Source:Fleming-north-side
George T. Fleming. "North Side has interesting history: This part of Pittsburgh once proposed as Allegheny county seat: Some old residents." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, June 4, 1916, sec. 6, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85468418.
THE HISTORY stories as evolved from names of Pittsburgh streets have been mainly taken from commemorations in the old city, or original Pittsburgh—"Peninsular Pittsburgh" is the correct term—and also from its extensions to the East, or between the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. No mention heretofore except an occasional reference has been made of Allegheny streets or those on the North Side, or of former Allegheny town and Allegheny city.
There is much history that can be brought out by the same deductions as the Pittsburgh history so far presented.
The North Side or former Allegheny has a separate and distinct history from Pittsburgh. It has a different system of plotting and was not in the manor here reserved by the heirs of William Penn and known in history as the "Manor of Pittsburgh."
In fact, Allegheny had a slow growth and it was not until after the Civil War 1861–65, that the city leaped out of its original boundaries of four wards and began to consolidate with adjacent boroughs and to annex parts of bordering townships.
During the controversy in regard to making Allegheny part of Pittsburgh, it was urged in opposition to their arguments against annexation that as a city it had grown by annexation and that the same reasons that were potent in bringing territory within the corporate limits of Allegheny city were as potent in bringing Allegheny into the corporate limits of Pittsburgh. Annexation we may call the process; forcibly those opposed said.
We understand now that when the long-drawn legal contest was over the right to annex lay in the legal maxim: "The power that creates can destroy." Allegheny was a borough and later a city by acts of the legislative power of the state.
These acts are legally known as Acts of Assembly, the Legislature proper, the General Assembly of the people. The power to legislate is conferred by the Constitution.
The first act relating to the town of Allegheny is that of the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, September 11, 1787, three years before the adoption of the first constitution of the state.
The Allegheny Reservation had been surveyed by Alexander McClean in the month of April, 1785. The act of 1787 recited that "a sale of the said tract of land, if laid out and disposed of to the best advantage, will furnish a considerable sum of money towards discharging the debts due by the state."
Therefore, to attain this end in the most serviceable manner to the state, is enacted: "That the president or vice president in Council are hereby empowered to cause to be laid out and surveyed a town, in lots, with a competent and suitable number of out-lots for the accommodation thereof in the said tract; and to cause to be laid out and surveyed the residue of the tract in lots, which last-mentioned lots shall not be less than one acre nor more than ten acres each."
Upon the return of such surveys they were empowered to sell the whole of said lots to the most advantage to the state and convey the same.
Then followed the important minor reservations required to preserve control and to carry out the legislative design, that "the Council shall reserve out of the lots of the said town for the use of the state so much land as they shall deem necessary for a court house, gaol and market house, for places of public worship and burying the dead and without the said town 100 acres for a common or pasture, and streets, lanes and alleys of the said town and out-lots shall be common highways forever."
The reservations for places of public worship and burying the dead were never put to use.
The town as originally laid out contained 144 lots, each 60 by 240 feet, in blocks 240 feet square, a very simple arrangement.
How the blocks were first plotted can be seen from four which have, by the terms of the order of survey, remained unchanged for 128 years.
These blocks are in the center of the original town plan. They were reserved and designed for public buildings of the town and are in use today for that purpose, except the block formerly known as Haymarket Square at Ohio and Federal streets.
The other blocks are those containing the old City Hall of Allegheny, the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny and the North Side Market House.
Surrounding the original town was the common ground or "commons" as they came to be called, in area 102 acres originally. As plotted the commons were 60 feet wide on the south, 250 feet on the north and east, and 1,400 feet on the West.
We know the commons now as the North Side parks.
They were first know [sic] as the East, West, North and South commons and later these points of the compass were similiarly [sic] applied to the parks. The original design of the commons was for a common pasturage of cattle. With the growth of the city and the passing of cattle within the downtown limits of the city of Allegheny, the use of the commons for pasturage passed also and most of the ground became a dumping ground and an eyesore—until made into parks in 1868.
The grants made from the commons to the Western Penitentiary, the Western Theological Seminary and the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad, now the "Fort Wayne Route" of the Pennsylvania Lines West, reduced the commons' acreage to about 80 acres.
This was increased again by the removal of the Penitentiary to its present site at Woods Run, "Riverside" we call the location. The old buildings on the commons erected in 1828 were razed.
The commons have a long and interesting history, especially the legal phases of that history, and the many decisions that set forth as law all that could be evolved from the ancient right of commons are interesting reading to this day; not only interesting, but instructive. It is apparent this history cannot be gone into today.
When the last survey of the reserve tract was ordered it, with the neighboring town of Pittsburgh, a rough, tough border town, lay within the limits of Westmoreland county. In 1788, the same year the survey was finished, Allegheny county was created by the same power that ordered the survey, the Supreme Executive Council.
By the provisions of the act creating the new county the county seat, or seat of justice as they said then, was temporarily established in Pittsburgh and was to remain in Pittsburgh until certain trustees named in the act should construct suitable public buildings on the reserve tract "opposite Pittsburgh" on the public square in the town of Allegheny.
Naturally the project of having the county seat north of the Allegheny in a wilderness met with strong opposition. There was but one house on the tract, the log cabin of James Robinson at what is now Federal street and River avenue on the northwest corner.
The section of the act in reference to the location of public buildings was deemed inexpedient by the majority of the Allegheny county people, and that opposition became so strong that a supplementary act was passed early in the spring of 1789 repealing the provisions as to the North Side location and authorizing the trustees to purchase ground on the Pittsburgh side of the river for public buildings.
This act fixed the county seat, or seat of justice for Allegheny county, in Pittsburgh. The trustees built the first Court House in the Diamond. This has been frequently referred to and its picture shown, with the semi-circular market sheds surrounding it on the north side of the building, or towards Liberty street.
The reserve tract as laid out by the Council's survey contains over 3,000 acres, divided into 10-acre lots, more or less, numbered from 1 to 276, inclusive, except a tract containing about 312 acres which was patented to Gen. James O'Hara May 5, 1789, for a consideration of £234 12s 6d, and described as high rough land, embracing the rugged hillsides of the Allegheny valley.
This O'Hara tract is in the Butchers Run district and came to be known in later years as Schenley estate property, though [sic] the right of Mary E. Groghan [sic], granddaughter of Gen. O'Hara, wife of Capt. E. W. H. Schenley. The district came in years to be known locally as "Dutchtown."
The reserve tract commenced at a point near the mouth of Woods Run and ran by various courses to a point on the Allegheny River near where Girtys Run empties in what is now Millvale. The rivers were the southern and western boundaries.
The lots were numbered from the west, beginning with No. 1 on the Ohio and running to 70 as the extreme eastern number. The other numbers are somewhat erratic in order. The last number, 276 is at Western and Irwin avenues, the southeast corner.
The contest over the location of the seat of justice on the reserve tract was waged principally in the Legislature. The courts in Allegheny county pending this legislation were held in rented buildings.
The first Court of Quarter Sessions was on the north side of Front street, now First avenue, in a log two-story building owned by Andrew Watson. It had previously been used as a store by two brothers named Calhoun. This building was rented by the trustees pending the settlement of north side location matter.
The population of Pittsburgh in 1788 probably did not exceed 500. The country which extended almost to Lake Erie was sparsely settled. Large areas were wilderness.
The North Side was within what was known as Indian territory, not fully acquired from the Iroquois until the treaty at Fort Stanwix, N. Y., in 1784.
The south side was Virginia territory and Virginia deeds today are the fundamental evidences of land tenures in that territory.
Hence, it was not at all a weak argument that the location of public buildings on the reserve tract was not only inexpedient, but would be a great inconvenience.
One vigorous opponent of the measure named Wright advanced the "logical" argument that the location of the court house and jail in the prospective town was entirely improper because there was nothing over there to commit to jail except an occasional wild beast and, becoming satirical, explained the use of the word "occasional" "because even the creatures of the forest so plentiful in every other direction about Pittsburgh, avoided the God-forsaken spot where the commonwealth intended to locate the public buildings of the new county of Allegheny."
David Redick, an attorney at the bar of Washington county, as well as a surveyor, in a letter to the executive council, clearly indicated his estimation of the propriety of laying out a town on the North Side. In later years Allegheny city folks came to regard this letter as a highly-colored and biased report, and altogether a misrepresentation.
The document is somewhat amusing, and our North Side people said it was neither comprehensive, instructive nor truthful.
The letter was dated Washington, February 19, 1788, and reads:
I went with several gentlemen to fix on a spot for laying out the town opposite Pittsburgh and at the same time took a general view of the tract and find it far inferior to my expectation, although I thought I had been no stranger to it. There is some pretty low ground on the rivers Ohio and Allegheny; but there is but a small proportion of dry land which appears anyway valuable, either for timber or soil but especially for soil. It abounds with high hills and deep hollows, almost inaccessible to a surveyor.
I am of the opinion that if the inhabitants of the moon are capable of receiving the same advantages from the earth that we do from the world—I say if it be so, this same famed tract of land would afford a variety of beautiful lunar spots, not unworthy of the eye of a philosopher.
I cannot think that ten acre lots on such pits and hills will possibly meet with purchasers, unless, like a pig in a poke, it be kept out of view. Would it not be of more advantage to the State if the Legislature would alter the law, that a town and a reasonable number of out-lots for the accommodation of the town be laid out, the remainder of the lands be laid off in two-hundred acre lots, fronting on the rivers when practicable, and extending back so as to include the hills and uneven ground which might be of some use to a farm?
I cannot even believe but that Col. Lowry and Col. Irwin will on consideration be of opinion with me, that small lots on the sides of those hills can never be of any purpose but as above mentioned. Perhaps Council may think proper to lay the matter before the Legislature.
I shall go on to do the business as soon as the weather will admit; and before I shall have proceeded further than may accord with the plan here proposed, I may have the necessary information whether to go on as the law now directs, or not.
Redick, we all know, was a poor prophet.
The reservations expressly for the use of the state were by act of the Legislature March 12, 1783, the law reading:
Reserving to the use of the state three thousand acres in an oblong of not less than one mile in depth from the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, and extending up and down the said rivers from opposite Fort Pitt as far as may be necessary to include the same.
A similar reservation was made on both sides of Beaver Creek, including Fort McIntosh and the present town of Beaver.
When the town was laid out the solitary log cabin on the river at the ferry crossing to the Franklin road contained all the inhabitants.
In commemoration of the first inhabitant we once had Robinson street on the North Side. It is now General Robinson street, the name fittingly restored in a manner.
When the street name changing was done after the annexation, the name Robinson was dropped as conflicting with Robinson street in the Oakland district and the Allegheny street was dubbed Reliance. But after much dissatisfaction had been expressed the name General was added and the original name restored.
As the street runs through the original farm of James Robinson, the original settler on the North Side, the appropriateness of the commemoration cannot be questioned.
Gen. William Robinson, son of James Robinson, was born in the Robinson log house December 17, 1785. It is justly claimed for him that he was the first white child born within the limits of the North Side. Some biographers say west of the Allegheny mountains, but this claim cannot be sustained when we recall that Bedford, Ligonier and Hannastown were in existence long before 1785 and that Pittsburgh dates from 1758.
The Robinson log cabin formed the center piece in the seal of the city of Allegheny.
During William Robinson's life he took a prominent and active part in the affairs of the community and was foremost in everything pertaining to the growth and prosperity of the city. His abilities were of no ordinary kind. He was given a liberal education and was a graduate of Princeton College and classical scholar of more than ordinary ability.
He studied law under Senator James Ross, but did not practice. Gen. Robinson was deemed by many haughty and dictatorial in manner and this interfered with his political aspirations, and kept him from making many friends.
James Robinson, the father of Gen. Robinson, was an intrepid pioneer. His memoirs would make thrilling reading. However he left no written records of his life, and even his personality has become a tradition.
Gen. William Robinson's mansion stood about where his father's cabin had stood and on this lot William Robinson passed the 83 years he lived. As he died in 1868 there are many today who can recall his features and remember the Robinson homestead.
It is apparent that his surroundings in youth tended to endow him with a spirit of adventure and a predelection [sic] to outdoor sports rather than to create a love of study. On the contrary he was early studious and was a precocious child.
His mother, who had received a good education, took him in hand as a teacher and from her he received the rudiments of his education. He lost his taste for the law upon completing the course with Senator Ross and entered "the field of politics," as they used to say. Later he became prominent in business and financial and railroad circles.
Gen. Robinson was fascinated and after quitting the law, politics became his occupation. He was ambitious but unsuccessful.
Well qualified to fill any office within the gift of the people, he had not the arts of the politician. In plain words, he was impolitic. He could not make himself popular.
His first setback came when in 1806 he allowed himself to become entangled in the disreputable schemes of Aaron Burr, well known in connection with the sad story of the Blannerhassetts [sic]. While Robinson was inveigled into the scheme by misrepresentation as to its principal object, nevertheless he long suffered in the esteem of his fellow-citizens.
On the death of his father he inherited a large and valuable property on the North Side, especially that part north of North avenue, known as Buena Vista, laid out by Gen. Alexander Hays after the Mexican War, and containing Buena Vista, Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey and Fremont streets and Jackson street and Taylor avenue. Some of these streets are now otherwise named.
The General's political ambition was not realized further than by filling the office of mayor of Allegheny in 1840, the first mayor of the city. His title of general came from service as such in the state militia. He served as president of Select Council in Allegheny from 1849 to 1856 and one term in the Legislature. He regarded these places as stepping stones to higher political offices, but he could not step.
There is much more to be said of Gen. Robinson and the Robinson family history, but it will have to go over.
Likewise there is much history to be evolved from Lacock and Anderson streets and Stockton avenue, in the vicinity of the original Robinson farm.
How Allegheny was plotted in 1856 is shown in the map today and the same ground in 1795 shows the Robinson farm of that date and also Nelson's and Smoky Islands opposite the Point.