brison was master of ceremonies. A few months earlier Brackenridge had termed him “a puppy and a coxcomb.” Brackenridge credited Brison with retaliating for the epithet, by neglecting to provide his wife and himself with an invitation to the ball. This was an additional cause for his dismissal, and toward the close of January the office was given to John C. Gilkison. Gilkison who was a relative of Brackenridge, conducted the bookstore and library which he had opened the year before, and also followed the occupation of scrivener, preparing such legal papers as were demanded of him.83