Source:Wylie-wiley/content
In a Wylie avenue car: "After whom was this avenue named?"
"After William Wylie, father of Gen. John A. Wiley, who, by the way, was born in that old house occupied now by the cow dealer, on Francis street, just north of the avenue. I used to go to school with him. His father was collector of taxes for Pitt township, and moved away from that old house about 30 years ago."
On the corner of Fifth avenue and Grant a much older man, who has known Pittsburg for more than 60 years, and especially the hill district: "Was Wylie avenue named after William Wylie, father of the general?"
"No, after his grandfather, Stephen Wylie, who owned all that hill from the avenue across to where William McConway lives and down nearly to the West Penn hospital."
Another old citizen: ""The avenue was named after Andrew Wylie, who was solicitor of Pittsburg many years ago." He was solicitor in 1842.
It could not have been named for him as an officeholder, for it was Wylie street in 1840, and there is no means of determining at this moment how much earlier. By the act of April 14, 1851, it opened from Crawford to Arthur, which is to say, to the top of the hill. In answer to an inquiry, Gen. Wiley says that while he cannot be positive, "I have always understood that Wylie avenue was named after my father's people, that is, after his father, Stephen Wylie. When I was a lad I saw a statement written by my father, a kind of history of our ancestry, from which I have, indistinctly though, a recollection that the street was named as Mr. George Ewart says it was, after Stephen Wylie."
There is a difference in the spelling of the name of the avenue and of the family now, and with reference to this Gen. Wiley says that he once had a discussion with his father concerning the spelling, who seems to have stuck out for the y in the second place instead of at the end, where the General puts it. One spelling is merely an alteration of the other, whichever the other originally was. There are nearly 50 entries of the name in the Pittsburg directory, and about evenly divided as to the spelling. So far as noticed the spelling here in the old day was as it is in the name of the avenue. The city solicitor spelled his in that way.
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"What did Hayti look like when Wylie street was opened up to it?"
"Oh, a lot of cheap houses scattered about on the brow of the hill and on the face. The negroes went up there because rent was low, but there were not so many of them as supposed, and very few fugitive slaves among them. Previous to the passage of the fugitive slave law the runaways thought themselves safe enough in Washington and Uniontown. The Virginia runaways would stop in Washington and the Maryland in Uniontown. I have seen lots of them there. After the passage of that act they came to Pittsburg, to be farther from the border and where they could find help to escape if chased. But there was little slave hunting in this town. I can recall only one attempt to take a negro from here under that act, and the catchers had such an unpleasant time of it that they did not care to return."
Wylie avenue is not the least interesting one in Pittsburg, and it would be wrong to let the origin of its name pass into oblivion.
