First Families
Geography set the stage for Pittsburgh, and an amazing cast of people came to shape its story. Now, as we celebrate the city's 250th birthday, learn about some of the men and women who were here back when its history was just getting started - and meet some of their 21st-century relatives, who are living links to our past.
By Christine H. O'Toole
Photography by Becky Thurner Braddock
Above: Pittsburgh, circa 1804 - Painted by George Beck, Darlington Memorial Library, University of Pittsburgh
Neville Island. Gist Street. Girty's Run. Leetsdale. The local landmarks and traffic intersections Pittsburghers pass, talking on cell phones and driving our cars, take their names from 18th-century settlers whose everyday routines included hunting and killing their dinners, negotiating with angry American Indian neighbors, axing hundred-year-old trees in deep, silent forests, and paddling the Forks of the Ohio by canoe.
Before 1800, Pittsburgh was the Wild West, barely American and growing fast. A few Indian tribes clung to lands in the region - Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo and more. A handful of families lived near Fort Pitt in 1758. As the fort grew, they were joined by a huge influx of immigrants: More than 4,000 additional families - English, Scots-Irish, German-speakers and African-Americans - flooded the region in just two years between 1768 and 1770. More arrived to claim lands offered to them for service in the Revolutionary War. It was land, not industry, that made fortunes for early speculators, particularly the ambitious young men who came to Western Pennsylvania as surveyors and stayed to prosper. More than two centuries later, many of these "first families" are still here. Now meet a few of the clans whose family albums contain the stories of American history and, in particular, Pittsburgh history.
Above: Portraits from the past (left to right): Simon Girty, Alice Kennedy Woodson, Massy Harbison and Mary Shields Shewell. Their relatives are still around the region to help Pittsburgh celebrate its 250th birthday this year.