Source:Fleming-wooing
George T. Fleming. "Vast estate is won by swift wooing: Odd bits of Schenley history raise queries that have not been answered: Brave Maj. Croghan." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Feb. 6, 1916, sec. 6, [p. 4]. Newspapers.com 85897871.
THE history evolved by the name Schenley, now so common in Pittsburgh, was but slightly touched upon last week, although allusion was made to several of Mrs. Schenley's ancestors and to her father. A biography of Capt. Schenley was inserted as published at the time of his death in 1878.
About all that was obtainable was published concerning the Captain and the good fortune that attended him by reason of his "September and April" match with Mary Elizabeth Croghan, an heiress of Pittsburgh. "December and May" would be too wide a variation to describe their ages, for the Captain was hardly 50 at his third marriage and enjoyed the felicity of his last wedlock for 36 years.
Mary Elizabeth was sweet 16, it is said, although some accounts make her younger. Accounts vary also as to the exact date of the elopement, which was not from Pittsburgh, but from a select boarding school on Staten Island. It was about 1842.
The name O'Hara, commemorating the grandfather of Mrs. Schenley, very properly is now applied to a street through one of his vast tracts which we know as Schenley Farms.
Beautiful Tracts of Land.
William G. Johnston, who knew Mrs. Schenley's father, Col. William Croghan, recounting the many beautiful suburban places in the Oakland district mentions "the extensive lands of Col. Croghan (now Schenleys)" as adjoining the Chadwick farm to the east. In his classic style Mr. Johnston describes Col. Croghan thus:
Perhaps no finer specimen of the "genus hominum" ever trod the streets of Pittsburgh than Col. William Croghan. He was indeed a splendid-looking man, portly, dignified, refined, pleasing in manners, and, like a true gentlman [sic] in general, kind and without a particle of hauteur.
Book stores have ever been places of resort for literary poople [sic], naturally. Mr. Johnston's father, Samuel Reed Johnston, was a member of the firm of Johnston & Stockton, the successors of the first book store in Pittsburgh, and this store was the rendezvous of men of leisure and the book lovers of Pittsburgh of that day.
Men of prominence of the city and country roundabout frequented the store and Mr. Johnston from boyhood became acquainted with many who were eminent in their day and generation. Among them was Col. William Croghan, and his tribute to Croghan is corroborative of the brief biography published last week.
Col. Croghan survived his daughter's marriage about eight years. He died in 1850.
Visit of Mrs. Schenley.
The story of his elegant mansion and grounds, which he called "Pic Nic," belongs properly to the history of Stanton avenue, near which the mansion stands. Several years after her marriage Mrs. Schenley came to Pittsburgh and visited her father, who had built the mansion and had it ready for her. We are told that her father had it built in exact imitation of her English home.
This place we now know as the old Schenley mansion.
Maj. William Croghan, grandfather of Mrs. Schenley, deserves more than a passing notice for, like her maternal grandfather, Gen. James O'Hara, he was a soldier in the Revolution on the side of the Colonists. Born in Ireland in 1750, he was brought to Virginia at an early age.
In 1776 he became a captain in the Fourth Regiment of the Virginia line, under Col. John Neville. The lieutenant colonel of this regiment was the Colonel's son, Presley Neville. William Croghan was promoted major of the regiment.
These three were under the immediate command of Washington and became intimate friends of the Father of our Country—lifelong friends, it may be stated.
Amid the snows of Trenton and Princeton and under the burning sun at Monmouth these three fought and saw victory. At Brandywine and Germantown they were in action also and, suffering the pangs of defeat, retired with Washington to Valley Forge.
They helped drive Lord Howe from Philadelphia the following summer, and through New Jersey to Sandy Hook, and into the city of New York.
In Active Service.
In 1780 the Fourth Virginia joined the Southern army under Gen. Lincoln. During the most of 1780 their field of service was largely in the Carolinas.
A large British fleet conveyed Sir Henry Clinton with the bulk of his forces from New York and disembarked them in Charleston. Gen. Lincoln was obliged to capitulate after a month's siege, during which most of his fortifications had been beaten down by the British artillery.
The Nevilles, Croghan, and all the rank and file of the Fourth Virginia were made prisoners. Presley Neville was fortunate in securing an early exchange for himself, but his father and Maj. Croghan, and the other officers could only secure a parole.
Before Maj. Croghan was exchanged he was present at the siege of Yorktown and witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis, but as a non-combatant, his parole forbidding active participation.
Maj. Croghan came with Gen. John Neville to Fort Pitt July 6, 1782. On that date Maj. Croghan wrote to the Virginia secretary of war recounting the massacre of the Moravian Indians at the Tuscarawas towns in Ohio by Col. Williamson's men.
Under the orders of the Virginia secretary, Maj. Croghan discharged the Virginia soldiers remaining in service at Fort Pitt and gave each man three months' pay.
Maj. Croghan was one of the original members of the Society of Cincinnati, joining with other members of the Virginia at a meeting held for the purpose at Fredericksburg in 1783.
Friend of Pioneers.
Maj. Croghan was the comrade and townsman of many pioneers, soldiers of the Revolution, who had come to Fort Pitt, and the growing frontier town of Pittsburgh. The Nevilles, the Butlers, Col. Stephen Bayard, Maj. Isaac Craig, Maj. Ebenezer Denny, Maj. Abraham Kirkpatrick, Col. James O'Hara, Gen. John Wilkins, Jr., Maj. James Gordon Herron, Maj. William Anderson and James Foster are but a few of the patriots with whom Maj. Croghan was associated here in 1782–83.
In 1784 Maj. Croghan visited Kentucky and was so pleased with the country that he concluded to abide there. Accordingly he removed there and settled in Jefferson county near Louisville. His beautiful home and plantation he called Locust Grove and here he resided for the remainder of his life. He died at this home in September, 1822.
Shortly after he removed to Kentucky he married the sister of Gen. George Rogers Clarke, who was the mother of William Croghan, Jr., or Col. Croghan, later of Pittsburgh and father of Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Schenley, donor of Schenley Park, and fastened her husband's name upon much of Pittsburgh to the exclusion of her patriotic ancestors.
Mrs. Schenley was born at Louisville in 1826. So that instead of having been a Pittsburgher as everyone thinks, "she was born in old Kentucky, etc." Her mother, Mary O'Hara, daughter of Col. (subsequently Gen.) James O'Hara, was one of the early belles of Pittsburgh, born here about 1800. She died in 1827, leaving a daughter, Mary Elizabeth, and a son, William, who died soon after his mother.
Father Nurses Sorrow.
It can be imagined how keen his agony of soul became when William Croghan dwelt in his loneliness at beautiful Pic Nic. Ever recurred the thought of his little girl, mismated, far away, the wife of a reputed blase man of the world and more than old enough to be her father.
Eight years the colonel is said to have nursed his poignant sorrow and then he passed away and the fortune-grabbing captain came into his own—really his wife's own—and proceeded to paste his Belgian name upon the map of Pittsburgh, where it not only stuck but spread.
We learn from the biography of Schenley published at his death that his father was born in Belgium and early in life took service in the British army.
On Robert E. McGowin's map of Pittsburgh of 1852 the name Edward W. H. Schenley is found on many tracts, and a reference to that map, a ragged and disreputable looking remnant to be found in the office of the city engineer, will show the extent of the good fortune in Pittsburgh that attended his whirlwind wooing of the gentle and unsophisticated Mary Elizabeth Croghan.
McGowin's old map is very rare now. The late Henry A. Breed had one in his office in the old McClintock Building that was spick and span, but it disappeared in flame when that building was on fire about 20 years ago, except a small charred fragment which Mr. Breed religiously cherished.
It was a pleasure to study old Pittsburgh on this map when it was in its original condition. On the disreputable looking one in the city engineer's office, showing more than three-score years of grime, it is necessary to wet the finger and wipe off the spot demanding attention.
Nevertheless Capt. Schenley's name can be made out very plainly on the plots of much of the ground that he married.
Land Along Railroad.
Some of these plots were along the hillside parallel to the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks in the Point district, the present Schenley Farms and Schenley Park, in Hardscrabble, and in various tracts, some in the North Side.
Just how many tenants the estate had the agents only knew, but it run [sic] into hundreds—perhaps thousands. After the captain's removal from Pittsburgh, in 1863, he was distinctly an alien landlord.
During the dark days of the Civil War there was no reduction of the rents of the Schenley holdings in Pittsburgh. Many of these were in the Point district, held on a ground rent on which the tenants had erected their own little houses—whole rows alike with a frame work filled in, often with only a single layer of brick.
These tenements were the homes of the lowly, the toilers in the mills and foundries of that day and the many manufacturing establishments then in the Point district. These rows were on First street, Fort street and the alleys about the Block House.
Indeed the Block House itself was a Schenley tenement, the domicile of two old Irish women when the writer hereof first saw it in his boyhood.
The Schenley tenements in the outer Penn avenue, or Bayardstown, district showed a corresponding lack of thrift. If a person wanted to know where Peter Tumbledown and his progeny lived there were many Pittsburghers who would have sent such an inquirer to some one of the Schenley tenements or groups.
Heiress Stays Away.
Mrs. Schenley was of a different heart and mind from her spouse. The memories of her girlhood home were ever pleasant, yet she came not hither.
If ever she regretted her marriage no trace of it ever drifted into print in Pittsburgh.
Her's [sic] was never a popular marriage here. Had it been solemnized here there would have been no run on the rice counter.
The yoking of tender girlhood with a man utterly unfitted for her in the eyes of her devoted parents and others was regarded as what the Apostle Paul would deem an unequal yoke—and then there was the money phase.
Pittsburgh people could not get away from that. The captain in our very easily understood metaphor of the twentieth century expression was "out for the stuff" and he got it.
Hence he was never popular in Pittsburgh and during the years he spent here lived much to himself. In some directories his name occurs. Thus in 1858–59, Thurston's directory has it
Schenley, Capt. Edward W. H. o. 189 Penn st. ] h Pic Nic House, Collins Tp.
This indicated that his office was at 189 Penn avenue and his home in Collins township, since annexed to the city.
Similarly in the same publisher's directory, 1867–63 [sic]:
Schenley, Cap't E. W. H. o 189 Penn, h Pic Nic House, Collins Tp.
In Pittsburgh Schenley was regarded as a foreign landlord—an alien landlord—and put in the same class as the Irish landlords across the sea.
No. 189 Penn street, now avenue, was a brick of three stories that stood on the site of the Colonial Annex Hotel.
Office of Estate.
There were iron steps up to the office and the building is shown in the old views of Library Hall, now the Lyceum Theater Building. A sign in the window reads:
Schenley Estate.
Francis Torrance, Agent.
Mrs. Eliza Koehler lived on the Pic Nic farm for many years—57 in all. She was Mrs. Schenley's maid, and made five trans-Atlantic trips with Mrs. Schenley.
After the Schenleys left Pittsburgh in 1863, Mrs. Koehler and her husband remained on the place and conducted a dairy farm. They were caretakers of the mansion, but rented the place, paying $400 per annum, but Mrs. Schenley made a reduction of $50 later.
The Koehlers did not live in the mansion, but in another house on the place, but they used the basement in part for their dairy purposes. They were loyal to their trust and lived on the place the remainder of their lives, Mrs. Koehler surviving her husband.
When Mrs. Schenley died in November, 1903, Mrs. Koehler was good interviewing for Pittsburgh reporters and her evidence as to Capt. Schenley's character is good reading. This evidence confirms the statements of the captain's unpopularity here.
Mrs. Koehler stated that the Schenleys remained at Pic Nic House for five years, that the captain at one time had intended to become an American citizen, but had changed his mind. She describes him as haughty in carriage and manner.
During the palmy days of Col. Croghan's occupancy of the mansion the farm, with its wealth of flowers and fruit, was thrown open to the residents of the neighborhood and many happy hours were spent by the youth in the beautiful grounds. Col. Croghan was an enthusiastic patron of floral culture. His greenhouses were unrivaled in all the section hereabouts.
Grounds Shut Up.
When the haughty English captain came into possession his aristocratic ways gave swift chase to the democratic spirit of dear old Col. Croghan and a new regime ensued—none of the common herd were allowed to put foot on the grounds, pick an apple or carry away a flower.
This course of action aroused an intense antipathy to the man and it was intensified by the fact that he had carried away a Pittsburgh heiress for a wife—"stolen her away," indeed, was a common phrase to characterize his "romantic marriage."
Of course all of this is treason from the viewpoint of the Schenley partisans. O'Hara and Croghan have been relegated to obscurity—still so for the latter, and only recent re-commemoration for the former—and Schenley as a name is a poor substitute for either.
Again, what strange reasons kept Mrs. Schenley away from the land of her birth for over 40 years, made her an alien and kept her one?
From the time she and her husband left here in 1863 neither ever returned. Old Pittsburghers resented this. There were enough Pittsburgh dollars went across the ocean to have brought her over many times, many said.
Several times, according to Mrs. Koehler, Mrs. Schenley packed her trunks and made ready to come, but changed her mind at the boarding of the steamer. Why?
Even Mrs. Koehler could not tell, and she, the confidential maid, crossing the ocean with her mistress first in 1843.
Forty years of expatriation for Mrs. Schenley have never been explained.
During Civil War.
Capt. Schenley was a resident of Pittsburgh during the stormy period preceding the great Civil War, and during more than half of the period of that conflict. He knew of the uprising in Pittsburgh that prevented the removal of the cannon from the Arsenal here in 1860, and saw the first defenders go forth, and many subsequently.
There is a record somewhere that the captain, true to his military proclivities, visited the Army of the Potomac early in the war and that he espoused the cause of the North, differing from many of his distinguished countrymen, "Bull Run" Russell, and others then much in the public eye.
Perhaps the story of this visit came to the writer's view in the perusal of the hundreds of letters written home by Gen. Alexander Hays, or it may have been printed in some correspondence from the army in the war days, an everyday feature in the papers.
Veterans of today who remember the captain incline to doubt the truth of this. The opinion prevails that it was not a practical espousal as in the midst of the war the Captain and Mrs. Schenley left Pittsburgh for good.
Last week the statement was made that the street formerly known as O'Hara in the Shadyside district, now Maryland avenue, was in honor of Gen. O'Hara. Florence C. Miller writes that this is erroneous—that it commemorated Michael O'Hara, a member of the Allegheny county bar, whose widow, nee McFarland, yet lives in the neighborhood. Inquiry as to this point establishes the truth of Mrs. Miller's assertion.
Some Points Made Clear.
A lifelong friend, now gray haired, who wants no mention for his kindness, writes that it was William Peter Eichbaum who came here to run Gen. O'Hara and Maj. Isaac Craig's glasshouse.
This point is affirmed also. William Eichbaum, postmaster and later city treasurer of Pittsburgh, was but 10 years old it appears in 1797, when glass making began here, and could not have superintended to a great extent; in fact, never touched the glass business at all. He was a very nice old gentleman for all that, as all will attest that knew him.
The late William A. Herron succeeded Mr. Torrance as the Schenley estate agent here, and his son, John Herron, is one of the executors of the American will of Mrs. Schenley.
The picture of Mrs. Schenley is made from the one presented to Pittsburgh a few years ago.
The old Casino in Schenley Park, burned some years ago, will appeal to many who recall it and its brilliancy.