Source:Fleming-queer
George T. Fleming. "Queer house is of historic interest: Price's round building for years one of the landmarks in district: Home of curious man." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Dec. 5, 1915, sec. 5, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85896530.
LAST week the statement was made that practically all that was extant in regard to Claire Aime Fidele De Rouaud had been told. Some few items have since been discovered. They are interesting, but not fully enlightening.
However one or more incidents serve to show the good side of this strange man's character. He was certainly a loyal friend. The French pronunciation of the name is as if spelled Rou.
There is no doubt that he made sausage in his cellar on Market street, and the presumption is that he sold it, though there is no direct evidence that he did.
The story below seems to give the impression that he did or some one for him, or he allowed a friend in distress, but putting up an admirable bluff.
De Rouaud was certainly a puzzle to the rabble of his day. It is a good bet that no one now can wear a straw hat painted green or a plain straw, after September 15 without being mobbed, yet De Rouaud wore the green one summer and winter. We must admire the gentle and genteel rabble of his time.
DeRouaud [sic] most eccentric, always reserved save with his cronies, exclusive, silent and unapproachable, was the type of an oddity upon whom to fasten an evil reputation. His business methods awakened the reasonable presumption that he dealt in smuggled goods. His eccentricities were marked and unfathomable. He was regarded daft and called the "crazy Frenchman."
We come now to more French history, tragic likewise, and it, too, involves De Rouaud. The fanatical Louvell, the saddler, plunged his vengeful dagger into the breast of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, February 13, 1820, just as the duke was leaving the Grand Opera House in Paris. Louvell had sworn to destroy the Bourbon race.
Seven months after the assassination of her husband, the Duchess gave birth to a son destined to become the Count de Chambord. The Duchess, Marie, was the daughter of the king of the two Sicilies.
Stirring French History.
In 1830, when a new revolution in France broke forth, Duchess Marie urged the claims of her son to the throne, but was restrained by Charles the Tenth. She went into exile with the other Bourbons, only to return in 1832 to raise the standard of revolt at Marseilles in the name of her son.
Defeated, she fled in disguise to La Vendee, again defeated, she fled to Nantes, in the Loire Inferieure. Here she was betrayed to Thiers by a converted Jew, Simon Deutz, after hiding 24 hours behind a chimney in danger of suffocation.
The Duchess lived until 1864, dying at the Chateau Brunsee in Gratz, while her son was still urging his claims to the throne.
Naturally there was the necessity of some concerned in the revolution of 1830 making a quick exit from France. One of these refugees came to Pittsburgh and sought De Rouaud and was permitted to make his home with that queer one.
This man was a gentleman; his education and bearing so testified, hence he was admitted to the homes of Pittsburgh's elite of those years. He was known as the Chevalier de Bache.
In provincial Pittsburgh of that day gossip spread fast. No one knew the Chevalier's resources, but his style of dress was so elaborate as to awaken curiosity, especially among the younger people.
Rumors became rife that strange noises could be heard at night in the cellar of De Rouaud's store and a plan was put into execution by some young bloods to solve this mystery. These gained admission to the cellar of the adjoining house, punched a hole through the wall and secreted themselves until night.
Mystery Is Solved.
The mystery dissipated. It was very commonplace and altogether plebeian.
In the De Rouaud cellar appeared the chevalric form of De Bache in a long white apron, cleaver in hand, and forthwith he began to chop sausage meat. One of the spies reported the solution to his father and was chided:
"If the Chevalier," the father replied, "is chopping sausage, it is because necessity has driven him to it, and if you open your lips on the subject I will skin you.
Somebody opened lips—else not this mention, at least 80 years after.
The mystery of De Bache, Stephen Quinon, a writer for the Pittsburgh Times, endeavored to solve, but could find only repute, handed down hearsay. De Bache was alleged to have been Bourrienne, schoolmate and companion of Bonaparte, later his secretary, who became also Bonaparte's biographer, and yet later parted company with him.
The story that Bourrienne had been compelled to chop sausage for a living in the United States had been printed, but was never proved sufficiently to establish its truth. No books so state—in fact biographical sketches of Bourrienne do not mention his flight to the United States. They do state he fled to Belgium.
It is a fact that he was impoverished by the revolution of 1830 and brooded over events until he lost his mind. The last two years of his life were passed in an asylum at Caen in the province of Calvados in the northwestern part of France, where he died of apoplexy in February, 1834.
Whether Bourrienne chopped sausage meat in De Rouaud's cellar in Market street, Pittsburgh, or not is worthy of doubt. Some noble Frenchman did.
Secrets Securely Kept.
Many Frenchmen had come to this strange man, Claire Aime Fidele De Rouaud, but their secrets were never [revealed?], the tales that his countrymen in distress poured into his willing [⸻] were never retold by him. Silent as the sphinx when he chose to be, these tales of adventure, horror, woe or penury died with him.
The secrets that were buried in the lonely tomb on the Soho hillside no man can fathom. They typified the term secrecy, and when one ponders on the site of the vanished monument of a rare man he must in mind go back to unhappy France in the last part of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century. History has told many things of these years—but not all.
In his researches into De Rouaud's strange history Stephen Quinon dug up the story of "Billy" Price also. Of him he relates:
To this home (Tustin's) there came also an accentric [sic] little gentleman still well-known among all classes for his humor and the universality of his mechanical business, Mr. William Price; or "Billy" Price; an Englishman too, was he not? who built the pipe manufactory in Kensington known yet as Pipetown."
The quotation is from Ann Royal, an accentric [sic] body herself, who visited Pittsburgh in 1828 when the market house was the center of population, who went about the town noting everything to be seen, pausing only to rail at the preachers for she was a fierce free-thinker.
Mr. Quinon goes on to describe Mrs. Royal and her works, and then continues:
She was a rare companion for "Billy" Price, with his odd humor and his universality of genious [sic]—the "Billy," who after the preacher had labored with him to convince him of the error of his heretical way and given it up as a bad job, saying: "Well, Brother Price, there is nothing certain in this world," retorted: "How about the multiplication table?" —the "Billy" who built the round house at the corner of Fifth avenue and Stevenson street—built it round, as was said, because he did not want to live where the devil could corner him.
Story Lasts Long.
It was in 1894 that Mr. Quinon wrote this and the story of putting one on the parent of evil was still current, though the roundhouse had gone the way.
Mr. Quinon relates further that with Tustin, Price and others of the early so-called Free Thinkers of Pittsburgh De Rouaud spent many a day on the Tustin grounds and they with him in his Market street store. Their favorite spot, where they sat and talked on the Tustin place both Tustin and De Rouaud chose for the last resting place and both had their wishes carried out. This spot is a sorry-looking graveyard today with the gaping and abandoned Tustin vault and the steep rocky hillside betokening strange things—unfathomable things.
Tustin had a decent reinterment. De Rouaud's bones are either in the ground yet or were carted no one knows where, or they may have returned to earth again.
As for the pet spaniels Cricket and Busy Bee, who were buried at his head and the other at his feet:
Patrician dogs who lived at ease,
With troubles naught save active fleas,
Their "bark" is on some other shore.
On Soho's heights they sleep no more;
Long hushed their once lugubrious howl,
Long since they slumbered cheek by jowl;
Gone are their master's bones, we see,—
Farewell then, Crick and Busy Bee.
The above may be rightfully termed dog-gerel, but it is not every dog that has a legacy and a monument. Such dogs deserve a "poem."
As the Price–Sims–Tustin–Reed families were related, either by kinship or marriage, something of their genealogy is appended, as all were old and in their day, more than well-known Pittsburgh families. One may call them celebrated in science and manufacture.
Old directories of Pittsburgh, those previous to the Civil War, have the line—
"Ralph Reed, gardener" and "Ralph Reed, justice of the peace, Pitt township."
However Ralph Reed conducted a men's furnishing store at 98 Smithfield street, between Diamond street and Fifth avenue. He succeeded William Green who had been in business there for a number of years. Mr. Reed remained in this business many years, and after his death July 21, 1869, his son, Ralph L. Reed carried on the business.
Ralph Reed was a son of Ralph Reed and Jane Gibson Reed of Virginia.
The Reed Family.
Ralph and Ann Tustin Reed had one son and three daughters. The son was Ralph Lawrence Reed. Jennie Gibson Reed never married and made her home with her parents. Ann E. Reed married Eustace S. Morrow, city controller of Pittsburgh. She died in 1879. Miss Jennie Reed and her sister Sarah are still living.
Sarah Frances Reed married William Henry Sims in 1859. He died in December, 1872. He was the only son of Henry and Jane Price Sims, the latter the daughter of William Price, or "Billy" Price, who built his home round with the chimney in the center.
Mr. Price built this house about 1814 or 1815 on the Fourth Street road, now Fifth avenue, at the corner of Price street, now Stevenson. He established his foundry in 1813 just in the rear of the round house on Colwell street and called it the Berlin Foundry.
The usually accepted reason for building his house round was that the devil could not corner him, in his own home. Another reason was, he said, that it did not make any difference which way the road went, any part would be the front, and he could always enter by the front door.
Mr. Price was quite a joker. One day he stopped a friend who was very lame, who was passing the round house and said:
"Britton, you should have been a brewer."
"Why?" asked Mr. Britton.
"Because you would never be out of hops," replied Price.
William Price was born in London, England, in 1769, and died in Pittsburgh in 1855, aged 85 years 6 months.
Sims Family an Old One.
Henry Sims was born in London, England, in 1801, and died in Pittsburgh September 22, 1846, aged 45 years. He was a manufacturing chemist in this city and died from inhaling the fumes of printers' ink which he was making. It had boiled over and ignited and in his attempt to extinguish the flames he inhaled the fumes.
Mr. Sims could trace his family history back to 1682. His progenitors were nearly all chemists and apothecaries and from these he inherited his taste for chemistry. In Harris' directory of Pittsburgh for 1841 the line occurs: "Sims, Henry, chemist, Fourth street road."
The former generations in London had a coat-of-arms which is in possession of William Henry Sims, his grandson. Howard Sims, a brother of Henry Sims, came from England and settled in Baltimore, Md. Lafayette, while on his visit to America, was entertained by Howard Sims and was shown through the city in Mr. Sims' carriage, as Mr. Sims' conveyance and horses were the only ones in the city considered fine enough for this distinguished visitor.
Henry Sims was married twice. His second wife was Sophia Granada, who was born in France. They had one daughter, Jane Sims, who married Abner Brink of Burlingame, Kan.
His son, William Henry Sims, was the only child of the first marriage. His mother died when he was about 2 years old and he was only 9 years old when his father died. His aunt, Mary C. Price, raised him.
Wedding in Round House.
He attended the old Franklin School when it first opened. Prof. D. C. Holmes was the principal of this school and Mr. Sims was one of the first class passing through this school.
William Henry Sims, the son of the chemist, Henry Sims, was familiar with the foundry business from his boyhood, having learned every detail of it from his grandfather, William Price. When he became of age, William Price and his son, William G. Price, having died, in January, 1865, Mr. Sims bought an interest in the foundry from his aunt and formed the partnership of Price & Son, conducting the Berlin foundry.
This partnership was very successful until Mrs. Price went with her two sons and two daughters to Paris to complete their education there. They remained in Paris more than two years.
While there Mrs. Price met a French count, Alexis Garnier de la Roche, and was so much impressed with him that she married him. The marriage took place in the round house, Mrs. Price's home at Fifth avenue and Price street, Pittsburgh, in 1869.
Mr. Sims and his aunt, the Countess Mary de la Roche, dissolved partnership by mutual consent in 1872. Mr. Sims then started to built a new foundry on the Ann Reed estate, formerly the James Tustin estate, just about where the old Tustin forge had stood. This Sims foundry building is still standing near the corner of Moultrie street.
Mr. Sims had completed all his arrangements and was ready to start business when he died, after three days' illness, December 27, 1872.
Old Iron Buildings.
At the time of his death Mr. Sims had many orders on his books for cast iron fronts for buildings, such as the old First National Bank, the old Second National Bank and many others throughout the city that were built from 1870 to 1875. After Mr. Sims' death his estate leased the foundry to Henry Freyvogel, who filled some of Mr. Sims' orders, notably the Second National Bank Building at Liberty and Ninth streets, and continued to operate the foundry for some years. About 1880 the building and grounds were sold to Andrew Lyons, who leased the premises to the Standard Paint and Color Works, then a subsidiary concern of the Standard Oil Company, who manufactured paint for oil barrels.
The original Price foundry early attained a good reputation. S. Jones' directory of Pittsburgh, issued in 1826, contains this item (page 57):
Price's cupola furnace, situate one-fourth mile east of Pittsburgh and may be considered a brass as well as an iron foundry as all the various articles of a light nature in both branches, are manufactured here. Mr. Price also makes large crucibles for fusing copper, brass, etc., and is the only person about Pittsburgh who has succeeded in making these articles to perfection. Value of castings, etc., about $4,000.
The Price heirs conducted the business began by their grandfather until about 1890. The heirs erected a shot-tower about 1880. The foundry made lead pipe and cast pig lead. All sizes of shot were made, and a full line of the best iron castings that could be made.
Celebrated Law Suit.
The inscription on his monument in the Allegheny Cemetery reads:
William Price
Of the Round House.Born in London, England, Dec. 6, 1769.
Died in Pittsburgh, July 11, 1855.
He was inflexibly honest and generous, genial and sincere, eminent in mechanics and chemistry.
One word cannot be deciphered.
The Price shot tower was the cause of a celebrated lawsuit. Just above the entrance to the tower resided George Grantz, a barber, who had an ailing wife.
After some years' suffering Mrs. Grantz died, when her husband entered suit against the foundry company, alleging his wife had been gradually poisoned by the fumes given off the shot tower. No other persons in the neighborhood were affected.
This suit, the title, "Grantz vs. William G. Price et al," resulted in a verdict for Grantz of $700, whereupon the defendant appealed and the case was remanded for a new trial.
The second trial resulted in a verdict for the defendant, when Grantz appealed and lost, so the verdict stood. The first opinion was rendered by the Supreme Court January 3, 1888, the second November 11, 1889.
The shot tower was on the upper side of the round house at the alley, then and now called Our Alley. Across the alley, extending to Colwell street, was the foundry, the roof not very much above the grade of Colwell street. The entrance of the shot tower was above the house through the adjoining lot between the modern brick in front of the round house and the Grantz house.
Odd Pittsburgh Relic.
Mrs. A. H. Lane has a curious heirloom of her grandfather's days presented her by him. It is a common yellow pitcher which was made at the Price foundry by a workman, an Englishman, who had worked at the pottery business in England. It was made from the clay used for making crucibles, or molds, for the Fort Pitt glass house on Washington street.
The designer was somewhat of an artist, for he has embellished the pitcher with a picture of the round house, a unique sketch, and also of another building of Mr. Price's, which Mrs. Lane states was called the "Powder House," but in the picture smoke is coming in volumes from this building.
The inscription reads:
Friendship's Gift to William Price, 1828.
Under it is a spread eagle.
There are other embellishments also. Around the base are the words:
Fort Pitt Glass Works, Round House, Pitt Township.
From the fact that the words "Round House, Pitt Township," occur under the sketch of the circular dwelling and the words "Fort Pitt Glass Works" under the other building, the presumption is fair that the designer has represented the glass works, and then the smoke strengthens this presumption.
The pitcher was one of the curios exhibited at the celebrated Loan Exhibition held in January and February, 1879, at old Library Hall, now the Lyceum Theater.
When the widow of William G. Price, formerly Miss Mary Robertson, married the Count De la Roche they went to Paris to live. In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war broke out and the couple passed through the siege of Paris.
The Countess wrote letters to her children in Pittsburgh, some of which were published in the Pittsburgh Gazette. She had with her her youngest child, Jeannette, who also underwent the privations and horrors of the siege.
The family got away after the capitulation during the 100 days' armistice granted by the Germans. They went to England, where they remained until the Commune had spent its fury and civil government was restored, when they returned to Paris.
Two children of William G. and Mary Robertson Price survive, Mrs. Augustus H. Lane of Pittsburgh and Albert R. Price of Jeannette, Pa.