Source:Fleming-romantic
George T. Fleming. "Romantic tale recalled by street: Career of George Plumer is remarkable in several different ways: First white child." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, May 7, 1916, sec. 6, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85459927.
THERE is a Lawrenceville street that conveys a story in its name—Plummer street—with one "m" too many in its spelling.
A biographical sketch by Isaac Craig, which later appeared in the New England Genealogical Magazine, ran about as follows:
"George Plumer was of English descent. His ancestors were of an ancient and honorable family. Members of the Plumer family were among the earliest settlers in Massachusetts. From that state Jonathan Plumer emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1750. He was a commissary to Gen. Braddock in 1755 and after Braddock's defeat settled at Old Town, near Fort Cumberland.
"A tradition in the Plumer family has it that he was with Forbes when that 'Head of Iron' took possession of Fort Duquesne in 1758 and named the site Pittsburgh. He returned East with Forbes' army and located at Fort Frederick. Here he met and married Miss Anna Farrell.
"In 1759 we have an account of Plumer at Fort Pitt, but not till 1761 did he bring his family to the West. In that year, by permission of Col. Bouquet, he built a cabin and 'made valuable improvements' on a tract of 1,500 acres of land along the Allegheny River which he had become jointly interested in with Col. George Croghan, who had obtained it by grant from the Indians. This land includes the location of the United States Arsenal and the Allegheny Cemetery.
"The peace of Fontainebleau, 'which secured to the British crown this long-disputed section,' was signed on November 3, 1762. Immediately after British possession was secured imigrants [sic] began to flock in from Eastern Pennsylvania, Virginia, Scotland and the North of Ireland.
"Jonathan Plumer's cabin was one of the pioneer structures outside of Fort Pitt. It was located about 100 yards east of where the old Ewalt mansion now stands in Water street, which was built by Samuel Ewalt, who purchased the property when it was sold by the Sheriff at the suit of Croghan's creditors.
"In that rude frontier cabin, whose blue wood-smoke curling among the trees was a guide for the settlers on December 5, 1762, the first white child was born west of the Allegheny Mountains under British dominion. He was christened George Plumer and his after career was as notable as his birth."
The youthful Plumer became a noted hunter and scout and occasionally accompanied parties of surveyors. Soon after the close of the Revolution he met Miss Margaret Lowrey, the youngest daughter of Col. Alexander Lowrey of Lancaster county.
Miss Margaret was visiting her sisters, Mrs. Daniel Elliott and Mrs. John Hay here when she met the strapping young backwoodsman in buckskins. It was a case of love from the beginning, and shortly the young people were engaged.
When the engagement was anqnounced [sic] to Mrs. Hay there was a storm. The Lowrey family were wealthy and proud. Mrs. Hay opposed the match and threatened to send Miss Margaret home.
Before this could be done the youthful pair set an example which has been followed by many ardent lovers since. They eloped and were married in August, 1784. But the girl was an outcast from home.
The first home of the newly wedded couple was on the right bank of the Pucketos (now Puckety) Creek, near Fort Crawford, within the present boundaries of Westmoreland county, where Plumer had taken up 300 acres of land and built a log cabin. Here he conducted his aristocratic bride and the two bravely began the struggle of life together without a hope of the father's forgiveness.
Plumer cleaned [sic] the land and hunted the game that abounded in the woods. They were often annoyed by Indians and were compelled to take refuge in the woods and occasionally in Fort Crawford.
There is something pathetic in the situation of the high-born girl who preferred to share the dangers and privations of such a life with the man she loved rather than give him up for the luxuries of the Lowrey home and a share of the Lowrey fortune.
George Plumer and Robert Hays, being called upon to perform a month's military duty as scouts, a Pittsburgh attorney took advantage of their absence to send a surveyor to survey their lands and had a patent taken out before they knew anything about it. By this scoundrelly action they lost their all.
Shortly after this Plumer met his father-in-law for the first time. Col. Lowrey had a large plot of land north of Hannas Town, near Greensburg, about which there was litigation and preparatory to the trial of the case he was there with a party of surveyors to fix the boundaries.
Plumer was hunting in that direction and met the party. Being well acquainted with the surveyors he shook hands all around, and then he was presented to his astonished father-in-law.
The unexpected meeting was a trifle embarrassing to Plumer. He invited his father-in-law home with him and see his daughter and grandchildren. But the colonel declined and bade him a cold farewell. But in a day or so who should appear at the little log cabin in the woods but the stately Col. Lowrey unannounced, but greeted with a tearful welcome. The Colonel fairly overwhelmed his long-lost daughter and her little sons with embraces and everything went well thereafter.
That reconciliation between a disobedient daughter and an irate father was notable and the first event of its kind west of the Alleghenies. At least the first recorded.
Lowrey followed up the reconciliation by giving Plumer and his wife their choice of three tracts of land near the mouth of Big Sewickley creek. The selection was made and Plumer erected a house at the mouth of the Sewickley, near West Newton.
So attracted was Col. Lowrey with his son-in-law's enterprise and thrift that two years later he presented him £800 ($4,000) to erect mills on his property. The next year the Colonel came again and found the sawmill runninb [sic] and masons at work on the foundation of the grist mill. He was delighted and presented Plumer with £300 more and sent him burr-stones for the mill.
Plumer afterward sold his mills and built a large square log house on the upper portion of his farm where he spent the remainder of his days. He went into the distilling and mercantile business in 1808 and carried them on with great success.
Shortly after this his public career began. He was elected to the Legislature in 1812 and re-elected in 1813, 1814, 1815 and 1817. In 1820 he was elected a represenative [sic] in the Seventeenth Congress from the Westmoreland district. He was then in the prime of his vigorous life and performed efficient, though modest service, in the national Legislature. The portrait of him now to be had was made during his congressional experience. It is in possession of his grandson, George Plumer Smith of Philadelphia. (1888).
Mr. Plumer was re-elected to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses and after that retired to private life. When urged to allow the use of his name as a candidate for Congress again in 1832 he positively declined. In 1818 he lost his wife, but afterward remarried.
Mr. Plumer was a pillar of the early Presbyterian denomination here, and was one of the nine ruling elders elected to select a site and establish a theological seminary west of the mountains. He did not favor the site finally selected on Hogback Hill, Allegheny, but favored the purchase of Braddock's Fields for the purpose. He died January 8, 1843, at the ripe age of 80 years six months and three days.
The valiant pioneer left a numerous and vigorous line of descendants. Branches of the Plumer family are scattered throughout the state and in the western states. John Campbell Plumer, who distinguished himself in the War of 1812 at the siege of Fort Meigs and in other engagements and who was a member of the Legislature from the Westmoreland district, was his eldest son.
There is also commemorated the name of a prominent Pittsburgh family in a short Lawrenceville street running from Liberty to Penn avenue—Denny street. Denny has been a Pittsburgh name ever since Ebenezer Denny, a youth of 15, came as a trusted bearer of important dispatches to Fort Pitt in 1776, 140 years ago.
Considering the standing and services of Maj. Ebenezer Denny, those of his illustrious son, Harmar Denny, and the character and standing of the family through all that period, the name Denny applied to the short street is a scant and very inadequate commemoration.
Though we hear often of the Dennys, the Denny estate and Denny property and the biography of Ebenezer Denny, first mayor of Pittsburgh, has been frequently published, that of Harmar Denny, lawyer, publicist, churchman, philanthropist and Christian gentleman, is little known to this generation.
The Dennys are English stock. Just when they first came to America the biographies do not state. We learn though that two brothers, William and Walter, immigrated from Chester county, Pa., in 1745, and located near Carlisle, Pa.
In Cumberland county, William soon became a prominent citizen. His wife's name was Agnes Parker. Ebenezer was the first child of this couple, born near Carlisle, or in the town, March 11, 1761.
Maj. Denny's services in the War of the Revolution on land and sea have been reverted to lately in the history that was pertinent to the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Pittsburgh as a city—the actual date, March 18, last.
Maj. Denny's services with Gen. Josiah Harmar and Arthur St. Clair in their disastrous Indian campaigns have also been mentioned.
Harmar was a native of Philadelphia, eight years the senior of Denny. He lived to be 80 years old, dying in Philadelphia in 1813. Like St. Clair, he had served loyally and with distinction during the Revolution. We have his name commemorated in an Allegheny county village, Harmarville.
Not Harmarville, and not Harmer Denny, as often seen in print, but Harmar, was the name bestowed by the Dennys on the village in which vicinity they have had for many years a summer home, and once much ground.
Ebenezer Denny had a profound regard for Gen. Harmar and none the less regard for Gen. St. Clair. Hence he named two sons for his revered, though unfortunate commanders. Maj. Denny's other sons were William H. Denny, a prominent physician and writer of Pittsburgh, and St. Clair Denny.
Dr. William H. Denny will be remembered as the friend of the eccentric French refugee, De Rouaud, and was the trustee and executor of the odd will of that queer man.
Ebenezer Denny was one of the first to join the Society of Cincinnati, founded in 1783 and composed of officers who served during the Revolution with Washington, the first president.
Maj. Denny's services during the War of 1812 have also been mentioned. Likewise his mercantile career in Pittsburgh, his home at Market and Third streets (now avenue), and his business associations with William B. Foster, Sr., father of Stephen Collins Foster and the late Morrison Foster.
Besides serving as mayor of Pittsburgh, Maj. Denny held other public offices. He was a commissioner of Allegheny county and treasurer in 1803 and again in 1808.
Maj. Denny married Nancy Wilkins, daughter of Gen. John Wilkins, Sr., sister of Quartermaster General John Wilkins, Jr., and Judge William Wilkins; and here we come to other local commemoration of distinguished and talented Pittsburghers. We have Wilkins avenue, Wilkinsburg and Wilkins township.
Of the Wilkinses, the Judge was the most noted and had both a national and international reputation. He was judge of common pleas in Pittsburgh, 1820–24; judge of the United States District Court until 1831, when he was elected to the United States Senate.
He became minister to Russia in 1834. In 1844 he was for a time secretary of war. He subsequently served in the State Senate of Pennsylvania. He died at his beautiful home on Penn avenue, Homewood, June 23, 1865, aged 86 years.
Following out the Wilkins geneology [sic] would bring out the family connections of many notable Pittsburgh people, but today the Denny biography will be sufficient. The Wilkins line, it will be observed, is the maternal line of Harmar Denny and is deserving of a separate history. Wilkins is yet a live name in Allegheny county.
Harmar Denny was born in Pittsburgh May 13, 1794. He pursued his early studies here under the facilities afforded and was sent to Dickinson College at Carlisle, where he was graduated in 1813.
The Dickinson Alumni Record shows that he became the most eminent of his class. It also shows that he was cotemperary [sic] as a student for three years with most distinguished men, among them Robert C. Grier, who became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Judge Alexander Laws Hays of Lancaster, Pa.; Dr. Richard Henry Lee, for 27 years professor of belles lettres in old Washington College at Washington, Pa.; Judge Colvin Blythe of Adams county, who had a notable civic and legal career in Pennsylvania; James Dunlop of Chambersburg, lawyer and author of "Dunlop's Digests"—all of these of the class of 1812.
A fellow classmate of Harmar Denny was James S. Craft, "lawyer, of Pittsburgh, Pa. Further record unknown," and in the next year's records, 1814, occurs the short line, "Denney, William H.—Record unknown," and wrongly spelled, it may be added.
It is very evident that an inquiry started by the Dickinson College authorities among its Pittsburgh alumni would have brought results.
Nevertheless Craft is a familiar name in Pittsburgh, where James S. Craft was as noted an attorney as Harmar Denny. We have Crafton and Craft avenue in his honor, and in the legal history of Allegheny county, especially in land titles Craft figures largely; so too, William H. Denny in a medical way and as an author.
Returning to Pittsburgh Harmar Denny registered as a law student with Henry Baldwin, and was admitted to the bar in Pittsburgh November 13, 1816, the same year his father had become the first mayor of the young city.
Harmar Denny was taken in to partnership subsequently by his legal preceptor, who later became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. We once had Baldwin street, now Twenty-fifth; we still have Baldwin township.
Harmar Denny soon became widely known. He was unselfish and more devoted to the general welfare of the people than his personal comfort or private emoluments. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Legislature when the canal question was of absorbing interest.
He was a member of Congress for four successive terms from the Pittsburgh district, or Allegheny county. He was the steady advocate of a protective tariff as evinced by his able speech in reply to Mr. McDuffie of South Carolina in May, 1830, and in subsequent addresses in the House.
Mr. Denny was first elected in 1828 as an anti-Masonic candidate. His subsequent elections, in 1832–34 and 36, were on the Whig ticket. Mr. Denny was the sole representative from Allegheny county, Pennsylvania then being represented by 30 members.
In the memorable contest against the United States Bank, Mr. Denny was naturally as a Whig, bitterly opposed to President Jackson's policies, and was heartily sustained by a large majority of his constituents.
He was a member of the convention that met in 1837 and 1838 in Harrisburg and Philadelphia and prepared the constitution for Pennsylvania known as the constitution of 1839, superceded [sic] in 1874 by the present constitution.
In that convention Harmar Denny was a man of note. Pittsburgh was well represented. That fact was self-evident. He was a progressive and well equipped man of perfect equipoise and without ostentation.
He encouraged the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He was president of the Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad, subsequently merged into the "Pan Handle Route," now so well known. Upon the bonds of the Pittsburgh and Steubenville road was the likeness of Harmar Denny, a signal honor.
In every way we are told he was a friend of the people. He bettered the farmers by introducing improved agricultural implements and the importation of blooded stock.
A man of fine mind and college education he was early prominent in that cause and believed in, and worked for a liberal education for all who could possibly obtain it. He became a trustee of the Western University of Pennsylvania, now the University of Pittsburgh, and a director of the Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny.
His library was one of the largest and most valuable in Pittsburgh. It was especially well selected. In 1848 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, organized in Philadelphia in 1743. He was both a scholar and a man of action.
Soon after his admission to the bar, Mr. Denny joined the First Presbyterial [sic] Church of Pittsburgh, during the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Francis Herron. He became a ruling elder in 1829 and as a member of the Session of the church and of higher ecclesiastical courts, though modest and prudent his opinions carried great weight. In all the organizations of the Presbyterian church of which he was a member, he obtained prominence and early recognition of his signal abilities.
It will be observed that for one term he was a colleague of George Plumer. He was also a colleague of Walter H. Lowrie, Theodore Frelinghuysen, John Quincy Adams and other illustrious Americans.
Mr. Denny was one of three secretaries of a convention for the observance of the Sabbath, held in Baltimore November 27, 1844. This was a remarkable gathering, attended by 1,700 delegates and presided over by John Quincy Adams.
Mrs. Denny, who survived her husband many years, is much better known to this generation—the elderly portion of it, of course. Her maiden name was Elizabeth Febiger O'Hara, and she was the daughter of Gen. James O'Hara and Mary Corson O'Hara. Much of the O'Hara history has been already written and has appeared in these columns.
Mrs. Denny was the elder daughter and the last survivor of her father's family. She was a noble woman, an earnest and intelligent Christian of great energy and benevolence. Mrs. Denny died January 18, 1878, in her seventy-ninth year, 26 years after her husband.
About the same time died Capt. E. W. H. Schenley—husband of Mrs. Denny's niece, Mary Elizabeth Croghan Schenley—the captain whose posthumous fame is yearly increasing with the Heights farms, hotel, park, mansion, etc., but that story has been told.
We have a very good portrait of Harmar Denny and good descriptions of his personal appearance. Thus Historian J. N. Boucher states:
Harmar Denny was a man of fine personal appearance, a most excellent lawyer and a high-minded lawyer of the old school, whose polished manners, with his other high qualities made him many friends. Except that he was president of Common Council in 1849, we believe that he never sought office after his retirement from Congress in 1837. He died January 29, 1852.
Other authorities state that he was tall, erect and dignified in appearance, but modest, courteous and kind.
"His character was symmetrical and well established," we are assured, "and no one ever questioned his high sense of honor, his integrity, the purity of his life or the sincerity of his religious profession.
"His home was loved by himself and in it he practiced a generous hospitality. Morning and evening he worshiped God with his household. His life was not a long one, but an active and useful one. After a lingering and painful illness which he was enabled to endure with Christian resignation, supported by the precious hopes of the Christian faith and soothed by the loving attentions of those near and dear to him, he peacefully entered into rest through death January 29, 1852, in the fiifty-eighth [sic] year of his age."
At a meeting of the Allegheny county bar, presided over by Walter Forward, high tribute was paid to his worth and the estimation in which he was held by his associates was evidenced by sorrowful words of reverence and regret. The corporations to which he had belonged and the press of the country recognized his distinguished character and spoke in deep sorrow so widely felt because of his death.
Such was Harmar Denny, whose name and whose father's name find scant commemoration in the powerful city in which they were pioneers, for Harmar Denny was born, remember, in Pittsburgh in 1794, the year that Pittsburgh was created a borough.
