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(commonly considered the beginning of the French and Indian-Seven Years'-War) on the 28th of May 17 54, at Great Meadows (in what is now Wharton township, Fayette county, Pennsylvania, about 5o m. south-east of Pittsburg), between a detachment under his command and a scouting party under N. Coulon de Jumonville, in which Jumonville and several of his men were killed, the building, at Great Meadows, by Washington, of Fort Necessity, and its capitulation (July 3); and the retreat of Washington to Virginia. Another expedition, led by Major-Geueral Edward Braddock, resulted in the engagement known as “ Braddock's Defeat ” (July 9, 1755), fought within the present borough of Braddock (about 8 m. east of Fort Duquesne), in which Braddock's force was practically annihilated, and Braddock was mortally wounded, dying four days later. The fort was finally recaptured by the English in 1758, as the result of an elaborate expedition (involving about 7000 troops) planned by Brigadier-General John Forbes (1710-1759), and prosecuted, with the assistance of Colonel George Washington and Colonel Henry Bouquet, in the face of great difficulties. General Forbes himself was so ill that he had to be carried in a litter throughout the campaign. The troops having rendezvoused during the summer (of 17 58) at Ray's Town (now Bedford, Pennsylvania), and at Loyalhanna creek (now in Westmoreland county), about 50 ni. to the north-west (where Fort Ligonier was built), Colonel Bouquet, commanding the division at the latter place, dispatched Major James Grant (1720-1806) at the head of about 850 men to reconnoitre the fort. Grant advanced to a hill (still known by his name, and upon the crest of which the court-house now stands) within about a quarter of a mile of the fort. Here he rashly divided his force, and in a sortie of French and Indians, on the morning of the 14th of September, one of his divisions was surrounded, and a general rout ensued in which about 270 of Grant's men were killed, about 40 were wounded, and others (including Grant) were taken prisoners. Forbes's army advanced to within about 15 m. of the fort on the 24th of November, whereupon the French blew up part of the works, set fire to the buildings and retreated down the Ohio in boats The English occupied the place on the next day and General Forbes ordered the immediate erection of a stockade fort near the site of the old one. In reporting to Lieut.-Governor William Denny (Nov. 26) the success of the expedition he dated his letter from Fort Duquesne “or now Pitts-Bourgh, ” and this name, with its subsequent modification “ Pittsburgh, ” was thereafter more commonly used than that of Fort Pitt, which, as designating the fortification proper appears to have been first applied by General John Stanwix to the enlarged fort built (at a cost, it was estimated, of £60,000) chiefly under his direction during 1759-1760.

The first considerable settlement around the fort sprang up in 1760; it was composed of two groups of houses and cabins, fhe “ lower town, ” near the fort's ramparts, and the “upper town, ” built chiefly along the banks of the Monongahela, and extending as far as the present Market Street. In April 1761, according to a census of the settlement, outside of the fort, taken for Colonel Bouquet, there were 332 inhabitants and 104 houses. Fort Pitt was one of the important objective points of Pontiac's conspiracy (1763), and as soon as the intentions of the Indians became evident, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, the Swiss officer in command of the garrison (which then numbered about 330), had the houses outside the ramparts levelled and prepared for a siege The Indians attacked the fort on the 22nd of June (1763), and kept up a continuous, though ineffective, fire upon it from the 27th of July until the 1st of August, when they drew off and advanced to meet the relieving party under Colonel Bouquet. They were defeated at Bushy Run, and Colonel Bouquet relieved the fort on the 10th of August (see PONTIAC). In 1 764 Colonel Bouquet added to the fort a redoubt, the “ Block House, ” which still stands, the sole remaining trace of Fort Pitt, and is owned and cared for by the Daughters of Lhe American Revolution.

A second town, laid out in 1 764, by Colonel John Campbell (with the permission of the commandant at Fort Pitt), is bounded in the present city by Water Street, Market Street, Second Avenue and Ferry Street, and comprises four blocks. In November 1768, at a general council of the Six Nations with Sir William Johnson and representatives of Pennsylvania and Virginia. held at Fort Stanwix, on the site of the present Rome, New York (q v.), at which was signed a treaty establishing the boundary line between the English possessions and the territory claimed by the Six Nations, the Indians sold for $10,000 to Thomas Penn (1702-1775) and Richard Penn (1706-1771), respectively, the second and third sons of William Penn-the founder of Pennsylvania-by his second wife, the remaining land in the province of Pennsylvania to which they claimed title, namely the tract lying south of the west branch of the Susquehanna river and of a straight line from the north-west corner of what is now Cambria county to the present Kittanning (in Armstrong county), and all of the territory east of the Allegheny river below Kittanning and south of the Ohio river. To this transaction the commissioner from Virginia seems to have made no objection, though the tract included the Fort Pitt region and other territory then claimed by Virginia. In January-March 1769 the Penns caused to be surveyed the “ Manor of Pittsburgh, ” a tract of about 5700 acres, including much of the original city, intending to reserve it for their private use, but in the following April they offered at public sale the lands in the remainder of their purchase of the preceding year.1 At this time the settlement about Fort Pitt consisted of about twenty houses, occupied chiefly bv Indian traders. By order of General Thomas Gage the fort was abandoned as a military post in October 1772, and was partly dismantled. In January 1 774 it was occupied by an armed force under Dr John Connolly, a partisan of Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, and by him was named Fort Dunmore (which name, however, was never formally recognized), this being one of Dunmore's overt acts ostensibly in support of his contention that the Fort Pitt region was included in Augusta county, Virginia. In the following April Connolly took forcible possession of the court-house at Hanna's Town (near the present Greensburg), the county-seat of Westmoreland county (which then included the Fort Pitt region), a few days afterwards arrested the three justices who lived in Pittsburg, and for the remainder of the year terrorized the settlement. Lord Dunmore himself issued a proclamation dated “ Fort Dunmore, ” 17th September (1774), in which he called upon the inhabitants to ignore the authority of Pennsylvania, and to recognize only that of Virginia. A year afterwards Fort Pitt was occupied by a company of Virginia soldiers by order of the Virginia Provincial Convention (assembled at Williamsburg in August 1775), but this move apparently was more for the defence of the frontier in the coming war than an expression on the Pennsylvania-Virginia boundary dispute; and, in November, Connolly was arrested at Fredericksburg, Maryland, on the charge of furthering Dunmore's plans for invading the western frontier. The boundary itself was in controversy until 1780, and the marking of the boundary lines was not completed until 1785. During the War of Independence the fort was maintained as a frontier Indian post, and as a protection against the British at Detroit. Soon after the close of the war it was neglected, and by 1791 it was in bad repair, therefore at the time of the Indian hostilities of 1792 another stockade fort was built near the bank of the Allegheny river and about a quarter of a mile above the site of Fort Pitt, this new fort being named Fort Lafayette, or, as it was more commonly called, Fort Fayette. After General Anthony Wayne's defeat of the Indians, at Fallen Timbers, Ohio (Aug. 20, 1794), Pittsburg lost its importance as a frontier post.

In January 1784 the sale of the land included in the “ Manor of Pittsburgh ” was begun by the grandsons of William Penn, John Penn (1729-1795), the second son of Richard Penn and lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania in 1763-1771 and in 1773-1776; and John Penn (1760-1834), the fourth son of Thomas Penn; and in the following June a new series of town lots was laid out in which was incorporated Colonel Campbell's survey. Thereafter, settlers, chiefly Scotch and Irish, came rapidly. This tract was confiscated by Pennsylvania m 1779.