of goods. The Alleghany River was the Indian boundary, and in time of peace the Indian trade brought to the town hundreds of canoes and pirogues, by means of which a regular intercourse was maintained with remote towns in the country still in possession of the natives. After the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania was formally extended over the southwestern portion of the state in the organization of counties, population began to press forward into the most exposed points contiguous to the Indian boundary, and the village of Pittsburgh now assumed the form of a regular American town. It was in the month of May, 1784, that Colonel George Woods, agent for the proprietors and heirs of William Penn, to whom the land belonged, as a portion of one of the manors of the original grantee, first surveyed and laid out the regular plan of a town, which was called Pittsburgh.* About the same time, the settlement at "Red Stone Old Fort" had become an important point of embarkation for emigrants to Kentucky, and bid fair to be the future seat of trade for the western country. In the spring of the same year, Thomas and Basil Brown, from Maryland, having purchased the claim formerly belonging to Captain Michael Cresap, including the "Old Fort," deemed it a suitable point for a town. In May, 1785, they laid off a plot near the "Old Fort," and called it by its present name of "Brownsville." Thus began the oldest town on the Monongahela. [A.D. 1785.] The situation of this place, as the point to which nearly the whole western emigration concentrated previous to its descent of the Ohio, soon gave to Brownsville a trade and importance unknown then to any town in the West. Before the close of the year 1786, its population had increased to five hundred souls. Many of these were engaged in the mechanic arts which contribute chiefly to boat-building, and supply the rude necessaries for barge and flat-boat navigation. Emigrants who designed taking water at Wheeling, where the voyage to Kentucky would be shortened one hundred and sixty miles, were still obliged to take Brownsville in their route, and here supply themselves for their future journey. This produced a necessity for mercantile houses, provided with the articles indispensable to the emigrants. * Pittsburgh Navigator for 1814. Also, American Pioneer, vol. i., p. 302–308. Heretofore the western settlers had been compelled to send their annual " caravans" across the mountains to Fort Cumberland, Hagerstown, Frederictown, or some other point, for all their supplies, which were transported upon pack-horses several hundred miles to the West. But this usage was now about to cease, and be superseded by regular commercial houses at Brownsville, which could supply the emigrants with implements of agriculture, provisions, salt, iron, and other articles indispensable in a new country. [A.D. 1787.] By the following year, several mercantile houses were established, and supplied with goods hauled in wagons across the mountains from Forts Cumberland and Ligonier. These tended to give additional importance to Brownsville, as a point of embarkation for the West. Emigrants could carry money with less inconvenience than the heavy articles for which they could exchange it at the end of their journey. Of course, money would seek its way to the West, instead of being carried to the East. A good wagon road had been opened to Brownsville from the East, and a regular line of freight-wagons from Baltimore and Frederictown had been established, each wagon making the trip to Brownsville and back, with full loads, once a month. The cost of transportation over this route was generally three dollars per hundred weight, and the great numbers of emigrants to the West soon opened a profitable commerce between these remote points. The same cause soon made Brownsville one of the most active trading and manufacturing towns in the West. The demand for mechanics and manufacturers of a certain class brought great numbers of adventurers from the East in search of profitable employment. The great demand was for carpenters and boat-builders, to supply conveyance for the hundreds of emigrants who arrived every week, seeking boats of all kinds for the voyage to Kentucky and Western Virginia, as well as to the Northwestern Territory. The boat-building and the boating business soon became an im- . portant branch of western enterprise. Hundreds of arks, keels, barges, and every variety of boats, kept up a constant intercourse between the Monongahela and the settlements on the Ohio below, and also with the city of New Orleans, and the rich settlements on the Lower Mississippi." * See American Pioneer, vol. ii., p. 62, 63. In the mean time, Pittsburgh had been rapidly increasing its population and business. Already a printing-office had been established by John Scull and Joseph Hall, two industrious. young men, who had embarked their whole means in the enterprise. On the 29th of July, 1786, they had issued the first number of the "Pittsburgh Gazette," and the first newspaper printed west of the mountains,* and more than a year before the first newspaper was printed in Kentucky. It was not until March, 1787, that a town meeting in Pittsburgh first resolved to establish a weekly market, and to erect a market-house. [A.D. 1788.] As late as the year 1788, Pittsburgh was a small frontier town, thirty miles distant from the county seat of Westmoreland county, to which it pertained. Hannahstown was the county seat, to which the people of Pittsburgh had to repair on county business, twelve miles east of Chestnut Ridge. On the 24th of September of that year they were released from these journeys by the organization of " Alleghany county," taken from Westmoreland and Washington counties. From that time Pittsburgh became the county seat for Alleghany county,† and began to assume importance as a trading and manufacturing town; mercantile and trading establishments began to appear, mechanics flocked to it for employment, and manufactures and trade began to extend. The inhabitants on the Monongahela and Yough had already found agriculture a profitable employment; and the produce of their fields, in the form of flour, whisky, and other surplus products of a new country, had already passed Pittsburgh, and found its way down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. A new class of hardy pioneers, under the name of "boatmen," now sprang up, who carried the products of the Monongahela and its tributaries to the more recent settlements of Kentucky, and to the Spanish provinces of Louisiana and West Florida. Thus commenced the first regular trade between Pittsburgh and New Orleans. Manufactures had already begun to flourish in Western Pennsylvania. Iron had been found in great abundance from its first settlement, and the great demand for it, connected with the difficulty of transporting it from the east side of the mountains, soon prompted the erection of furnaces and iron-works. The first blast-furnace west of the mountains was " Union Fur+ Idem, p. 306. American Pioneer, vol. i., p. 305. 66 |