Source:Fleming-neville-craig
George T. Fleming. "Neville–Craig story good reading: Fascinating tale of doings of two families prominent in early Pittsburgh: Active in city life." Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Sept. 5, 1915, sec. 2, p. 5. Newspapers.com 85764705.
IT IS a fascinating history, that of the Nevilles and Craigs because of the facts that they were men of heroic mold and lived in stirring times, and in those times stood sturdily and unreservedly for the right. In a word once common—they were God-fearing men—hence good citizens.
Hence also it is impossible to crowd even the saliant [sic] features of their long and active lives in the very liberal space of half a newspaper page.
We have some additional facts of Maj. Craig furnished by his son Nevile [sic], who tells us that the major—
Was of but common school education, but having a good mind for mechanics and mathematics, had in those branches added largely to his school acquirements and was at an early day a member of the American Philosophical Society. His position here during the insurrection, when his presence was necessary to the supply and intercourse with Wayne's army, and get continually exposed to insult and danger, was exceedingly unpleasant and trying.
Alexander Hamilton wrote Major Craig about this time (1794):
Your care of the interests confided in you, is, in every event, depended upon, according to circumstances. The keeping of the arms and the stores out of the hands of the insurgents is a matter of great importance. It is hoped that you will personally, in the worst issue of things, find safety in the Fort.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania appreciating the necessity of rightly and properly recording the history of the province and state has preserved to posterity much that is material and instructive—much is a poor word—we can say all that research has made available. These are contained in the Pennsylvania archives.
Maj. Craig in a letter to Gen. Henry Knox, Secretary of War in Washington's cabinet, details the happenings at Gen. John Neville's house at Bower Hill when the whisky insurrectionists burned it. It is a quaint production and is given verbatim in Vol. IV, Second Series, Pennsylvania Archives, and reads:
Pittsburgh, 18 July, 1794.
Sir—About day-break in the morning of the 16th instant a number of armed men attacked General Neville's house, he himself only defending it; he, however, dispersed the party, having wounded six or seven, one of whom, it is said, mortally. And yesterday a large number of armed men amounting it is said to seven hundred, assembled and attacked his house, defended only by himself, Major Kirkpatrick and ten soldiers.
Gen. Neville Escapes.
During the attack General Neville, seeing it impossible to defend the house against such numbers, took an opportunity of escaping and concealing himself in a thicket. Major Kirkpatrick continued to defend the house till one of his men was killed and four wounded, having killed two and wounded several of the insurgents. As soon as the Major surrendered the enemy set fire to the house, which is consumed to ashes, with all the property is [sic] contained, not a single article saved, only the clothing the family had on when they escaped during the attack; previous to burning the house they had set fire to the barn, stable & granary, which were also consumed with their contents, amonst [sic] which were several valuable horses & a large quantity of grain.
Major Lenox, Colo. Nevil, myself & two others, in attempting to get into the house, with a supply of ammunition, were made prisoners, disarmed and confined till the action was over & then carried several miles to their rendezvous; treated Major Lenox with the utmost indignity, and all of us with insult; the night I was happy enough to make my escape and to find General Nevil and to escort him to my house, where he now is. I have not yet slept since my return & feel very unwell.
I have the honor to remain your obed't serv't,
ISAAC CRAIG.
This is a straightforward statement of the events of July 16, 1794, at Bower Hill. We must admire the fortitude of the old General and his kinsmen and relatives in their plucky defiance of the mob. Lenox was the United States Marshal. Col. Neville referred to is Presley Neville, son of the general and brother-in-law of Maj. Craig.
Butler Saves Fort.
Maj. Thomas Butler, in command of the government troops at Fort Fayette, Pittsburgh, one of the fighting patriots whose name we have commemorated in Butler street, town and county, also wrote Gen. Knox. Butler, with but few men, prevented the insurgents from taking the fort. He was an intrepid soldier of the Revolution, in action in almost all the battles in the middle section of the colonies.
He was particularly incensed at the old soldiers in armed rebellion against the government and in his letter to Gen. Knox says, after reciting the details of the outrage as Maj. Craig has:
The chief of the banditti was killed and sundries wounded. I am sorry to add that the man killed was once an officer in the American Army. McFarlane was his name, which should be erased from that list.
It was Butler who sent the little bodyguard of 10 men to Gen. Neville and weakened his small force at the fort by that many.
In a standard encyclopedia of history (Harper's), in the brief notice of Presley Neville, there occurs a palpable error; the statement that he was "born in Pittsburg, Pa., in 1756." When we consider that there was no Pittsburgh until November 25, 1758, when John Forbes came, and the French evacuated Fort Duquesne; that 1756 was the year after Braddock's defeat, and that the French were in possession here, the error becomes quite luminous.
Only one possibility presents itself: that Presley Neville's mother, Winifred Oldham, wife of John Neville, was a prisoner of the French at Fort Duquesne, which we know was not the fact. Authentic biographies of the Nevilles state both were born in Virginia.
John Neville, we are assured, came to Pittsburgh with a company of Virginia militia and garrisoned Fort Pitt in September, 1775. That is his first record in Pittsburgh's history. Presley Neville was that year graduated in Philadelphia at what has since been the University of Pennsylvania.
The First Glass House.
Mention was made in the Craig story last Sunday of the first glass house in Pittsburgh, established in 1797 by Gen. James O'Hara and Maj. Isaac Craig at the south end of the Point Bridge, on the site of the power house of the Pittsburgh Railways Company. Neville B. Craig in his history records a letter from his father to Gen. O'Hara, stating the workmen under William Eichbaum were digging and probing the hills as far as the "Manor line"—this in search of a suitable vein of coal—and Mr. Craig, in commenting, states that the "Manor line was no doubt the line of the reserved tract." If he means the land outside of the Penn's Manor of Pittsburgh, south of the Monongahela, we may grasp his meaning.
There were two reservations by the act of March 12, 1783, which appropriated the land since known as the "Depreciation Land" for the redemption of the depreciation certificates given those who enlisted in the Pennsylvania Line during the Revolution. Pennsylvania guaranteeing to pay in a sound currency, the certificates were made receivable for unlocated land—hence the title.
The reservations were of 3,000 acres each. The one on which Allegheny city arose is always referred to as the "Reserved Tract opposite Pittsburgh." The other was at the mouth of the Beaver, on which the town of Beaver is located. It is obvious that neither had aught to do with the survey of Penn's Manor of Pittsburgh, which did not cross the Allegheny at any point.
Where and how the materials were obtained for the glass house is material enough to the history of glass making in Pittsburgh. We find the name Eichbaum occurring first in this connection—a familliar [sic] name in Pittsburgh for over a century, not commemorated, however.
We note also Maj. Isaac Craig, a pioneer in glass making, and that he did not profit by his venture we know.
Early Venture Described.
Neville B. Craig finished the glass house story thus:
Such was the commencement of that business, which is now carried on so extensively here. Major Craig, who embarked so promptly in the work, did not partake of its profits, the reason why has never been generally known. The extracts from his correspondence, which our task has called forth, proves him to have been a man of energy and enterprise, and his means then were very ample; but his brother-in-law, Presley Neville, by no means a man of business, became alarmed at the uncertainty of the result, and this alarm very naturally extended itself to his sister, the wife of Major Craig, and thus led to an abandonment of his interest in the glass works after a partnership of seven years.
We can ride along Craig street and remember that Maj. Isaac Craig was a gallant soldier of the Revolution, a pioneer merchant in Pittsburgh, a pioneer in glass making; quartermaster at Fort Fayette during Wayne's campaign and a man of sterling worth always.
We can remember also he was one of the founders of the First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1785. A picture of the first church ever built in Pittsburgh is presented, the log edifice that fronted on what is now Oliver avenue at the corner of Wood street on the present site of the McCreery Building.
The act of Assembly incorporating the Presbyterian congregation of the town of Pittsburgh was passed September 29, 1787. Among the trustees was the first pastor, the Rev. Samuel Barr, who came here in 1785 and remained until 1789.
The plan of pews of the original log church with the pewholders in 1801 shows Maj. Isaac Craig occupying pew No. 3 on the right, with Senator James Ross back of him. John Scull was in No. 34 on the other side of the pulpit. The Rev. Robert Steele was then the pastor.
Among the numerous business projects of the firm of Craig, Bayard & Co., in connection with their Philadelphia partners, Turnbull, Marmie & Co., was the operation of a distillery, necessary in the trade of those years.
A letter from the salt works to Craig & Bayard says:
"I am greatly in want of three barrels of whiskey and a barrel of rum. For want of them my neighbor gets all the skins and furs."
Neville Craig, commenting on this, remarks:
These were not temperance days.
Newspaper Starts.
Neville Craig in the next paragraph remarks naively:
In 1786, on the 29th of July, another manufacture was established here, one well calculated to correct the evil influences of the distillery. We mean the making of newspapers. On the day above mentioned, John Scull and Joseph Hall issued the first number of the Pittsburgh Gazette, the first newspaper ever printed west of the Allegheny Mountains.
The paper is here yet and printing this account today.
We come now to the consideration of a name frequently mentioned in these columns.
No less an illustrious resident of Neville Island than his father was Neville Bayard Craig, earliest historian of Pittsburgh, journalist and annalist, born in the old Block House, or Bouquet Redoubt, March 29, 1787. His most seasonable publication, "The Olden Times," begun in 1846, now occupies a high place in the Americana of the book trade. His "History of Pittsburgh," compiled likewise with great care and unusual accuracy to the year 1851, is the best history of Pittsburgh extant to that date. All historians since have found it a wellspring of treasure as well as of pleasure. Pittsburgh owes much to him. He was surely a man of letters.
Other publications of his were the "Memoir of Maj. Robert Stobo" and "Life and Services of Maj. Isaac Craig," both in 1854, and an "Exposure of Misstatements of H. M. Brackenridge's History of the Whiskey Insurrection," published in 1859.
Early Newspaper Men.
Neville B. Craig became the proprietor of The Pittsburgh Gazette in 1829. It was then a weekly. He soon changed it to a semi-weekly, and its first issue as a daily was during his ownership on June 30, 1833. Matthew Grant became a partner in 1835 under the firm name of Craig & Grant, the partnership continuing until July 1, 1840, when Alexander Ingram, Jr., purchased the paper.
Neville B. Craig was one of the early pupils at the first Pittsburgh Academy and entered Princeton in 1805, but did not graduate. He read law and was admitted to the Allegheny county bar and was well qualified to shine in the legal profession. He also served in the Pennsylvania legislature while conducting The Gazette, and when an attorney his partners were the celebrated Walter Forward and Henry M. Watts. His taste and preference lay to journalism and his biographers agree that he distinguished himself as an editor.
During his career as an attorney he served as city solicitor of Pittsburgh from 1821 to 1829 and as clerk of Select Council from 1821 to 1825. He died in Pittsburgh March 3, 1863. His wife was Miss Jane A. Fulton of Pittsburgh, to whom he was married May 1, 1811. Neville B. Craig died in Pittsburgh, March 3, 1863.
His son, Isaac Craig, a resident of Allegheny city for many years, was one of the faithful few who kept alive the old Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Isaac Craig died within the last decade.
Neville B. Craig, after his retirement as editor, continued to contribute to the Gazette. It is said of him that he possessed the characteristic of making the warmest friends and the bitterest enemies of any man connected with early newspaper enterprises in Pittsburgh.
Pen Pictures of Editor.
The Rev. Richard Lea, in a public address, spoke of him as the "tall, slender, gentlemanly, fearless, crutsy [sic], keen editor of the Gazette."
Another writer says: "But throughout the storms of personal abuse and partisan bitterness he ever retained the self-respect and confidence of the community, even of his enemies," although one, William H. Smith, made a most rancorous and scathing attack upon him on Craig's retiring from the editorship of the Gazette.
Smith was the editor of the Mercury and Democrat, who had often felt the lash of the Gazette's editor. Smith's attack was altogether ultra and not shared in by the community. Notices commending Craig's character and conduct in high terms appeared in all the other local papers of the day and Smith's article came in the line of a parting kick with the certainty of no responsive one.
A sketch of Neville B. Craig in the centennial volume of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, 1884, speaks of him as "one who became the historian par excellence of the city he adorned." Taken all in all the Craig family may be considered for three generations among the most distinguished citizens of our county.
The old Craig homestead on the island was formerly owned and occupied by Robert Phillips. The widow of Maj. Craig survived until 1848, when the estate was divided among the heirs. Thomas P. Fleeson, a relative, was an old resident of the island. For years he had in the yard of his residence there a sun dial, a family heirloom, which bore the following inscription: "Jno. N. Craig, Pittsburgh, 1815," and the motto, "Fungor Officio, Splendente Sole," freely translated, "While the sun is shining I perform my duty."
The Maj. Craig residence on Neville Island was for many years occupied by the late John M. Chaplin as a residence. It is now the site of a manufacturing plant.
Fine Island Home.
For some years Mrs. Sarah Crossan Chaplin lived here with her son John. It was a fine home noted for its greenhouses and beautiful grounds.
Some genealogy seems proper here. Sarah Crossan became the wife of William Craig Chaplin. Their family consisted of six sons and two daughters. The sons were James Crossan, William Huntingdon, Presley Neville, John M., Melchior B. and William Wilson Chaplin; the daughters were Amelia Neville and Anna C.
John M. was best known in banking circles from his long connection with the Pittsburgh Clearing House as manager.
William Craig Chaplin was the son of John Huntingdon Chaplin and Harriet Craig, daughter of Maj. Isaac Craig and sister of Neville B. Craig. She was the little girl who was present at the burning of the home of her grandfather, Gen. John Neville, at Bower Hill, July 16, 1794. At the time she was 9 years old. She died in 1867.
Amelia Neville Chaplin was the sister of William Craig Chaplin. She was born in 1812 and in 1833 became the wife of Thomas Leet Shields, a prominent attorney, who lived below Sewickley and whose family name is preserved in the postoffice and station of that name.
Judge John Huntingdon Chaplin, father of William Craig Chaplin, died in Florida while serving as judge of the Supreme Court of that territory. His death was caused by yellow fever.
Some Noted Names.
The family nmae [sic] Huntingdon came from a great-uncle, Samuel Huntingdon, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was a representative from Connecticut.
We see in this genealogy a rare colonial and Revolutionary lineage and in this age of the inter-marriage of representatives of every race that comes to our shores, mixing the American breed of humanity in a startling way, a colonial and Revolutionary lineage is something to be proud of. Few of us can go back of the third generation without crossing the ocean.
Not all the names of the Craig connection are commemorated here. The late Isaac Craig, for many years one of the shining lights of the old Historical Society with Judge John E. Park, the Rev. A. A. Lambing and others, had three sisters, Mrs. Comingo, Mrs. Davison and Mrs. Wallingford. We have Wallingford street, but no Comingo street. We have Davison street in Lawrenceville from the well-known Davison family in that section.
Mrs. Isabel Criag Comingo owned the property where the blind asylum stands adjoining Schenley Farms. She died intestate and childless at an advanced age and in the partition of her estate it was divided among a widely spread collateral line.
Early Presbyterians.
An old-time volume is open. Its title page reads "Centenary Memorial of the Planting and Growth of Presbyteriaism [sic] in Western Pennsylvania and Parts Adjacent." It contains the historical discourses delivered at a convention of the synods of Pittsburgh, Erie, Cleveland and Columbus, held in Pittsburgh December 7–9, 1875. It was printed by that well-known Pittsburgher of those years, Benjamin Singerly, at his shop, 74 Third avenue. Mr. Singerly was noted for his avordupois [sic] and was at one time state printer of Pennsylvania.
It is a good specimen of the olden time hand set print and contains some fine steel plates—the Rev. Dr. John McMillan, David Elliott and other great lights of Presbyterianism hereabouts.
But this does not make its mention relevant to this story. On the back of the title page in a large and legible "running hand" is a signature, "Neville B. Craig Comingo, July 4, 1876, Bellefield, Pittsburgh." These lines were penned on the centennial of American independence, for which Mr. Comingo's great grandfather, Maj. Isaac Craig, and his great-greatgrandfather, Gen. John Neville, fought. Mr. Comingo was the grandson and namesake of Neville B. Craig.
Now tragedy enters: the only child of Isabella Craig Comingo was drowned in the Conemaugh River while on a canoeing trip to Pittsburgh in 1890. He was a Presbyterian minister.