Page:Family of Ormsby of Pittsburgh.djvu/13

Rh give an insult and his opponents in politics or otherwise had too much respect for 'Sweet Lips,' as they called his sword, to provoke a quarrel.

"Whilst he lived in town, his landed interests here lay mainly on the south side of the Monongahela. He had several plantations over there, comprising between two thousand and three thousand acres, lying between the south end of the present Smithfield street bridge and Six Mile ferry, and extending southward over the hills, in some places two miles, covering, in part, the whole of the former boroughs of South Pittsburgh, Birmingham, East Birmingham and Ormsby, and the greater portion of the township of Lower St. Clair, and, as we know, a good deal of this property yet remains in the possession of his descendants. He procured a portion of the bottom land to be cleared and cultivated as his landed estate, and was regarded at the same time as a large landowner east of the mountains, on the Juniata. He considered landed possessions essential to the position of a gentleman, as was then, and still is, the sentiment of the English aristocracy. Such was the way he appeared to one who saw him frequently at home and in public and fully knew the estimation in which he was held by his fellow citizens; for, in a town of moderate size, such as Pittsburgh then was, its prominent citizens are always well known to one another."