Source:Fleming-pioneers-life
George T. Fleming. "Pioneer's life pictured by writer: Old magazine article tells about early resident of Allegheny: Big changes noted." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, June 18, 1916, sec. 5, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85469099.
LAST week's story concerned two pioneers on the North Side, one Gen. William Robinson, son of James Robinson, the first permanent settler on the North Side, and the other Joseph Stockton, a pioneer preacher and educator and the author of the first school books used in the West.
Some additional facts are presented today in the way of Stockton biography which should be read to complete this brief life story of a most worthy man.
We have also some more data of Gen. William Robinson's long life and active career after discovered evidence from a rare source, omitting today from the story many facts that have been presented previously herein.
In 1871 Pittsburgh journalism had advanced to that stage that it was presumed the public would support a monthly magazine devoted to local affairs, and to this end the People's Monthly was established by David Lowry and Charles McKnight.
Mr. McKnight had been previous to the Civil War one of the owners of the Pittsburgh Chronicle, now merged into the Chronicle Telegraph, and Mr. Lowry was later and for many years one of the editors of the Chronicle. He is still a resident of Pittsburgh.
The People's monthly was a facsimile of the well-known Harper's Weekly of the times, and not unlike Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly of the same period.
The People's Monthly had a short life. There are no files of it in the Carnegie Library, as newspapers are catalogued there up to 1912.
However, some 10 years ago Mr. Lowry presented the writer hereof with the first six-months' copies bound. These were the office copies, and, like all such, have been mutilated to the extent of whole pages, sundry columns, and parts of columns clipped out, thus spoiling many a good story and some old-time and most excellent wood cuts of Pittsburgh scenes and edifices that have long passed away.
Fortunately among those saved is a full front page cut of Gen. Robinson and the two park views shown today. The park views, however, had a close call, a column alongside having been clipped out.
These pictures were printed in the November issue, 1871. The views are of the North Park at Sherman and Montgomery avenues, etc.
There is also a full-page tribute to Gen. Robinson signed "M," possibly Charles McKnight's story.
To understand the esteem in which Gen. Robinson was held and the vast history that developed during his long life, one can not do better than quote some sections from this article in the People's Monthly. Remember the date is 1871 and the statistics presented are 45 years old.
In the lifetime of William Robinson, Jr., the section of the country which gave him birth, and with whose history he was at all times prominently connected, developed into seven states, with a population of as many millions, and had become the central and most important portion of the most powerful civil and military nation on the globe.
In that single lifetime—from 1785 to 1868—all the matters of review and eulogium in a patriotic oration, except the Revolution, have had their existence and history. The adoption of the Constitution, the whisky insurrection, the conspiracy of Burr, the War of 1812, the extermination of the Indians, the Mexican War and the Rebellion. The system of internal improvements by canals, the succession of railroads, the telegraph along with the latter; steamboats, the steam press and the iron manufacture—all these at the initiation of this era—at the commencement of the lifetime of Gen. Robinson were unknown. At his death they had made their mark upon the physical features of the country and developed the American citizen into the fast thinker and energetic spirit which the reader knows him to be.
It is to identify the subject of this sketch, to some extent with these events, which is the aim of the writer, and at the same time, by confining all this growth to the lifetime of the same individual, to show the rapid progress of a single generation in developing the resources of a country whose triumphs in the arts of peace are its history and glory.
In 1794, the date of Wayne's defeat of the Indians, William Robinson, Jr., was 11 years old. During his previous childhood, the log house in which he was born was attacked by the Indians, and defended only by his mother, who, with great presence of mind and courage, kept out the assailants until assistance arrived. This victory of Wayne on the Maumee was the first decisive overthrow of the Western Indians, and determined the possession of the now state of Ohio, and the Western frontier of Pennsylvania. Next, in 1811, still further West, the battle of Tippecanoe, secured Indiana. Later, and still further West, in 1831, at the battle of Bad Axe River, Black Hawk was defeated and Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan were surrendered to the whites.
Thus the whole of the district mentioned, the entire old Northwest Territory, became and continues a vested fee simple in the white man by the laws of destiny—and, to remove all controversy, by the extermination of all rightful or wrongful former claimants.
So the individual who in his infancy narrowly escaped massacre from the victorious savage, sees in his his [sic] prime the extermination of the savage race from that whole territory—and at his death, time and history had already falsified the painted, screeching savage into the hero of Cooper's novels, and his grandchildren looked up from their pictured stories of Blackhoof and Tecumseh to the face of the man whose mother's courage had scarcely saved their grandfather from the scalping knife, and thus one lifetime sees not only the extinction of the first race and the succession of the second, but far enough beyond for the romance of accepted history to make heroes and patriarchs of a race whose warwhoop and pitiless knife are still reality to those who survey the route of the Northern Pacific Railroad.
General Robinson was not personally identified with the Indian contest beyond this adventure of childhood, as the advance of the frontier placed his residence remote from contact with the race. The friendly remnant of "Cornplanters" however, whose name identifies their habits as in such contrast to the customs of their fellows, well remembered both his father and himself as their benefactors, and paid an annual visit down the Allegheny to give and receive presents after the manner of their fathers. At his mansion in Allegheny City, these visits were continued just the same as when a cabin stood in its place with their wigwams pitched around it. Up to the year of his death in 1868, on Brussels carpet, before his parlor fire they literally smoked the pipe of peace as they had done by the log fire before his father's door.
The rebellion of 1860, found Gen. Robinson seventy-five years of age. If that rebellion had occurred in the year of his birth the Northwest Territory could not have furnished 100 recruits.
When it did come, that same region sent 500,000 men into the field, furnished the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, most of the prominent generals, and far more than half the supplies of the entire Union army. His own grandson, Capt. William O'Hara Robinson, fell at the battle of the Wilderness, the day after the lamented Gen. Alexander Hays of Pittsburgh was killed, and the incidents of his death may illustrate his personal bravery, for when a piece of shell had torn off the flesh and ribs from his breast, he had the calmness to look down and observe the beating of his heart.
The Ohio and Pennsylvania road was the first railroad that crossed the Western line of Pennsylvania. Up to that date the prejudice against railroads existed to an extent which those who so expressed themselves, now refuse to acknowledge.
To the enthusiasm and personal exertions of Gen. Robinson more than to any other one cause, may be attributed the success of that endeavor whose results now astonish those who projected it. He rode along the whole line of the intended route from Allegheny to Crestline, presiding at meetings and holding interviews with the farmers who so grudgingly allowed the approach of a road, to which they now owe the tenfold value of the farms.
He mortgaged his own and his wife's estate to furnish bonds to build that road and ventured his whole fortune on the success of the experiment—and as the first president of the first railroad that ever entered the Western States he should be recorded as the pioneer of the western railway system with its 10,000 miles of track, its $500,000,000 of capital and its highway stretching to the Pacific and sharing the trade of China and Japan.
Prior to railways, communication with Philadelphia had been established by canals. In this also Gen. Robinson was one of the first to move, and assisted the project by huge donations of land. Before this canal the journey to Philadelphia was made by coach or on horseback, and Gen. Robinson, on a horse captured from the British at New Orleans, made the trip in the shortest number of hours then on record. It was the canal systems of Pennsylvania and New York which secured to those states the command of the western trade, which before had inclined to seek Richmond and Baltimore instead of Philadelphia and New York; and the completion of the canal to Pittsburgh connecting with the Ohio River was the first event in their history that gave Pittsburgh and Cincinnati that impetus to rapid growth which both have so well sustained. The extension of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad, however, and the completion of other lines of railroad, conferred upon Chicago, as he had predicted, that imperial precedence which even in her ashes she has the right to assert.
And though its name and identity have long since merged in longer lines and pretentious parts of the perfected, the old Ohio and Pennsylvania was the first railroad within the area of the Northwest Territory or that pointed toward its now acknowledged metropolis.
In 1842 Gen. Robinson was sent as special accredited envoy of the United States to England to negotiate a loan of $5,000,000. But the cry of repudiation had been started and affected at that time even the credit of the general government. The action of Mississippi, a sovereign member of the confederation, the agitation of the subject in other states, the excuse urged for the doctrine by so prominent an American as Thomas Jefferson, and the failure of Pennsylvania to pay the interst [sic] on her bonds, with the fact of the policy of the federal government being so plastic to the influence of its constituent states, had had such an effect upon the Rothschilds, the Barings and other bankers that they refused, as a retaliatory measure as much as through distrust, to enter into the loan.
On this account alone and not from any lack of standing financial ability he was unable to effect his purpose and obtain for the United States an amount equal to but the one five hundredth part of their present indebtedness. This fact along [sic], perhaps more than any other, may serve to illustrate the amazing growth of this country in wealth, stability and the confidence of the monied powers.
On the 3d of July, 1810, the subject of this sketch was married to Mary, daughter of Alexander Parker, of Carlisle, Pa., who was a captain in Revolutionary War and afterward founded the town of Parkersburg, in West Virginia. He received a grant of a square mile of land in Crawford county at the close of the war, which is still in the hands of the descendants of William and Mary Robinson.
Remarkable in early life for her personal beauty, and always for her dignity of demeanor and Christian character, she was in all respects a most suitable partner for her husband, and there never seemed a marriage better adapted to command the love and respect of the parties to each other, and to maintain a high position in intellectual and social circles. Uninterrupted in happiness and prolonged in duration 58 years, it continued until the decease of Gen. Robinson, whose wife survived but half a year.
Gen. Robinson lived all his life and died on the spot where he was born. The log cabin had been succeeded by an elegant and hospitable residence, where Henry Clay, Gen. Taylor, President Tyler, William Henry Harrison and many more of especialy [sic] the early great men of this country, have been entertained. Aristocratic and hospitable, and acquainted and associating with the leading men of both his earlier and later days, he entertained his friends where his father had done the same before him, in that Western style which adapts itself to all conditions of society, and shone neither more nor less brilliantly in the Gen. Robinson homestead of today than in the log cabin which stood there before it.
From the cupola of that same homestead, known to every citizen of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, let us take a final view of what may now be seen from there; of what could have been seen February 25, 1868, the day when William Robinson, Jr., died—and contrast it with what was there the day he was born, 83 years before, on December 17, 1785.
Within a radius of five miles from that house is found a population of 200,000 souls. The city of Allegheny, with over 50,000 people, and monuments in its parks commemorating the already historic record of its citizens; Pittsburgh and the boroughs of the South Side complete the measure of the population, and present themselves as the manufacturing metropolis of America.
One of the best known of Gen. Robinson's children was William O'Hara Robinson, an attorney at the Allegheny county bar, father of ex-Congressman John B. Robinson of Media, Pa.
Although Gen. Robinson's father's name was James, biographers do not state why he was William Robinson, Jr. James Robinson was the pioneer on the North Side. He conducted the ferry from St. Clair street, now Federal street, formerly Sixth, to the Allegheny end of Federal street about where the bridge approach now is.
Like all ferrymen in Pittsburgh in those days James Robinson found it advisable to keep a tavern in connection with his ferry business, which was considerable as connecting with the old Franklin road, now Federal street. His advertisement appeared in The Gazette at various times during 1803 and prior to that date. May 13, 1803, a characteristic ad of James Robinson's read:
All persons going to and returning from sermons and all funerals ferriage free.
This was an inducement for settlers to locate on the reserve tract opposite Pittsburgh in the little settlement then growing slowly and dubbed Alleghenytown.
Gen. Robinson was the first president of the company that erected the first bridge over the Allegheny at Federal street. It was opened for travel in February, 1820, and thus did away with the Robinson ferry, which had been in operation since 1785.
In 1798 Alleghenytown had but three families resident there. John Kelly, a wood cleaver, had built a cabin a half mile above the ferry in 1795 and Richand [sic] Getty between Kelly's and the ferry in 1798. Both were natives of Ireland.
Joseph Stockton was an indefatigable student. He was deeply learned in theology and prepared much manuscript with a view to publishing a work on theology.
Before studying for the ministry he had taken a course in medicine and, doctors being scarce in his neighborhood, he had frequent calls to alleviate the ailments of his neighbors who has [sic] implicit confidence in his knowledge and many people who knew him well would have no other physician.
In 1810, prior to the installation of the Rev. Dr. Francis Herron as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, Joseph Stockton occupied the pulpit there during that year.
The following additional history of the Rev. Mr. Stockton has been appended as supplementary to the Stockton story given in part last week:
The late William G. Johnston knew Mr. Stockton well, the former's father having been a pupil at the Pittsburgh Academy. Mr. Johnston states that the Allegheny Academy was first located in a little brick building in the center of a graveyard on the West Common, and infers that the small building had been used as a place of worship by the First Presbyterian congregation of Allegheny. Mr. Johnston states that Joseph Stockton was a fine Greek scholar and had succeeded the Rev. Robert Patterson, the first graduate of Jefferson College, as principal of the Pittsburgh Academy.
A son of Joseph Stockton, Robert Clark Stockton, was a partner of Mr. Johnston's father, Samuel Reed Johnston, the firm being Johnston & Stockton, printers and publishers, and from 1817 to 1822 proprietors of The Pittsburgh Gazette. The firm Johnston & Stockton lasted until 1850. This firm was the lineal successor of Zadok Cramer's publishing house in Pittsburgh, established in 1800, and a notable and busy one for many years.
Judge John E. Parke, born at the south end of the Point Bridge in 1806, knew the Rev. Joseph Stockton well. In fact Judge Parke was married to Jane Hannen of Allegheny by Mr. Stockton December 8, 1828. Judge Parke was one of the steady and reliable members of the old Historical Society in Pittsburgh with the late Isaac Craig, the Rev. A. A. Lambing and others. Judge Parke died in 1885.
At the time of the opening of the Allegheny Academy in 1822 Judge Parke was about 16 years old. William G. Johnston was born in 1828. Judge Parke would have remembrances where Mr. Johnston would obtain information from others. Possibly both are right and the academy was for a time conducted in the little church.
Judge Parke in one of his articles read before the Historical Society states that the original burying ground on the North Side was known as the Potter's Field, and was located on the Northern slope of Hog-Back Hill, immediately in the rear of the seminary buildings on Ridge avenue. The burial lot was about 50 feet from the base of the hill and here surrounded by young forest trees many of the early residents of the North Side were interred, for whom there is no record or chiseled mark.
When Marshall street, now Marburg, was put through along the base of the hill these bodies were carefully collected and reinterred in other cemeteries.
A few years after the abandonment of Potter's Field another plot was selected on the northern line of Stockton avenue at Webster street, now Sherman avenue. This was the second burial ground on the North Side. The third was about the First Presbyterian Church on the 10-acre outlot No. 251 in the original reserve tract.
Last week the statement was made that the reservations on the reserve tract opposite Pittsburgh for place of public worship and for burying the dead were never put to use.
But this statement should be qualified to say not within the squares at Ohio and Federal streets reserved for public uses.
In the map made by Bernhardt, Duke of Saxe Weimar Eisenach in his book, "Travels in North America, 1825–26," he shows a small run coming through the west common and emptying into the Allegheny River above Nelson's Island about old Exposition Park. Between this run which forked about what is now Ohio street and Sherman avenue, and the western line of the common, the Duke indicates a graveyard by the insertion of the words, "Burying Ground," on the map. This plotting accords with Judge Parke's location.
In 1832, during the first cholera epidemic in America, Joseph Stockton was hastily summoned to Baltimore, Md., on the occasion of the illness of a son. While there, he was smitten with cholera and died October 29, 1832, after 24 hours illness. In 1858 his remains were brought to Pittsburgh and interred in the Allegheny Cemetery.
Col. James M. Schoonmaker of Pittsburgh is a grandson.
