Source:Fleming-rare-gleanings/content
RESUMING the history of Market street, an odd jumble is brought forth. Our early newspapers were printed in that street. Our first book stores and our leading business houses were located there, and also our first market, and other public buildings, the postoffice, jail, court house, and some celebrated taverns.
That first market we have no picture of, but Fortesque [sic] Cuming, a traveler through here, describes it in his book, "A Tour of the Western Country," printed in [1809?].
In 1794, Cuming says "the only market house consisted of a light, indifferent woodshed hoisted on six wooden posts and those withal rather tottering, and overshadowed on one side by a couple of old apple trees with an ancient log cabin in the rear, leaning downward, standing on the ground now occupied by Col. O'Hara's three-story double brick, corner of Market and Second streets. The town did not look much a Birmingham or any other place of business."
However, the market was a starter and the town grew. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the news and literary center of the ambitious young town of Pittsburgh was on Market street, between Front and Second streets, now First and Second avenues. John Scull, owner and editor of the Pittsburgh Gazette, lived on the [northwest?] corner of Market and Front streets. As late as 1815, when James M. Riddle published the first directory of Pittsburgh, Mr. Scull is recorded as residing there as the editor of the Gazette and also as "President of the Farmer's and Mechanic's Bank." We note from the position of the apostrophe in the title that this was the bank of one farmer and one mechanic, or else Riddle had "one on" the proofreader or the intelligent compositor of those days who was probably one of Cramer, Speer [sic] & Eichbaum's force who printed the directory.
On Front street, immediately in the rear of Scull's dwelling, there was a small one-story building, of logs most likely. The dwelling was of logs and it is a fair presumption the printing shop was of logs also.
The earliest issue of The Pittsburgh Gazette now accessible is that of August 26, 1786. The paper appeared weekly, first on July 29, 1786. The publication day was Saturday. Copies of the first four issues are wanting except part of August 19.
The publishers state across the back page that the paper was "Printed and sold by John Scull and Joseph Hall at their printing office in Water street near the ferry, where subscriptions (at 17 shillings 6 pence per annum), advertisements, etc., are thankfully received, and printing in its different branches is done with care, elegance and expedition. Advertisements not exceeding a square are inserted for a dollar and every continuance after one-fourth of a dollar. Those exceeding a square are inserted in proportion."
Going forward in our researches to volume 7, 1794, the publishers' announcement reads: "Printed by John Scull in Front street next door to the corner of Market street."
Neville B. Craig, in his list of houses and householders in Pittsburgh in 1796, locates John Scull still on Water street. The issues of the paper in 1794 correctly locate Scull's printing shop at Front and Market streets. Mr. Scull was the first postmaster in Pittsburgh, appointed in [1786?]. He removed the postoffice from the original office on Water street to Front and Market when he moved the printing office there.
In 1797 Mr. Scull was succeeded by George Adams as postmaster. Mr. Adams moved the postoffice to a substantial log building on Front street near Ferry street. This house was owned by Adams' wife, who was the widow of Col. Aeneas Mackay of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment during the Revolution, who died in the service.
Mr. Adams and his wife conducted the postoffice until 1803 when Mr. Adams died and Dr. Hugh Scott was appointed to the vacancy, but he held the position only a year, the office again becoming vacant by death. However, Dr. Scott brought the office back on Market street to the Gazzam property at the corner of Third street, now avenue.
John Johnston succeeded Dr. Scott and removed the office to his residence at Front street and Chancery lane. There it remained during his term of 18 years. During the term of William Eichbaum, his son-in-law and successor, the office came back nearer Market street to a large double brick house on Second street (now avenue) above Market street on the south side of Second. This was but a block from John Scull's location. Mr. Eichbaum conducted the office 11 years. In 1823 David Lynch succeeded the postmaster and during his administration the office was removed to the south side of Third street (now avenue) above Market street.
This was getting uptown. The office remained in this neighborhood until 1852, when the government building at Fifth and Smithfield streets was opened for business. Early in the business life of the city we note the newspaper and the postal service closely associated, the postoffice located in the neighborhood of the newspaper offices. The location of the postoffice on or near Market street had much to do with the business life of the street, for the decadence of Market street began with the removal of the postoffice.
Near neighbors of John Scull at Front and Market were Dr. Peter Mowry and Judge Hugh Henry Brackenridge. The judge was a literary man, one of the first in Pittsburgh. He became also a newspaper published [sic]. Dr. Mowry's was a brick house. Brackenridge's was a commodious frame building painted blue and originally surrounded by a paling fence. It was the best-known house in the growing town. In 1794 when Gen. Henry Lee was here in command of the United States forces putting down the Whisky Insurrection, he had his headquarters in Judge Brackenridge's house. This was in the late fall. It was not at all congenial to the judge, who tells us he braved the indignation of the troops by parading before them dressed in a large cocked hat, buff underdress and a blue military coat. For various reasons Brackenridge was greatly in the public mind of the country during this unpleasantness and for some time afterward.
"Party spirit ran high," the saying goes. This was strictly true of party spirit in Pittsburgh following the insurrection. Scull and The Gazette had always been strong for the administration. Scull was honest and fearless. He bitterly resented the attacks of the leaders of the insurrection on the Federalists who were still in power under President John Adams.
Brackenridge was strongly anti-Federal. He and Scull had been firm friends, but this was before the national constitution was adopted and parties were formed. In the Gazette of August 26, 1786, now at hand, there is on the first page, left hand columns, the last of Brackenridge's article which began in the first issue, headed, "Observations on the Country at the Head of the Ohio River With Digressions on Various Subjects."
Fourteen years were to elapse from the day John Scull and Joseph Hall, two bold youths, had made their journalistic venture on the borders of the western wilds, until another paper came, Brackenridge's "Tree of Liberty."
Poor Hall! It is not without regret that one thinks of his untimely death, so soon after the Gazette partnership was under way and the venture promising success. This is an item taken from the issue of November 18, 1786:
"DIED."
"Friday night, the 10th instant, after a short illness, Mr. Joseph Hall, printer, in the 23rd year of his age."
No obituary, no eulogy, no particulars save as above. The next week John Scull's name appeared alone as the publisher. However, Brackenridge knew Hall and in the Gazette, January 6, 1787, notes it in a communication from Philadelphia dated December 16, 1786.
January 6, 1787, the firm name, Scull and Boyd, appeared for the first time, John Boyd, the new partner. Boyd was progressive. In the Gazette, July 26, 1788, appeared the announcement of a circulating library to be opened as soon as 100 subscribers were secured, the library to consist of 500 well-chosen books. The library did not circulate. August 9, 1788, Scull's name appeared again at the "masthead," as they used to say, as sole owner and editor of the Gazette.
A few days before Boyd had committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree on the hillside above Second street, now avenue, the hill, then called Ayres' Hill, but since known as Boyd's Hill, a name that is fast becoming obsolete. Just why Boyd "shuffled off" has remained a mystery. The cause has been assigned as chagrin at the anticipated failure of the library enterprise. Boyd's name in The Gazette in the firm name, Scull & Boyd, appeared last on August 2, 1788. Scull thereafter went it alone. He was a publisher of books as well as an editor and newspaper owner. He printed the laws of the commonwealth, passed during the Revolution, New Testaments, spelling books, chatechisms [sic], especially the Westminster Shorter Chatechism [sic], the Western Ephemeris for 1788 (an almanac) and many other books, some in the French language. Scull was distinctively and practically a pioneer here. A publisher long in advance of Zadock [sic] Cramer whose wilderness print shop became famous some years later, a neighboring indutry [sic] to Scull's, and both tended to enhance the value of Market street as a literary center.
Dr. Mowry's house was of brick and stone at the north end of the block at Market and Second streets. Brackenridge's office was directly across Market street from Mowry's, for Brackenridge made some pretensions to opulence. He had an additional building behind the office where the "Tree of Liberty" was printed, his dwelling adjoining on the south. There were sundry happenings at the time of the Whisky Insurrection in this vicinity in which Col. Presley Neville, Gen. Daniel Morgan, the colonel's father-in-law, and Brackenridge were concerned, and also some in which Steele Semple, a famous attorney and character in early Pittsburgh figured, but these happenings do not concern the business history of Market street. These folks lived on Second street, now avenue, about Chancery lane.
Zadock [sic] Cramer came into the center of the block in which Brackenridge lived and established his printing house and book bindery and put out the name of the concern as in vogue in those days and advertised his business at the "Sign of the Franklin Head." There were a number of stores close by and the street, by the year 1800, was largely given over to trade. Abner and Jeffe Barker and Jermiah [sic] Barker, both noted houses, stood on the site of Andrew Watsons' [sic] tavern, one of the pioneer taverns of Pittsburgh. It was a log structure and in it there met the first mechanical society in the new town. This meeting in response to the earnest wishes of a few mechanics to have a general meeting to settle on a plan for a well regulated society for the purpose intended. The call for this society appeared in The Gazette March 22, 1788.
The object of the society was the improvement of the working people, to induce working people to locate in Pittsburgh and to procure manufactories to locate here. Similar societies were common in the East. The society was a success in Pittsburgh.
Cramer and his publishing business came into the business life of Pittsburgh about the same time that Judge Brackenridge became formidable as a politician and began the publication of the "Tree of Liberty." He gave it a scriptural motto, "And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations" (Rev. 22:2).
The "leaves" did not heal long in versies ensued between the rival versions ensued between the rural [sic] newspapers, antagonistic party organs. This rampant style of journalism resulted in several libel suits. The "Tree of Liberty" withered away in a few years. The Gazette lives on. However, it was destined to have a new rival. The third newspaper published in Pittsburgh first appeared July 24, 1805, "The Commonwealth," a weekly published by Ephraim Pentland, printed in a building in the West Diamond. Politics now reached a white heat. The Commonwealth ran until about 1818. The Tree of Liberty was published as late as December, 1805.
If one were to follow the various phases of journalism in Pittsburgh in the early part of the last century it would lead him to much political history. The split in the then Republican party in Pennsylvania, the impeachment of Judge Alexander Addison, the virulent editorials during the gubernatorial election in 1808, resulting in the choice of Simon Snyder; the attacks on Tarleton Bates by Pentland, the cowhiding of Pentland, the duel between Bates and Stewart, a friend of Pentland; the death of Bates at Stewart's fire and much more political matter of stirring days here. Much of this has been related in previous articles.
And much of this history began in Market street. The newspapers were published there, the book stores were there, the publishing houses were there and Clapboard Row was there.
This was the houses in the block between Third and Fourth streets (now avenues) on the east side of the street. The term "row" did not fit, for the houses were built separately and were of different types. The row comprised the house of Dr. Hugh Scott, William Gazzam's store, another general store, a boot and shoemaking establishment, and a cut and forged nail manufactory.
Then came Mrs. Mary Murphy's tavern, the proprietress better known as Molly Murphy; and the tavern, "at the sign of General Butler," out of compliment to Gen. Richard Butler, whose history and that of his four fighting brothers was recently related in these columns.
The "sign of General Butler" became noted as the stopping place of President Washington's commission to meet the whisky insurgents. The commissioners were United States Senator James Ross of Pittsburgh; William Bradford, attorney-general of the United States, and Jasper Yeates, a justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Two other commissioners, Chief Justice McKean and Gen. William Irvine, represented Pennsylvania.
It was on July 18, 1794, that these commissioners came to Molly Murphy's tavern and immediately a rabble assembled. They raised a liberty pole, which was the emblem everywhere of those disaffected. Hugh Marie Brackenridge, son of the judge, in his "History of the Western Insurrection," tells of these events. Judge Brackenridge, knowing Judge Yeates well and also Mr. bradford, called on the commission at Mrs. Murphy's. He found Maj. Isaac Craig there, complaining in a tragic way, the Brackenridges say, of the treatment by the people of Pittsburgh of the Craig relatives, Maj. Kirkpatrick and Gen. Neville.
Immediately there was a clash between Brackenridge and Craig, which ended by Bradford rather tersely sitting down on Brackenridge, which greatly wounded the latter's feelings. He claimed later that he with difficulty prevailed on the mob not to place the liberty pole as it intended.
H. M. Brackenridge tells of this in his history:
"An occurrence took place almost immediately after the arrival of the commissioners, calculated to produce a very unfavorable impression, and which disclosed the existence in town of a dangerous spirit among a small portion of the thoughtless and worthless. A riotous and disorderly assemblage raised a liberty pole before the lodgings of the commissioners and would have run up a flag with seven stars for the four western counties and Bedford and the two counties in Virginia, but this was prevented by the well-disposed citizens who prevailed on them to substitute the flag of the 15 states. This was the first and only distinct manifestation among any class of a desire to separate from the Union, even if such an inference can be necessarily drawn from the act. The matter was afterwards the subject of indictment as a disturbance of the peace and the parties were convicted by a jury and fined by the court."
Mr. Brackenridge seems to have counted one county too many.
The insurgents' flag was plainly an emblem of treason. Some accounts make the flag six stripes, five for Pennsylvania counties and one for Virginia—Ohio county, now in West Virginia.
This conference we know was a failure. Only one man in attendance on the part of the insurgents gained anything in reputation. This was Albert Gallatin. His firm stand for law and order resulted in his election to Congress in 1795 over Brackenridge and Gen. John Woods and was the beginning of Gallatin's subsequent fame.
We have the case of Pennsylvania vs. Norris Morrison, Charles Craig, Adam Craig, John McWilliams, Thomas White, Alexander McCombs and Patrick Preston reported in Addison's Reports. These men were indicted for having, August 18, 1794, "unlawfully, riotously and routously [sic] assembled together to disturb the peace on Market street in Pittsburgh, raised a pole or standard called a liberty-pole, in defiance of the laws of Pennsylvania and of the United States, as an indignity and insult to the honourable James Ross, Jasper Yeates, William Bradford, Esqrs., Commissioners, etc., and the honourable Thomas McKean and William Irvine, Esqrs., Commissioners, etc., to the great disturbance of the peace and to the ill example of others."
It was claimed in defense that the men acted under duress and had no intention to oppose the government. The court ordered the acquittal of White, and McWilliams escaped punishment by signing the amnesty. Judge Addison said that pole-raising was a notorious symptom of disaffection and the exhibition of this in the only part of this country where the government was supposed to have strength must have made an impression unfavorable to the whole country, promoted violence in the people here and induced force on the part of the government. The act of raising a pole was in itself unlawful, independent of any other consideration. There was no duress. The defendants were found guilty.
Treason in Pittsburgh and evidences of it exhibited on our principal street do not furnish a pleasant story, nevertheless a true one. It belongs to the history of the street as much as the story of the newspapers, the print shops and the market.
H. M. Brackenridge's "History of the Western Insurrection" appeared in 1859, a long time after. It was printed by W. S. Haven in Pittsburgh, one of the best known of the old-time printers, long since out of business by reason of the death of Mr. Haven.
Brackenridge's book was written to counteract the effect of Neville B. Craig's accounts of the insurrection, especially that in Craig's "History of Pittsburgh," which appeared in 1851. The Brackenridges, H. M. and Alexander, his brother, claimed that the Craig history was the Neville family version and that it grossly libeled the people of Western Pennsylvania and "their townsmen in Pittsburgh."
However, this is all old history, and who cares to peruse it will find all the contemporary and later history of the insurrection in the various works referring to that interesting but shameful phase of our local history. Especially can reference be had to Craig's "History of Pittsburgh" and Brackenridge's "History of the Western Insurrection." Great claims are made for Judge Brackenridge, among others these few: "He saved the Western country from the horrors of civil war, the town of Pittsburgh from destruction and the Federal Union from the greatest danger it has ever encountered."
This was written by H. M. Brackenridge in 1859. A great danger was then at hand which came in 1861, the same danger averted here in 1794 and more widespread and more powerful but involving the same antagonism to the national government, invoking a break away and the establishment of a new nation.
Our Western Pennsylvania secessionists of 1794 by their overt acts, especially their intended flag and liberty-pole raising on Market street, designed a little nation of six counties, to wit, Allegheny, Washington, Fayette, Westmoreland and Bedford in Pennsylvania and Ohio in Virginia, quite a neat little nation, with Pittsburgh the capital.
Just after the meeting of the commissioners and the representatives of the insurgents at Molly Murphy's tavern the country was flooded with inflammatory bills overawing many who saw the trend of events and who desired to submit. A meeting of delegates of the disaffected was to be held in Brownsville August 28, 1794.
"In the meantime the wildest excitement prevailed; some proposed the formation of a new state; others resistance to government, while another class favored reconciliation." So Dr. Alfred Creigh writes in his "History of Washington County."
There are many students of history who still contend that President Washington and the little army he sent under Gen. Henry Lee had much more to do with the collapse of the Whisky Rebellion than the vaunted influence of Judge Brackenridge.
It is sorry enough history. Who walks along Market street and recalls it? Yet it is easily brought up in the history of that street.
The animosities of that year and the antagonisms aroused were felt in political circles here for many years and the story of certain Market street residents in our early political history is a long and curious one.
