Fort Duquesne and Fort Pitt; Early Names of Pittsburgh Streets

Part 4

Chapter 41,134 wordsPublic domain

Pittsburgh has always been preeminently a hospitable city, and it is possible that in no other town of its size is there as much entertaining. At weddings, too, the display of presents is an object of surprise to the out-of-town guests, unused to such lavishness. Tracing our Provincial characteristics back to their remote origins, we discover that Pittsburgh at the end of the nineteenth century, in the grip of hereditary, imitates the traders and early settlers in this region, who were in the habit of entertaining whole tribes of Indians, and of making them frequent gifts. Gay blankets, red paint, strings of wampum and barrels of whiskey are not now exchanged at Christmas and on New Year's Day, or shown at wedding feasts, as we have improved somewhat upon the primitive customs of our forefathers, but the instinct is unchanged.

Noted for the beauty and brilliancy of our balls, and the excellence of our dinners, it may be interesting to know something of our first attempts in the art of social entertaining. In a letter from Capt. Ecuyer, commandant at Fort Pitt, dated January 8th, 1763, written to Col. Bouquet, he informs the latter that they have a ball every Saturday evening, graced by the presence of the most beautiful ladies of the garrison. No mention is made of any solid refreshment, but we are informed that "the punch was abundant," and it is also intimated that if the fair sex did not find it strong enough for their taste, they knew where the whiskey was kept and how to remedy the fault. Gay indeed must have been the dancing and the merriment inspired by the frontier punch and the shrieks of the Indians outside the stockade, for at that very time hostile savages surrounded and threatened the lonely fort. No wonder the revellers needed strong drinks to keep up their spirits! It is indeed very doubtful if the very strongest ever brewed would give nerve enough to Pittsburgh belles of today to enable them to dance a cotillon to the tune of Indian whoops and yells.

As to more intellectual pursuits, it would at first seem impossible to discover what our frontier ancestors did in the way of reading. News from the outside world was not to be depended upon, and books a rare article, one would presume; but information often comes from unexpected sources, and in an edition of Robertson's "Charles Fifth," "printed for the subscribers in America in 1770," is "a list of subscribers whose names posterity may respect, because of their seasonable encouragement the American edition hath been accomplished at a price so moderate that the man of the woods, as well as the man of the court, may solace himself with sentimental delight." In this list we find the name of "Ensign Francis Howard, of the Royal Irish at Fort Pitt," the only subscriber west of the mountains.

We can imagine the young soldier, far from home and friends, reading of those far-off times of war and peril, the winter wind howling up and down the river and beating against the Block House, carrying with it the echo, perhaps, of an Indian death halloo! Doubtless he wondered what the stern Spanish campaigner would have done if brought to the western wilderness to fight the red man, and, if he lived to return to his English home with his scalp intact, it is more than probable that Ensign Francis Howard's tales of America warfare and adventure were the delight of many a hunting dinner or evening fireside.

Few indeed are the tangible relics of the most romantic period of our local history. The writer owns a copy of the edition of "Charles Fifth," and in all probability it is the one that the English ensign read at Fort Pitt. A few old letters, maps and account books, some cannon balls, rusty swords and bayonets, the handsome carved stone sun dial which the Chapter has placed for safe keeping in Carnegie Museum until its own home is built, are about all we can show of the works and possessions of the men who made our early history.

Here was the scene of a mighty struggle for empire, a struggle of which the only vestiges left are the Block House and the names of our streets, too many of which have been changed in recent years to suit the vulgar needs of convenience and at the cost of our historical identity.

JULIA MORGAN HARDING.

Postscript.

1914.

Much water has run under the bridges of the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers, since the sketch, "The Names of Pittsburgh Streets" was written, and changes as radical as those that took place between the first years of the Nineteenth Century and the early days of the twentieth, have revolutionized the historic "Point" in the last decade.

Just as the French and Indians stole down the river before the advance of Gen. Forbes and his British and Colonial troops in 1758, so did the denizens of the aforesaid "Point" melt away in every direction before the steam shovels, creaking derricks and snorting engines of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1904-05.

With the consolidation of Pittsburgh and Allegheny into one city came other changes. Some of the old streets whose names commemorated dead patriots associated with Colonial and Revolutionary Pittsburgh, are buried under embankments, concrete walls and brick warehouses. Other names have been dropped and certain etymological curiosities have been put in their places. Still others have been transferred to distant and irrelevant localities, and an old resident, returning from the world of shades would be sadly confused if looking for old landmarks, Fort Pitt and all pertaining to it, excepting only the Block House, vanished long ago. There is nothing left of the later age which saw "Rice's Castle" in its glory. The new industrialism is steadily and rapidly blotting out the picturesque and historic all around us. Let all good Pittsburghers unite to preserve the little that is left, the Redoubt built by Col. Bouquet in 1764.

JULIA MORGAN HARDING.

1914.