Source:Lytle-grant
William G. Lytle, Jr. "Grant Street—'memorial' to swaggering, conceited major who led his men to death: Row of skulls on sticks grim reminder of British officer's deadly charge on French, Indians." Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 20, 1931, p. 2. Newspapers.com 146896704.
A wealth of romance is embodied in the historical background of Pittsburgh's street names. Some were written in blood. Some recall men of the sword who swaggered across the pages of this city's early history with the dash and color belonging to a bygone age. This is the first of a series of articles on the story behind the name on certain street signs.
The breeze stirred the rotting plaid rags draped around the hickory poles on the hilltop overlooking the meeting place of the three rivers, so that they flapped like so many scarecrows.
It was what surmounted the poles, grinning at the hot sun above the wisps of plaid, that made travelers gasp and hurry down the hill to Fort Duquesne, anxious to be away from that place of death. For on top of each pole was a skull, whitening through the long summer days, gaping at the sky on nights when the full moon drew long shadows between the trees.
The rotting rags were the regimental plaids of His Majesty's Sixty-second Regiment of Foot, Montgomery's Highlanders. The skulls were those of Montgomery's men. The Indians had stuck their heads on stakes on the hilltop and hung their kilts beneath them, the better to desecrate the memory of brave men.
Craved Personal Glory
The Place of Skulls was a fitting monument to Major James Grant's attempt to capture Fort Duquesne before the main body of the English expeditionary force came up. For Major Grant's appetite for personal glory was exceeded only by his appetite for food.
Grant was born in Ballendalloch, Banffshire, Scotland, in 1720. He had climbed slowly through the lower grades until he reached the rank of major in Montgomery's regiment. On the morning of Sept. 14, 1758, he stood on Grant's Hill, on about the present line of Grant Street and Fifth Avenue, smiling to himself.
For the man from whom Grant Street was to take its name, believed that he had only to march down the hill and into Fort Duquesne to succeed where Braddock had failed. He underestimated both the numbers and the fighting ability of the French and their Indian allies.
Jealous of Fellow Officer
The major had arrived on the hilltop at 11 p. m. on the previous night. He had detached 50 men under Captain Bullitt, whose name reads as if Sheridan had chosen it for one of his plays, and sent them two miles to the rear to guard the baggage train.
Grant then split his forces again, and sent 400 men under Major Andrew Lewis a mile to the rear, ostensibly to ambush the French if they should attack the baggage train. Many historians think Grant really wanted to get Lewis out of the way, so he could claim credit for capturing the fort.
Grant stared down the hill, where 30 log houses clustered close to the fort that represented the monarchy of France in territory that England claimed for its own. The mist was rolling up from the rivers, and the sun was coming out strong. The sight of the fort, apparently unprepared for an attack, brought the same kind of a smile to Grant's lips with which he would have welcomed a choice roast of beef. He would succeed where Braddock had failed. London would ring with the name of Grant.
Makes Foolhardy Daylight Charge
Most soldiers would have advanced in the night and rushed the stockade at dawn with all their forces, fighting it out hand-to-hand. But Grant had to do things with his own inimitable swagger.
He sent 50 men forward to burn a log warehouse near the fort. When that failed to stir the hornet's nest, the Major caused the reveille to be drummed repeatedly.
The advance down the hill began, with Captain McDonald's company of the Highlanders in the lead. Back on the hilltop, Major Grant smiled with satisfaction. It was a scene to delight the heart of any soldier. The sunlight touched the tips of the long needle-pointed bayonets. The pipes were playing the lads forward.
McDonald's advance guard had crossed the present line of Smithfield Street between Fifth and Third Avenues when the French and Indians struck them like a whirlwind. The Highlanders stood their ground and fought like men, but Grant had split his force into too many pieces.
They retreated up the hill—what was left of them—and the men of the colonial contingents, in the homespun of Pennsylvania, Maryland and the two Carolinas, dropped down to cover wherever they could find it and fired as fast as they could load their guns.
Whooping Indians Scalp Men
There wasn't much time, because it isn't far from Smithfield Street to Grant Street, and in no time the French were on the hilltop lunging with the bayonet, with the Indians whooping like mad and swinging tomahawk and scalping knife.
Starting at what is now Seventh Avenue and Grant Street and running in an irregular chain of swamps to the vicinity of Wood Street and Third Avenue, was a morass later known as Hogg's Pond.
Many of Grant's men were driven into that swamp, and were tomahawked as they floundered in the mud.
There was never any question as to Grant's courage. He had enough of that and to spare. So he stood his ground amid the slaughter.
As the sound of firing swept up the hill, Lewis came up from the rear as fast as his men could run. Lewis had been a doughty figure in the gloom of more than one disaster. He had been a captain under Washington at Fort Necessity, and was to command the frontiersmen who defeated the Indians in the desperate battle of Point Pleasant, many years later.
Six feet tall and built for combat, Lewis grappled hand-to-hand with the first chief he met as he reached the hilltop, and killed the Indian. But he and his men were driven back before they had time to form a battle line. Some of the fugitives were forced into the Allegheny River and drowned.
Bullitt Saves Survivors
Captain Bullitt with his 50 men, could hear the roar of the retreat sweeping back on him. He had drawn his baggage wagons into a circle, and waited, cautioning his men to hold their fire until it would count most.
The rout rushed up the barricade, men gone mad with fright. It was enough to disorganize any defense, but Bullitt held his men steady until the French regulars and their Indian allies came yelling through the woods. Then the circle of wagons blazed fire, and the white powder smoke hid the tops of the wagons.
Bullitt's defense broke up the pursuit, and saved what was left of Grant's command. Of 813 men, 295 were killed or taken prisoner. That loss of more than a third of the total was an appalling record.
Grant refused to surrender, hoping that he would be killed with his men, but the French took him prisoner in spite of himself. Lewis was captured too, as he strove to form some kind of a firing line among the trees.
While the two were prisoners in Fort Duquesne, Grant wrote a letter to his commanding officer, blaming the defeat on Lewis. The French officer who was a censor for Grant's letter knew the true story of how Lewis had been sent to the rear, and showed the letter to the Virginian.
Lewis challenged Grant to a duel. The Major refused, and Lewis spat in his face, in front of the French officer.
Grant must have told a good story in London, for he rose to high rank. Two years later he was made Governor of East Florida. He was a major general in the British army in the Revolution, being prominent at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine and Germantown. In 1796, he was made a general, the highest rank in the army.
The General survived both the perils of his ambition and his appetite. He lived to be 86.