Source:Fleming-devereux
George T. Fleming. "Devereux Smith gives name to street: Pioneer and patriot long a resident of Pittsburgh district honored: Tales of bygone days." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, May 9, 1915, sec. 5, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85758093.
OF PITTSBURGH's downtown streets Smithfield as yet has received no mention. It commemorates the name of Devereux Smith, a thorough patriot and 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 during the years 1774–75, 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.
The story can expand into the account of Dunmore's war, the battle of Point Pleasant, an account of Col. Michael Cresap, the murder of Logan's family, the speech of Logan, sent to Dunmore through the hands of Col. John Gibson; the imprisonment of Connolly, his perfidy; the flight of Dunmore; the opening of the revolution; the stirring times at Fort Pitt; the triumph of Pennsylvania, and the birth of the nation.
A Historic Street.
Quite a few items of history evolve from the consideration of the story of an individual, whose name has been bestowed upon a main thoroughfare here, one of our best known commemorations in fact—and how's a fellow going to get it all in within the space of an ordinary newspaper article?
Say something now and leave the rest for future articles. Many facts can be brought up by reason of pertinency suggested from the consideration of other commemorated names—those of contemporaries.
Verily Smithfield is a street that shines as an evolution of Pittsburgh history—as much as Penn and Forbes and Ross and of a different era.
I am unable to find the exact date that Devereux Smith came to Fort Pitt or when he died. He was a trader and merchant at the fort who came prominently into the history of Pittsburgh in the years immediately preceding the revolution and figures in our history for 15 years or more. His holdings of lands were divided by Wood's [sic] and Vickroy's plan of the city, made in 1784.
The name Smith's Field street naturally became Smithfield, the final "s" in each word lost in the excess of sibilance and the difficulty of enunciation.
In the maps of Pittsburgh published in 1795, frequently published in the marginal numbered references, none refer to Devereux Smith. James Ross, Samuel Ewalt, John Ormsby, John Neville, Isaac Craig, James O'Hara, John Gibson, John Wilkins and other pioneer residents find mention and their dwellings are marked and referred to.
In the list of inhabitants printed in The Gazette January 9, 1796, Devereux Smith is mentioned, residing on Ferry street.
Smithfield street between Fourth and Diamond, the map shows, is badly broken by Hoggs Pond, the inlet of the pond at the foot of Wood street, with a fork at Wood and Third, opening into a small pond that extends nearly to Diamond street. The main pond reaches to Grant street at Strawberry alley and it is widest at Diamond street, the lower side half way to Wood street and the upper touching Cherry alley.
Old Piling Found.
When the foundations of the new William Penn Hotel were begun the builders found the pilings that had been driven in 1868 to make sure the foundations of the Third Presbyterian Church. The daily onlookers at the progress of the work on the hotel, saw vast quantities of muck removed from the deep pit dug for the basement of the building.
Similar conditions confronted the builders at Fifth and Smithfield, both in 1885 when the original Kaufmann stores were erected and in the recent rebuilding.
On the site of the Henry W. Oliver Building, however, the excavation showed beds of sand, betokening an old river bottom.
The Frick Building and the Court house, built on Grants Hill, of which the pond was the foot, we know were built upon rock, the recent excavation in the cutting down of the site of the former St. Paul's Cathedral revealing much rock.
The present excavation and that of the new City–County Building will prove interesting also. This geological phase of street history is not without its lesson.
William A. Herron and William Thaw and their co-temporary boyhood companions were wont to relate how they used to go swimming in Hogg's pond at Smithfield and Fifth.
William Thaw was born at Wood and Third in 1818, as the commemorating tablet on the Thaw Building there shows, and William A. Herron at Penn and Eighth in 1821, so that estimating their "swimming years" from 12 up, Hogg's pond must have been considerable of a pond in the early '30s and Smithfield street still a broken thoroughfare or a bridged or filled one. Likely the street and Cherry alley were filled in and the remains of the pond left between the street and the alley.
Smithfield street, from 1816 a bridge street, naturally became a great thoroughfare. It was first a residence street, then small stores gradually came in the retail line; the postoffice removed from old Philo Hall at Third and Market in 1851, gave some tone to that corner and brought trade up town following a line bisecting the angle of the rivers, with the shifting centers of trade along that line and still following the same line.
Old Pictures Preserved.
We have some early views of Smithfield street preserved by the congregation of the German United Evangelical Protestant Church at Sixth avenue, on the plot of ground donated by the Penns in 1787. This ground, included between Sixth avenue and Strawberry way, Smithfield street and Montour way, formerly Miltenberger alley, comprises lots 455 and 456 of the original plan of Pittsburgh, 1784.
Smithfield street was yet a resident street in the early '70s. From Diamond street, then an alley, both sides of Smithfield were swept bare in the fire of 1845. Afterwards a row of small buildings, many one-storied, stood on both sides of the street between Diamond and Fifth. These were supplanted by the block known as the Howard block on the north side and the Kaufmann store on the other.
The Howard block was erected about 1870. The buildings that gave way to the Kaufmann stores were in two sections, the first about half way from Fifth toward Diamond were razed in 1885, the others in recent years.
When the Birmingham horse cars first began street service, the terminus at Fifth avenue and Smithfield street and the line was extended to Washington and Liberty streets in 1874. Smithfield, as other streets, was paved with cobblestones found in the rivers.
Transportation in those years was vastly different. Switch service from the railroads was unthought of. The many foundries and iron works hauled their large castings and heavy output through the streets to the few freight depots. Various vehicles were used, drays predominating; huge timber wheels drawn by four to 30 horses were common. After transportation of a load requiring this latter number the street usually needed repaving on that part without car tracks.
The noise made by these rumbling vehicles can be imagined. In 1855 the first high school of the city was established and housed for 12 years at the present numbers 508–510 Smithfield street. The noises without contributed just the opposite of quiet and ease, deemed essential to study.
An Unsolved Problem.
Indeed, when one takes a retrospective view, and contrasts the vast and costly machinery of our modern school system, its varied curricula that include everything but ethics, the wonder grows apace that the children of those years ever learned anything, and how they ever did, must be left as one of the unanswered problems of pioneer (sic) days and the word pioneer take for a much overworked word.
Oh yes! these thoughts arise logically from the history of the street The old high school buildings still stand, part of the Mellon holdings and they are stern reminders of other days; and surely contrasts are always in order.
Across the street in 1867 there stood part of the buildings of the foundry owned and operated by Ballman, Garrison & Co., the most of the buildings of the foundry having been razed to give place to the old postoffice and custom house in 1851.
These ramshackle holdovers were demolished in 1867 and the foundations of the present Municipal Hall begun and huge blocks of stone hauled from the Allegheny River taken from the piers of the canal aqueduct that crossed the river just below the railroad bridge at Eleventh street.
Municipal Hall, now a discredited and inadequate structure, was not completed until 1872
A souvenir book was printed by the city in 1874, complete in detail, with ground plans sections, elevations and all such relevant matter. The hall was dedicated with interesting and appropriate ceremonies May 23, 1872, and the city government took permanent possession
City Hall Celebration.
Newspaper accounts reveal that there was no needless display or extravagant expenditure in the inauguration, but a sensible and fitting celebration of the event. The program had been before the public for several days and the arrangements were all in good taste and admirably carried out.
The day was inauspicious—it rained heavily.
The bell on the hall at 6 o'clock a. m. rang out 1–7–5–8, the date of the French evacuation of Fort Duquesne. At 9 o'clock the bell struck 1–7–6–4, the date of the building of the Bouquet blockhouse; the redoubt of the English. The band in the first case played "The Marseillaise." (How appropriate); in the second, "God save the Queen."
Then followed the program, Henry W. Oliver, Jr., then president of Common Council, presiding.
In the wall at the first stair landing was placed the tablet from the Block House, which was restored when the Daughters of the Revolution took possession.
We should have some account of Devereux Smith's troubles and tribulations by reason of his opposition to the designs of Dunmore and Connolly. Smith was a writer and put his thoughts on paper in vigorous style. These are preserved in the Colonial Records, Craig's "Olden Time and Rupp's History of Western Pennsylvania and the West."
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, and George Mason.
Big Land Grant.
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 Kiskiminitas 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 Wills' Creek, New Cumberland, Md., and by 1751 had built a road to Turkey-foot, or the three forks of the Youghiogheny. It employed Christopher Gist in 1750, who then began his surveys in its interest.
The relations of Gist with the company are related in his "Journals" and these, with much pertinent matter, were published in Pittsburgh in 1893, arranged with historical, geographical, and ethnological notes by the late William M. Darlington.
The company first designed a fort at Shurtees Creek on the Ohio, which we know as Chartiers, the name Shurtee, a border pronunciation of the French cognomen of Peter Chartiers who had a trading post there as early as 1743.
Col. Cresap, Capts. Trent and Gist were appointed a committee and authorized to procure workmen to build the fort there, stock it and provide ammunition and ordnance.
Guns for New Fort.
Twenty swivel guns were ordered from London through Hanbury, the plans and transactions of the committee approved by the company at a regular meeting November 2, 1753, and an assessment of £20 sterling made upon each member for building and finishing the proposed fort and clearing the road from Will's Creek to the "Mohongaly," which was to be finished with the utmost dispatch.
We know this projected fort was not built. The doubt as to jurisdiction over the territory about the forks of the Ohio had already arisen.
However, by consent of the Penns, Dinwiddie sent Capt. Trent and his company to build the fort at the Forks, the Point, we call it
Ensign Edward Ward, left in command by Treat [sic], was in charge at the fort. Contracoeur and his flotilla came down the Allegheny River and April 17, 1754, summoned Ward to surrender. Resistance was useless. Ward had but 41 men, Contracoeur hundreds. Contracoeur built Fort Duquesne. The French jurisdiction began. Bloody deeds followed for over four years.
Braddock came, Maj. Grant came and both met defeat. Forbes came, and Bouquet; Duquesne vanished, Pitt arose. A larger and better fort succeeded the first Fort Pitt and Pittsburgh began. It was still unsettled whether the town belonged to Virginia or to the Penns.
We pass over much intervening history and come to the year 1772. In October Gen. Thomas Gage of Boston Revolutionary fame, commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, who had been under Braddock in 1755 and in the battle where his chief lost his life, ordered the demolition of Fort Pitt. To that end Maj. Charles Edmondstone (not Edmonson, or Edmund Stone, as some histories name him), was in command, and sold the fort all the pickets, brick, timber and iron in the buildings, the walls and redoubts to Alexander Ross and William Thompson for £50, New York currency.
Costly Fort Torn Down.
The work is estimated to have cost the British government £60,000. It was a formidable and well constructed fortress.
Judge H. H. Brackenridge in the first number of the Pittsburgh Gazette, July 29, 1786, in writing of the fort, places this estimate upon the cost of the fort. Other historians think the amount excessive and that a typographical error increased the amount from £6,000.
Building forts in the wilderness necessarily was expensive work. The bricks were made on the ground; the timber cut nearby and it is difficult to see how upwards of $250,000 could have been expended in construction.
However, the fort which was designed to secure British empire forever on the Ohio was within 13 years ordered to be abandoned. Craig remarks:
However, the fort was not destroyed, though abandoned. Some of the material of the fort was used to erect houses in the town before the sale was set aside.
In 1772 a corporal and three men only had been left in charge. In 1773 Richard Penn advised that a small garrison be left in the fort as a protection from the Indians.
The boundary dispute in 1774 was still unsettled.
Troubles Begin.
Enter now Dr. John Connolly at the behest of Lon [sic] Dunmore. Armed forces accompany Connolly. Critical times arise, and now begin the troubles of Devereux Smith, Arthur St. Clair, John Ormsby, Aeneas Mackay, et al.
We—that is to say our ancestors—were Virginians if force and duress counted in the making of Virginians, and force and duress are never acceptable.
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.
As early as 1754 the Penns had tried to have their western boundary fixed. The claims of Virginia to the lands west and northwest of their coastline were indefinite. The fort proposed by Dinwiddie at the forks of the Ohio was built with the consent of the Penns as a safeguard against the mutual enemy of both colonies, the French.
Dinwiddie had sent Washington to the French fort in 1753, a futile mission it turned out. It must have amused the redoubtable and gentlemanly Legardeur de St. Pierre, the French commander, when he considered the presumption of Dinwiddie. At any rate St. Pierre evidently had a quiet little laugh in the interior of his sleeve, and was fully justified in giving old Robert Dinwiddie, the rapacious grouch at Williamsburg, Va., what we know now as the ha-ha.
Fort Is Not Built.
And all the time the Penns sighed, and Dinwiddie swore, and his fort was not built. Thomas Penn, wise man, stipulated that if this fort was built it must be without prejudice to his claim if the site be found within the Pennsylvania limits. The Penns claimed that the forks were six miles within her grant.
In the ultimate settlement of the boundary line they got much more; what the map of Pennsylvania shows.
As early as 1770 the Virginia authorities began to interest themselves in the colony on the Ohio, and settlers came into the region. In 1773, the Penns petitioned the king to settle the boundary dispute, but Dunmore denied their rights and declared a large tract of land some 50 miles within Pennsylvania territory to be under his control. Dunmore's pliant tool, Connolly, came, settlers were granted land by Virginia and many petty feuds ensued between settlers claiming rights from both parties.
Connolly reigned with a high hand. He was thoroughly hated by the Pennsylvania contingent in Pittsburgh and his downfall was complete when it came.
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 Devereux, Smith and his compatriots lasted until the summer of 1775.