Neville Street

For other streets that have been named Neville Street, see Neville Street (disambiguation).

Neville Street
Neighborhoods	Lower Lawrenceville, North Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill North
Origin of name	Probably John Neville

At least three men important in Pittsburgh's early history bore the name Neville: General John Neville, his son Colonel Presley Neville, and his grandson Neville B. Craig.

General John Neville (1731–1803) was an officer in the Revolutionary War. He was a private in the ill-fated expedition of General Edward Braddock (eponym of Braddock Avenue) to Fort Duquesne in 1755. As a captain, he commanded the Virginia troops that occupied Fort Pitt in 1775, remaining there for two years. In 1794, he was appointed "Inspector of Excise" by President Washington to collect the recently enacted "whiskey tax." The tax was very unpopular in western Pennsylvania. Neville suffered repeated threats on his life, and his house was attacked and burned—a critical event in the Whiskey Rebellion. General Neville is the source of the name of Neville Island, formerly Montour's Island, in the Ohio River.

John Neville's son, Colonel Presley Neville (1755–1818), served from 1804 to 1805 as the Chief Burgess of the Borough of Pittsburgh (the equivalent of mayor before the 1816 city charter).

Neville B. Craig (1787–1863), a newspaper editor and early historian of Pittsburgh, was the son of Isaac Craig (eponym of Craig Street) and grandson of General John Neville. He was born in the Fort Pitt Block House in 1787. He bought the Pittsburgh Gazette in 1829 and was its editor until 1841. In 1846 he began a monthly historical magazine called Olden Time, and later published a History of Pittsburgh.

Bob Regan says "there are two possibilities reported in the literature" for the origin of the name of Neville Street, listing John Neville and Presley Neville. James K. DeLaney, George T. Fleming, Julia Morgan Harding, Gilbert Love, Torsten Ove, and Lillian Thomas point to John Neville. Some sources claim Presley Neville. And at least one source associates Neville Street with Neville B. Craig. Annie Clark Miller says that Neville was one of the "family names" used for streets when Bellefield, the farm of Neville B. Craig, was divided into city blocks, along with Bellefield, Craig, and Wallingford.

There is an unmarked segment of Neville Street in Lower Lawrenceville, in Skunk Hollow, just west of where the Bloomfield Bridge crosses the ravine. A building of the M. O'Herron Company displays a sign with the address "3807 Neville St." The Hopkins atlas from 1889–1890 shows Neville Street running continuously from 33rd Street to Forward Avenue in Four Mile Run (today Saline Street), though the portion south of Forbes Avenue is called Boundary Street in both earlier and later maps.