Source:Fleming-careers
George T. Fleming. "Girtys' varied careers are retold: Two of pioneer family become renegades, and others noble citizens: Baby made captive." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Feb. 4, 1917, sec. 5, p. 2. Newspapers.com 85848054.
A NEGLECTED graveyard and a little old brick chapel a few years ago in the southeastern part of Pittsburgh seemed utterly without interest save only the thought that each had seen better days. A statement that the graveyard and chapel might bring up thrilling stories of colonial and Revolutionary days in and about Pittsburgh would have been received with some doubt. A big house not so far away from the chapel and graveyard is connected intimately with them in story, for the builder and original owner of the house, John Turner, donated the ground for the graveyard in 1828 and John Turner was a historic character in Pennsylvania and related to other historic characters.
Turner, although a good sort of a man, was the half brother of the notorious Girtys, Simon and James, renegades. Their history has been written for a century. It may be had in book form in C. W. Butterfield's "History of the Girtys," in our libraries. Incidentally the Girtys must receive some mention for they, too, were pioneers about Pittsburgh, not voluntary residents, but compulsory at first, having been brought here captives by those fierce Indian marauders, the Shawnese and Delawares. After the destruction and massacre at Fort Granville (now Lewistown, Pa.) in July, 1756.
This was the year after Braddock's defeat on the Monongahela when the whole frontier was open to the incursions of the savages and remained so until Gen. Forbes came and drove the French away, erecting Fort Pitt and establishing the town of Pittsburgh in November, 1758.
A few years later came Pontiac's war and more outrages and then Col. Bouquet and his story recently written of in these columns.
John Turner was but an infant when first brought to Fort Duquesne for there was no Pittsburgh then, and it was nine years later when he returned. A new fort stood at the forks of the Ohio and the standard of Great Britain waved over it. Turner was one of the captives whom Col. Bouquet compelled the Indians to release, after this expedition to the Muskingum towns as described in last Sunday's story. Turner came back in the spring of 1765.
Some of the Girty family history must be recited to enable a better understanding of events that led to the coming of the four Girty brothers, their mother, Mrs. John Turner, and young John, to this region.
Mrs. Turner's first husband, Simon Girty, Sr., was an Irish emigrant who came over between 1730 and 1740 and located on the Susquehanna River about Harris' Ferry, subsequently Harrisburg. This was then in Lancaster county. Girty, an uncouth character, found employment as a pack horse driver with an Indian trader, or a trader in Indian goods, which were chiefly rum and gew-gaws, powder and lead, etc., given in exchange for valuable furs.
While employed thus Girty met the woman who later became his wife. She was of a respectable family, and respectable herself. Her name was Mary Kewton and she was of English birth. She was married to Girty in 1741. The next year her eldest son Thomas was born, and in two years the second son, named for his father, who turned out the most notorious renegade that ever infected the borders; some apologists admit that he did at times show a heart and that his brother, James, should be awarded the palm for utter atrocity.
We have the family name commemorated in Girtys Run in Allegheny county, emptying into the Allegheny River at the Forty-third Street Bridge and passing through the borough of Millvale.
Strange circumstances brought the Girtys to Pittsburgh and fastened their name upon this run and these circumstances were additionally strange in ultimate results—the restoration and upright after life of part of the family who remained in Pennsylvania and the most despicable villainy of two who remained with the Indians.
About the time Simon Girty, Jr., was born his father concluded to go into the trading business on his own account and did so. He obtained his trader's license from the provincial government of Pennsylvania, and then removed to a tract of land, 200 acres in extent, on the east side of the Susquehanna, then in upper Paxtong, Lancaster county.
This was in 1743. At that place the third and fourth sons, James and George, were born. The father and family returned to their previous home on the Susquehanna. Girty passed several years as a trader, sometimes without license. He seems to have been of a roving disposition and was next heard of as a settler on a tract of land in Sherman's Valley, now Perry county, and there he lived until the spring of 1750.
He and other settlers were on Indian land and they were warned by the authorities of Cumberland county then having jurisdiction to get out, but, not doing so, were driven out. Girty returned to the Paxtong settlement and continued to follow his occupation as a trader until 1751 when he was removed from his sphere of usefulness by a drunken Indian named "the Fish," who sank a tomahawk into Girty's brain. Few tears were shed over his sudden taking off.
Girty's desolate widow in a few years married John Turner, who had been in Simon Girty's employ. In 1755 the Turners were living on Penns Creek, now in Union county, in what is known as Buffalo Valley. There young John, destined to be a Pittsburgh pioneer, was born. Soon after his birth the elder Turner sold his land and removed to the Juniata River, about the present site of Lewistown.
There tragedy begins in the summer of 1755. Braddock had just been defeated; war declared between France and England and the French Indian allies from the Ohio region had begun to ravish the frontier. The English settlers, driven from the wilderness homes, sought shelter in the frontier forts. The Turners fled to Fort Granville, not far from their home.
July 31, 1756, the Indians appeared suddenly. Turner and a few others had just made the shelter of the fort when the attack was begun. The cunning, lying Indians made many promises of safety if the fort were surrendered. The fort had been set on fire by Indian arrows and the brave commander, Lieut. Armstrong and another man killed while extinguishing the flames. The situation of the besieged was most desperate.
The Indians were led by two noted Delaware chiefs, Shingiss from the Delaware town at the mouth of Chartiers Creek, and Capt. Jacobs from Kittanning. John Turner, too eager to accept the terms of quarter before they were agreed on, ran and opened the gate of the fort; the enemy rushed in and all the inmates were killed or captured. It was a sorry day for John Turner, Sr., for it sealed his doom. With him were taken Mrs. Turner, little John and the Girty brood.
Little time was lost in getting the prisoners away. They were driven over the old trail via Kittanning Point in the Alleghenies to the town of Kittanning, where Capt. Jacobs was the chief. There Turner was put to the torture and miserably perished. Having satisfied their vengeance and Indian nature thus, the Indians, as was their custom, became reasonably kind to the other captives and made a division of them. Mrs. Turner and little John were allotted to the Shawanese.
In a few days they were brought down the river by their new masters and landed at Fort Duquesne. This was Young John's first visit to the place where he spent most of his four-score years.
The Shawanese spent some time about the fort. There is a record in the baptisms made by Father Denys Baron, the French chaplain at the fort, attesting that Jean (or John) Turner, son of John Turner, an Englishman and Maria (Mary) Newton, an English woman, was baptized by him as priest in charge at the fort, August 18, 1756.
Later in the summer the Shawanese with their prisoners proceeded in their canoes to Logstown, their town built by the French on the Ohio close to the present site of Ambridge, or old Economy.
Thomas Girty, the eldest of the brothers, was found a prisoner at Kittanning by Col. John Armstrong when he attacked that place September 8, 1756, this attack resulting in the complete defeat of the Indians, the death of Capt. Jacobs and the burning of all the Indian huts. We have the historic town name, and the county name commemorating Armstrong. Thomas Girty returned with Armstrong's army to the East side of the Alleghenies.
The three Girty boys and Mrs. Turner were not held long by the Indians. They were back at their old home on the Susquehanna River some time in 1759. In 1764 when Col-Bouquet [sic] had made things reasonably safe about Fort Pitt the three Girty boys and their mother returned to Pittsburgh. Mrs. Turner, because of her relationship, became known as Mary Girty. The land the Girtys settled on is now in the fashionable Squirrel Hill district and was originally known as the Girty tract. It is possible and most likely that her claim was only a "tomahawk claim," that is, the boundaries were blazed on the trees as was the custom and others seeing these marks respected them as indicating land already taken up.
Thomas seems to have rejoined his family, for it is known that Mrs. Turner divided her tract between him and her fourth son, George, some time previous to 1769. John Turner, Jr., had returned to her in 1765.
There are records of the application of Simon and George Girty in the land office of the Province of Pennsylvania and in the same vicinity as Mrs. Turner's claim. George Girty, to make sure of his title, included in his application what had been his mother's land.
Thomas Girty's share is supposed to have been the portion of the tract on which the family lived in a log cabin. Of course no other kind of dwelling was then erected on the frontiers and few elsewhere. This land in later years was known as the Castleman tract, much of it coming into the possession of John I. House, a wholesale grocer of Pittsburgh before and after the Civil War. The tract was bisected by the old Squirrel Hill road and lies along what is now Bigelow street. This is in the old Twenty-third Ward, now the Fifteenth.
Thomas Girty became a farmer, married and remained on the tract his mother granted him. His marriage was in 1769 or 1770. No further history of him is available.
A score or more years ago old residents of this section who had been born and raised there maintained that there had been a log house on the tract claimed by Simon Girty. Some of these old-timers heard the story of the Girtys from their parents who had been born and reared in the same neighborhood, their memories going back into the eighteenth century.
This long [sic] house is said to have stood on the land now or late of Charles Neinhauser on the Beechwood boulevard, about the head of Hazelwood avenue and adjoining the brick chapel and Turner burying ground. There was always a spring near a pioneer cabin and there is a good one on the Neinhauser property.
Mrs. Turner is supposed to have lived and died on this land and to have been buried on the land as was customary in olden times when no burying ground was available.
When young John Turner returned from his captivity he was about 10 years old. It is not known now where he was taken by the Indians. Nomads as they were, they may have taken in many locations. Some say in Canada. But being with the Shawanese it is more reasonable to presume that he was with this tribe at their Scioto River towns if not on the Muskingum. These Shawanese towns were long maintained.
John Turner had many characteristics of the Indians, also habits peculiar to the Indian race. In person he was tall and straight, with black eyes, long, straight black hair, but thin of flesh and sallow. He lived a life of activity with all the hardships of a frontiersman. He spoke several Indian dialects and was a valuable man to the authorities in consequence. He had but little English education but all the crafts and wisdom of an Indian.
Withal, he was a man of native ability and thoroughly honest. He was a man of his word also, and enjoyed the respect of all with whom he had dealings. He was a brave man, too, and served his country. With Simon Girty he served in Lord Dumore's [sic] war against the Indians. There was a strong affection between Simon Girty and Turner. It lasted, too. Dr. William H. Denny, brother of Ebenezer Denny, first Mayor of Pittsburgh, refers to this in his long historical poem entitled "Succotash," which Dr. Denny composed and read at the centennial celebration of the founding of Pittsburgh, November 25, 1858.
Speaking of this brotherly regard, verses 24 and 25 of "Succotash," with Girty the actor, state:
"He swam the river, if low, he forded,
Where Woodcock's ripple is the crossing still,
Past the two graves, boys, his party murdered,
And went up Negley's Run to Squirrel Hill.
"Then here this hard and subtle renegade
Risked most his life through all that war and pother,
And not for fame or booty or fair maid,
But just to see John Turner, his half-brother."
Doubtless this expresses a historic truth. Girty did this after his apostacy [sic] and came by way of Girty's Run to the Allegheny River.
The old residents of the Squirrel Hill section as referred to have it that they knew from the traditions and records handed down by their ancestors that John Turner built his log cabin in which he lived so many years, about 1778 or 1779. The War of the Revolution was then going on. Simon Girty, in March, 1778, with Matthew Elliott and Alexander McKee, had eluded the forces at Fort Pitt and fled from McKee's house at McKees Rocks. They had been under surveillance and Gen. Edward Hand, in command here, had sent a squad of soldiers to arrest them. The soldiers were too late.
With the three were McKee's cousin, Robert Surphlit, a man named Higgins and two Negro slaves of McKee's. Simon Girty, Hassler, our Pittsburgh historian, states, was a captive among the Senecas after his capture at Fort Granville at the age of 11. Girty is known to have been master of several Indian tongues and to have been of much use to the English forces at Fort Pitt prior to the Revolution, as an interpreter and scout. McKee and Elliott were notorious Tories, who are presumed to have tempted Girty with promises of preferment in the British service.
McKee and Elliott obtained rank in the British service and Girty soon became the scourge of the border and known as the "White Savage" by the frontiersmen. He came to a brutal end after the war of 1812—murdered while drunk. It is possible much of the infamy of his equally reprobate brother, James, attached to him.
If Simon Girty visited his half-brother, John Turner, it must have been subsequent to the revolution and while Girty was with roaming bands of Indians in this region. His visits were undoubtedly surreptitious.
James Girty had allied himself with the Shawanese, first having been sent from the authorities at Fort Pitt to this tribe on what turned out a futile mission. When he learned of Simon's flight he at once joined him and the other renegades. For 16 years they were the scourge of the borders, ceasing only when Gen. Anthony Wayne had thoroughly subjugated the Western Indians on the Maumee in 1794.
Turner's mother and two half-brothers, Thomas and George, turned out good. James, all historians state, was a natural savage, partaking all the bad qualities of his drunken, worthless father, John Turner. Thomas and George Girty, in their heriditary [sic] strain, partook of the gentle and humane character of the mother. There is no record that James Girty ever visited his mother and half-brother, John, in their Squirrel Hill cabin.
The cabin of John Turner, shown today, is near Loretto street, which extends from Winterburn street to the boulevard. To be more exact, at what is now known as Kishon place in Frank street, extending from Hazelwood avenue to Greenfield avenue. This land now or lately belonged to the Beehner estate. The old log house, weather-boarded and cosy, was always a comfortable dwelling.
John Turner was also known as John Girty and under this last name obtained a grant from the state by warrant dated November 12, 1787, for 154 acres of land which was surveyed for him March 13, 1788, and a patent granted him and called Federal Hill, the patent dated July 7, 1788.
Turner was wise enough to obtain a Virginia warrant also, the date of this warrant, January 27, 1786. This tract of 154 acres was that claimed by Simon Girty. Girty, an outlaw and enemy, could in no possible manner have retained it.
About 1783 John Turner was married to Susanna Clark, daughter of neighboring pioneers. They were a childless couple. However, they adopted and reared several children, not formally adopting by legal process, but practically, and these were three children of Mrs. Turner's sisters, by name John McCaslin, Turner Blashford and Susan Halstead.
Turner continued to reside in his old home until 1823, when he moved to a smaller log house on the place and added two rooms to it. There his wife died April 1, 1833. She was a good woman and a good wife.
All the Squirrel Hill district from the Monongahela River to what is now Fifth avenue beyond the Bigelow boulevard became Peebles township and when annexed to the city in 1868 was divided into two wards, the Twenty-second and Twenty-third, now the Fourteenth and Fifteenth. To Peebles township John Turner gave the lot on which the first free school was located. He also gave the lot on which the brick chapel was erected in 1843, five years after he had given the lot for burial purposes. This plot was long known as Turner's graveyard. There many of the early settlers of the district were interred.
John Turner appreciated an education, something that had been denied him. He was surprisingly liberal and public-spirited for a man that had passed through the vicissitudes and the rough life of the border that had been his fate.
Mr. Turner made the deed of the burial plot to David Irwin and John McCaslin as trustees for the people of Peebles township to be kept and reserved forever as a public burial ground. The date the deed was made is July 31, 1838, exactly 82 years after Turner's capture by the Indians, when a helpless baby.
The graveyard, as sometimes graveyards do, became neglected, but within a few years was reclaimed and put in good order by the late Catp. Sam S. Brown, a native of the vicinity, who with his brother, W. Harry Brown, erected the Mary S. Brown Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church on the site of the old Turner chapel, in memory of their mother.
The Turner land about this graveyard adjoined the land of Thomas Sutch. The burial plot, the deed states, contains 108 perches strict measure. To the deed John Turner made his mark, the consideration was "one dollar, lawful money of the United States well and truly paid."
There was another proper use and behoof of the citizens and inhabitants of Peebles township besides that of burial purposes. It was for the purpose of erecting on the plot "a church for the dispensation of the the [sic] Christian religion" if the citizens and inhabitants thought proper. They did. Hence the little chapel of 1843 and the magnificent Mary S. Brown Memorial Church of today.
When John Turner made his will April 10, 1840, he referred to the burial plot, reciting in his will that he reserved free of all encumbrances the burying ground for the use of the public forever.
John Turner died at his old home on the original Turner tract May 20, 1840, aged 85 years. His surroundings on that beautiful spring day were peaceful. His eventful career closed with complete tranquility. No red foemen roved east of the Mississippi River. In his declining years his memories must have been vivid and his reminiscences, if he related them, many and varied. May 22 they laid him away in the quiet spot his generosity had provided in the rural community in which he had been one of the first settlers and where he passed 72 years of his eventful life. He saw the town of Pittsburgh grow into the bustling, thriving, famous iron city of America. He saw three standards wave over it, the lilies of France, the royal banner of St. George and the stars and stripes. He was in turn under the sovereignty of three nations, always a patriot loyal to king and country, loyal to home, church and kin. If he sorrowed over the infamous career of his beloved half-brother, Simon, he did so in secret.
Turner was a rugged man. He lived in the open, thrived and was honored and he has not been forgotten. He was of the best type of pioneer. An honest man and a worker.
Properly we have his name commemorated in Turner street, near his old farm, a street extending from Shady avenue to Landview street in the Fourteenth Ward.
Let us think of John Turner as a child of the border redeemed from the thralldom of savage foes, to become an honest citizen, a pioneer and patriot.
