the favor of you to transmit the same to us or to your brother Thomas, in order that it may be recorded at Williamsburg in Virginia as the jurisdiction of that colony is now extended and exercised as far west at the Ohio and Courts established, etc. We think it our duty to inform you as one of the Grantees, that many Difficulties are like to arise from any delay in taking Possession of the Lands, and that those Difficulties will double on us if we do not very speedily fall on some measures to obtain Peacable Possession of them and Permission to proceed in their sales. Lands have been and are now surveying to Officers, soldiers and others in Consequence of the King's Proclamation of October 1763, in every part of this Country from hence downward as low as Scioto and indeed as far as Kentucky and the Falls. And you may be assured they have not hesitated to lay their Warrants in many parts of our Grant of which most of the good Lands are already surveyed. "We are sir

"Your most Obedient Servants." [Names of Trent, Croghan, Traders etc.] Virginia declared by express legislation enacted in 1779, that all sales and deeds by Indians for lands within their limits to be void and of no effect. Congress, by acts of the 16th and 18th of September, 1776, and others subsequent thereto, conferred grants of land to the officers and soldiers of the Continental army. Virginia holding the immense tracts of unappropriated land, very soon adopted the idea suggested by Congress of granting land bounties to her officers and soldiers both in the State and Continental establishments. To a Major-General 15,000 acres of land, and to a Brigadier-General 10,000. For this purpose the lands surveyed by Christopher Gist were again surveyed, and the land not in possession of settlers was so disposed of.

Colonel George Morgan, whose name appears above, was a member of the firm of Baynton, Wharton & Company. In 1776 he was made the Indian agent for the Middle Department, with headquarters at Pittsburgh. He remained here after the war and settled in Washington county, his extensive estate called Morganza, a name that has endured and has been well known for many years as the seat of the Pennsylvania Reform School.

Things seemed to run smoothly about Fort Pitt after the treaty at Fort Stanwix. The only important event was the arrival of Washington and his party in October, 1770, the details of which Washington recorded in his journal of his journey to the Kanawha. Craig says: "We will permit him to speak for himself as to what he saw here by an extract from his journal." We may read it here as Washington recorded:

October 17-Dr. Craik and myself with Capt. Crawford and others arrived at Fort Pitt, distant from the crossing forty-three and a half measured miles. In riding this distance we passed over a great deal of exceedingly fine land, especially from Sewickley creek to Turtle creek, but the whole broken, resembling, as I think the whole lands in this country do the London lands. We lodged in what is called the town distant about three hundred yards from the fort at one Semple's, who keeps a very good house of public entertainment. The houses which are built of logs, and ranged in streets, are on the Monongahela, and I suppose, may be about twenty in number, and inhabited by Indian traders. The fort is built on the point between the rivers Allegheny and Monongahela, but not so near the pitch of it as Fort Duquesne. It is five sided and regular, two of which near the land are of brick; the other stockade. A moat encompasses it. The Garrison consists of two companies of Royal Irish commanded by Captain Edmonson.

This was Washington's first return to a well known locality, for he had been here with Gist in 1753 and with Forbes in 1758. He knew the situation of Fort Duquesne, but had not seen the second Fort Pitt,

though he did see the first begun and parted there with his friend Captain Hugh Mercer. The London lands referred to were those of the London Company. Craig observes most justly:

It happens singularly enough that the very first description of the point on which Pittsburgh stands was from the pen of Washington, and the very first statement, which exists, of the number of houses here, is from the same pen. He estimates the number of houses at this place, out of the fort of course, as about twenty. We have no doubt that the number was more likely to be under than over his estimate. But suppose there were twenty, and that there were six persons to a house; Pittsburgh then contained, exclusive of the garrison, one hundred twenty persons, men, women and children.

There is much conjecture here. In 1760 Bouquet enumerated 149 people, which fact Craig seems to have overlooked. Colonel Burd recorded that there were 201 houses finished and unfinished, including huts, and made an "N. B." to this effect: "The above houses exclusive of those in the fort; in the fort five long barricks and a long casimitt." The last word is his spelling of casement. What became of this aggregation during the decade that had elapsed? Washington surely could count the houses, and that he had ample opportunity to view the little town is clear, for he rode out to Croghan's, as he relates:

October 18-Dined in the fort with Colonel Croghan and the officers of the garribon: supped there also, meeting with great civility from the gentlemen, and engaged to dine with Colonel Croghan the next day at his seat about four miles up the Allegheny. 19th Received a message from Colonel Croghan that the White Mingo and other Chiefs of the Six Nations had something to say to me, and desiring that I would be at his house about eleven where they were to meet me. I went up and received a speech with a string of wampum, from the White Mingo, to the following effect:

"That as I was a person whom some of them remember to have seen when I was sent on an Embassy to the French, and most of them had heard of, they were come to bid me welcome to this country and desire that the people of Virginia would consider them as friends and brothers linked together in one chain; that I would inform the Governor that it was their wish to live in peace and harmony with the white people, and that though there had been some unhappy differences between them and the people on our frontiers, they were all made up, and they hoped forgotten; and concluded with saying that their brothers of Virginia did not come among them and trade as the inhabitants of the other provinces did, from whence they were afraid that we did not look upon them with so friendly an eye as they could wish."

To this I answered after thanking them for their friendly welcome "that all the injuries and affronts that had passed on either side were now totally forgotten, and that I was sure nothing was more wished and desired by the people of Virginia than to live in the strictest friendship with them; that the Virginians were a people not so much engaged in trade as the Pennsylvanians, which was the reason for their not being so much among them, but that it was possible they might for the time to come have stricter connexions with them and that I would acquaint the government with their desires."

After we dined at Colonel Croghan's we returned to Pittsburgh, Colonel Croghan with us, who intended to accompany us part of the way down the river, having engaged an Indian called the Pheasant, and one Joseph Nicholson, an interpreter, to attend us the whole voyage; also a young Indian warrior.

20th-We embarked in a large canoe with sufficient store of provisions and necessaries and the following persons besides Dr. Craik and myself, to wit: Captain Crawford, Joseph Nicholson, Robert Bell, William Harrison, Charles Morgan, and Daniel Rendon, a boy of Captain Crawford's, and the Indians who were in a canoe by themselves. From Fort Pitt we sent our horses and boys back to Captain Crawford's with orders to meet us there again on the 14th day of November. Colonel Croghan, Lieutenant Hamilton and Magee set out with us. At two we dined at Mr. Magee's and

encamped ten miles below, and four miles above Logstown. We passed several large islands which appeared to be very good, as the bottoms did on each side of the river alternately the hills on one side being opposite the bottoms on the other, which seem generally to be about three or four hundred yards wide and so vice versa.

"Magee" referred to Alexander McKee. William Crawford, subsequently colonel during the Revolution, was one of Washington's firm friends, whose melancholy end must ever awaken emotions. Harrison was a son-in-law of Crawford, and he, too, perished at the stake when captured by the Indians in the ill-fated Crawford expedition in 1782. Crawford's home was on the Youghiogheny, at what is now New Haven, Pennsylvania, opposite Connellsville, the locality in border times known as Stewart's Crossing. Before coming to Pittsburgh in 1770, Washington stopped at Crawford's. At Logstown, Washington was on familiar ground, as he had been there with Gist in 1753. Proceeding down the river everything went well with the Washington party. On October 28th, when encamped below the Big Hocking river, Washington met an old acquaintance in the person of Guyasutha, whom he records as "Kiyashuta," "he being one of the Indians who went with me to the French in 1753." There was a pow-wow immediately, similar to that with the White Mingo at Croghan's which Guyasutha rehearsed to Washingtonhow informed Washington does not state. He did record and lament the tedious ceremony which the Indians observe in their counsellings and speeches which detained Washington until 9 o'clock-preventing an early start. However, the party was treated with great kindness and Guyasutha presented a quarter of a very fine buffalo. In Washington's journal of 1753, Guyasutha is mentioned as "the Hunter."

An account of the services of the Moravian brethren in Western Pennsylvania, Zeisberger, Hecke welder, Post, Roth, Ettwein and others, may be omitted, as not being strictly local in character and as being confined to missionary efforts among the Indians. In April, 1770, four years after the arrival of the Revs. Beatty and Duffield, the garrison of Fort Pitt and the townspeople were astonished to see fifteen canoes of Christianized Delawares descend the Allegheny, proceeding down the Ohio and up the Big Beaver, encamping and establishing a town five miles below the site of New Castle. These were the converts of the Moravian missionaries and their town has been commemorated in the Lawrence county town of Moravia. These Christian Indians removed to the Tuscarawas in Ohio in 1773, where their settlements lasted for nine years and their massacre in 1782 by Washington county settlers brought untold calamities on the Western frontier, the ill-fated expedition and tragic death of Colonel Crawford.

Following the visit of the Revs. Beatty and Duffield there came, in the summer of 1772, the Rev. Daniel McClure, a missionary visiting the Indians on the Muskingum. He, too, kept a diary in which he recorded that "he tarried three weeks at Pittsburgh and preached several times to the people of the village who live in about thirty log houses, and also to the British garrison in the fort, a few rods distant, at the request of the commanding officer, Major Edmundstone."

The account of the hospitality shown Washington will serve to recall the fact that he was already famous. The White Mingo attested that. His coming was a bright ray in the dreary round of frontier garrison life Undoubtedly the various officers of the garrison at the fort from its erection were gentlemen by birth, education and inclination. They could exercise little influence of an uplifting nature upon the rabble that lived in the village "a few rods away." These officers had a social circle peculiarly their own, narrow of necessity and not open to any of the villagers. We must not include Croghan, who was an official of the crown. Croghan was a unique character. E. W. Hassler says Croghan was an Episcopalian when he allowed religion to bother him at all.

Croghan was a faithful official, a man of some education, a land grabber and an Indian trader to the extent that historians have called him the "King of the Traders." As the greatest man in authority here he was looked up to in matters of safety. As an individual he did little for the moral side of the community. In Colonial days preceding the Revolution, with no schools, no churches and but little preaching, it takes slight imagination to picture the collection of hovels about Fort Pitt, which then constituted Pittsburgh as a town without uprightness and we are in a manner prepared for Hugh Henry Brackenridge's comments made in 1786, and Arthur Lee's unfavorable mention in 1784.

In October, 1772, orders were received by Major Edmondstone, in command at Fort Pitt, from General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, directing him to abandon the fort. Edmonstone sold the pickets, stone, timbers, brick and iron of the fort and redoubts for £50, New York currency. A corporal and three men were left to take care of the boats and batteaux intended to keep up communication. "Thus," says Craig, "it appears that Fort Pitt, which had cost the government about £60,000 sterling, and which was designed to secure forever British empire on the Ohio, was within thirteen years ordered to be abandoned. Such is the short-sightedness of our wisest statesmen that even William Pitt could not foresee the early abandonment of the formidable work which bore his name."26

But the fort was not destroyed, though abandoned as a military post by the British government. John Connolly came, as detailed in our next chapter, and during the Revolutionary War the work was constantly occupied by Continental troops, first the Virginia battalion under Captain John Neville, and then by the Continental forces under General Edward Hand, Colonel Daniel Brodhead and General William Irvine, and there thus came into Pittsburgh history these notable names.

26"History of Pittsburgh;" Edition 1917, p. 97.

2

CHAPTER XXVI.

Virginia Assumes Jurisdiction.

Virginia assumed jurisdiction of the region of the Forks of the Ohio in no gentle manner. Smithfield street is one of the original streets of Pittsburgh, and since the laying out of the town one of the principal thoroughfares north and south. In its name is commemorated the name of Devereux Smith, a thorough patriot and a devoted adherent of the Penns, whose strong opposition to the designs of Lord Dunmore and his scoundrelly factotum, John Connolly, made much of the history of Pittsburgh of 1774-1775 and brought suffering and imprisonment upon Smith. Incidentally the name of Devereux Smith opens up the whole controversy between Lord Dunmore and the Penns regarding the boundary line of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and serves to recall how nearly Pittsburgh came to being included in slave territory. The story ramifies widely. It can be made to include the conflict of jurisdiction between the Pennsylvania magistrates, chief of whom were Arthur St. Clair and Devereux Smith, and those of Virginia appointed by Dunmore, chief of these being George Croghan and his cousin, Thomas Smallman. Connolly was a Pennsylvanian by birth, "smart," as we say now, and thoroughly unscrupulous. Craig says he was a daring, enterprising and sanguine man, and had been a good deal in this country. Connolly reigned with a high hand. He was thoroughly hated by the Pennsylvania contingent in Pittsburgh and his downfall was sudden and complete. When Connolly took possession of the ruined Fort Pitt he changed its name to Fort Dunmore, but the name did not stick. The troubles inspired by Connolly involving Smith and his compatriots lasted until the summer of 1775.

The boundary dispute arose from the transactions of the Ohio Company, which originated in London in 1748. Its projector was John Hanbury, a merchant of London, seconded by Thomas Lee, president of the Council of Virginia, and the stockholders were largely Virginians, among them the executors of the estate of Lawrence Washington, and Augustine Washington, Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, Colonel Thomas Cresap, and George Mason. George II., in 1749, granted the company 500,000 acres, 200,000 to be taken from the south side of the Allegheny (otherwise the Ohio) between the Kiskiminetas and Buffalo creek, and between Yellow creek (Ohio) and Cross creek on the North side, or in such other part of the country west of the Allegheny Mountains as they should think proper, on condition that they should settle 100 families thereon within seven years, and erect and maintain a fort. On compliance with these terms the 300,000 acres additional were to become the company's to adjoin the first grant. The company began operations immediately. It brought a large cargo of goods from England, built a storehouse opposite the mouth of Will's creek, on the site of Cumberland, Maryland,

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