Source notes:Clapham
What is the story of this map? I can't find any authority for it other than Source:Johnston, and Johnston doesn't actually say anything about it apart from the caption. In a footnote on page 22 is mentioned "Captain William Clapham, report to Col. Bouquet, 1761," with a count of 104 houses and 233 people, exclusive of soldiers and their families living in town.
The presence of Grant Street on the map seems especially strange—it seems to lead from "Hugh's" (Hogg's) Pond to nowhere. Grant Street was the eastern boundary of the 1784 plan of Pittsburgh by George Woods, and it seems more likely that it was created as part of the laying out of that plan than that it happened to exist earlier and was merely adopted as the boundary.
Earliest Pittsburgh Map.
The earliest map of Pittsburgh is said by William G. Johnston to have been drawn by Col. William Claphan [sic] in 1761. This was three years after Fort Pitt was erected. Three streets are shown, Liberty, Market and Grant. Mr. Johnston does not attach much importance to this plan, so he places it in his "Reminiscences" so small as to be almost illegible. It seems to have been merely a plan that Caphan [sic] suggested for the laying out of a town.
Fleming continues:
However in 1774 John Campbell came along with a better plan. He shows six streets besides Water street and Chancery lane intermediate to Ferry and Market.
At Market and Water the northwest corner lot is marked "P. Neville." Gen. Neville did not come to this property until after the whisky insurrection of 1794. It is evident the names on this plan were not given by Col. Campbell Chancery lane and Market street, suggesting a court house and a market, which did not come for years afterward.
But if the presence of "Market Street" on Campbell's map is of suspicious veracity, then surely the same is true for Clapham's map.
Other sources mention Clapham's census, but they don't mention a map.
Source:Chapman, p. 80:
Among its citizens was Colonel William Clapham, a man distinguished in his day, who had once commanded at Fort Augusta. In April, 1761, Colonel Clapham took a census of the town of Pittsburgh. He reported one hundred and four houses and a population all told of three hundred and thirty-two souls. A couple of years later Colonel Clapham was living at Sewickley old-town, said to have been about eighteen miles east of Pittsburgh, where he met an unhappy fate.
Source:Lambing, pp. 32–33:
The protection of the garrison naturally brought persons, especially traders, to the forks, and Pittsburg began to assume the appearance of a town. The French, during their occupation, had cleared a considerable tract of land, and thus an important part of the work was done for the new occupants. From a carefully prepared list of houses and inhabitants outside of the fort, made for Col. Bouquet by William Clapham, and headed "A return of the number of houses, of the names of owners, and number of men, women and children in each house, April 14th, 1761," which is the first description of the incipient town that we possess, the number of souls is 233, with the addition of 99 officers, soldiers and their families residing in the town, making the whole number 332; the number of houses was 104. The lower town is said to have stood nearest the fort, the upper on the high ground along the Monongahela, extending as far as the present Market street.
Return of Bouquet.
We have records of Bouquet's return here in 1760. To go into all the details of these years would require volumes of history. Only such as is sufficient for the purposes of this article can be mentioned. Bouquet was a ready letter-writer and left a mass of manuscripts which have been preserved in the British Museum and to which we owe much of our succinct history of the times. Parkman especially acknowledges access to these papers and admits their value. Other historians also.
July 22, 1760, the first census of Pittsburgh was taken by order of Bouquet.
April 17, 1761, a similar census was taken. At these times nearly all the male inhabitants of Pittsburgh were Indian traders. The total population at the first enumeration was 149. The second census gave the names of the house owners only. The houses were all log cabins.
Among the 149 were 24 women, 14 male children and 18 female.
In 1761 there were "43 outlying soldiers" with their families not enumerated.
In the first line we find the names of Ephraim Blaine, Andrew Biarly (Byerley), William Trent, Edward Ward and John Finley, all noted men of the border.
In the second we find William Clapham, subsequently killed by the Indians; John Ormsby and George Croghan.
Source:Centenary, pp. 267–268:
The first town of Pittsburgh was built near the Fort, in 1760. It was divided into the upper and lower town. In a carefully prepared list of the houses and inhabitants out of the fort, made for Col. Bouquet, April 15, 1761, by Captain William Clapham, and headed "A return of the number of houses, of the names of the owners, and number of men, women, and children in each house, Fort Pitt, April 14, 1761," the number of inhabitants is two hundred and thirty-three men, women, and children, with the addition of ninety-five officers, soldiers, and their families residing in the town, making the whole number three hundred and thirty-two. Houses, one hundred and four. The lower town was nearest the fort, the upper on the higher ground, principally along the bank of the Monongahela, extending as far as the present Market Street. In this list of the early inhabitants are the names of George Croghan, William Trent, John Ormsby, John Campbell, Ephraim Blaine, and Thomas Small.
In May, 1763, when the Indian war, usually called Pontiac's War, broke out, the inhabitants removed into the fort, and destroyed the town by levelling the houses with the ground, that they might not give shelter to the savages when making their threatened attack, which soon commenced, and was renewed at intervals, happily unsuccessfully, until the battle of Bushy Run, on the 5th and 6th of August, gallantly fought and won by the troops under Col. Bouquet, who compelled the Indians to raise the siege and retire. In October, 1764, Col. Bouquet, at the head of an army, made a treaty of peace with the assembled chiefs of the several Indian tribes at the forks of the Muskingum.
The second town of Pittsburgh was laid out in 1765, by Col. John Campbell, by permission of the commanding officer at Fort Pitt. It comprised the ground within Water, Market, Second and Ferry streets. Campbell's plan of lots was subsequently incorporated unaltered in the survey made by George Woods for the Penns in 1784, and is known as the "Old Military Plan." Two of the houses built on lots in that plan are now standing on Water Street, near Ferry. They are constructed of hewn logs weather-boarded. These, with the two on the southeast corner of Penn and Marbury (Third) Street, formerly owned and occupied by Gen. Richard Butler and his brother, Col. William, are the oldest in Pittsburgh or west of the Alleghenies. Of course the old brick redoubt of Col. Bouquet, between the Point and Penn Street, is excepted. It, however, was not originally built as a dwelling-house, but as an outwork or addition to Fort Pitt.
I wonder if this map was a sketch drawn at a later date as an explanatory illustration to go along with Clapham's census, in particular to delineate what was meant by the upper and lower towns. That would explain why Market Street appears (as the upper limit of the upper town) and also Grant Street (as the upper limit of Woods' plan).
The three names written in the upper town are apparently "Geo. Crog.," "E. Blaine," and "J. Ormsby," that is, George Croghan, Ephraim Blaine, and John Ormsby.
