Source:Grave-of-aschenaz/content
Parvenues resident in the United States, such as the Daughters of the Revolution, Colonial Dame societies, Knickerbockers, descendants of the house of Stuart, and even those who trace their lineage to the Norman followers of William the Conqueror may hide their diminished heads.
Within sight of the court house repose the ashes of a mighty chief whose ancestry is traced by some to the royal house of Hoshed, who reigned over the 10 tribes of Israel 740 years before the Christian era, and by others even to Noah, the reputed father of the post-diluvian world.
A once mighty chiey [sic] said to have been a Cherokee Indian and one of the forheart [sic] of Queen Aliquippa, is buried within the limits of Sheraden, in a lovely sylvan spot overlooking McKees Rocks, Esplen, lower Allegheny, and the Ohio and Chartiers vallies [sic]. It is true that some people say royalty is a little out of date, but judging from the manner in which Americans have testified their delight during 50 years past in honoring European princelings when they condescended to visit us at intervals, it may be questioned whether our professed democracy is of any great depth. Mark Twain, who sighed for an opportunity to drop a tear on the tomb of Adam, might here find an acceptable substitute. When he dries his tears he can survey the greatest industrial hive in the world—the strongest contrast between the day of Mr. Noah and that of the present. It is true that we have no chronological history of our royal family, but it is fortified both by scriptural history and tradition and, as Buckle convincingly shows, the tradition of ancient times was more reliable than written history, being less subject to interpolation and falsification.
The royal house of Ashkenaz, or Aschenaz, as the name is spelled both ways, is first mentioned in the Bible in the book of Genesis, C. 10, V. 3, "And the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz and Riphath and Tagarmah." From Gomer were descended the Welsh, as any patriotic Welshman will tell you. The Bourbon, Orleanist, Capetian, Carlovingian, etc., royal houses of France all claimed to trace their descent to Noah and the subject of this sketch could claim within two removes of the same, for his father, Gomer, was the son of Japheth and Japheth was the third son of Noah. The word Japheth signifies enlargement, and if it be true, as some hold, that at the time when mankind was scattered on account of the confusion of tongues, the progeny of Japheth overspread Central and Northern Asia, Eastern Europe and a section crossing Behring's strait peopled America. The name is certainly suggestive, for the latter emigration seems to have occupied the new world from Behring's strait to Cape Horn.
If, on the other hand, those who contend that the old Cherokee chief's genealogical tree cannot be traced further back than the dispersion of the tribes, 740 B. C., descent from Noah still seems to be satisfactorily established, for Noah, in pronouncing the cure on his son Ham for unfilial conduct, says, Ibid, C. 9, v. 27: "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem," etc. So it appears plain that the ancestors of Aschenaz may have been mingled with the ten tribes at the dispersion. It is noteworthy that the disperson of the tribes sent them to the plains of Media, the land of their relatives, the other descendants of Japheth. The story of this event is told in 2d Kings, 17 c.: "Hoshea, king of Israel, was a wicked king, and in consequence and as a punishment, Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, besieged Samaria, the capital city, three years. "In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes." There the record drops them, but it goes on to state their character as idolaters, and if you read the chapter you will be stricken by the similarity of the customs of these dispersed Israelites to those of the mound builders who were once active on Sheraden heights and about McKees Rocks generally. Nearly all ethnologists agree that the mounds we find now were devoted to sacrificial purposes. It is related that these idolatrous Israelites "set up images and groves in every high hill * * and there they burnt incense in all the high places." Their practices were then similar to the heathen round about them. And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartack, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adamelech and Anamelech, the gods of Sephervaim."
What more probable than the mound builders of McKees Rocks once passed their children through the fire to Moloch?
The next reference to the name is in Jeremiah c. 51, v. 27, in denouncing the judgment of God on Babylon thus: "Blow the trumpet among the nations * * * Call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Aschenaz."
The grave of Aschenaz is within the limits of a town originally laid out by N. P. Sawyer some 30 years ago and he named the town after the above chief at the suggestion of his (Mr. Sawyer's) aunt, Miss Mary Brooks, who died at the age of 89, at the residence of Mr. Sawyer in Oakland, some 20 years ago. The town flourished for a time, but was nipped by the panic frost of 1873. Of late it has become one of the prettiest and most thriving suburbs of Pittsburg. Mr. Sawyer states that the name like all primitive ones had a significance and meant "pleasant land," but in Cherokee lingo it meant "father," or "leader of a tribe." Some quibblers have objected because this royal family did not always spell the name the same way, but the objection is not valid, for five centuries back the ancestors of Queen Victoria spelled their names as seemed best to each, if indeed they could spell it at all. It is recorded by some one that Shakespeare spelled his name 22 different ways.
The grave of Achenaz [sic] is on the Conly Foster property near the western border of Sheriden [sic]. Mr. Foster has a number of relics which were taken from it when it was opened some years ago. The grave was walled with flag-stones. Near it is a famous spring once known as Indian spring. There is a deer lick close by, but neither deer nor Indians have been seen in the vicinity for several generations.
It is said that the blood of Achenaz [sic], or some of his relatives, at least, flows in the veins of a sufficient number of people in this county to constitute a society more numerous than that of the Daughters of the evolution [sic], but for some reason they modestly keep in the back ground and do not coalesce. If they cannot run their record back beyond the time of the building of the tower of Babel they can at least get back 2,640 years and New York's 400 sink into insignificance compared with families founded before the earth was really day. No one would dare to throw aspersions on a lineage so ancient and on top of all royal, for there cannot nor ever could be any dispute as to the ancient mariner being the first man in the world in his day—not only the first gentleman of Asia, but in the whole footstool.
