Source:Fleming-rescued/content
MANY memories of Squirrel Hill have been awakened by the story of the little brick church and the old Turner graveyard in last week's Sunday Gazette Times. In the mention of John Turner there comes up also all the history of the three Girtys, the scourges of the borders, half-brothers of John Turner.
Some of this border history was reverted to last week. It is voluminous; much of it sad; much of it shocking. The fact that Mrs. John Turner, mother of John Turner, Jr., with her four sons by her first husband, Simon Girty, Sr., were pioneers in the Squirrel Hill district of Pittsburgh, gives this history a local phase and renders all the subsequent history of the Girtys relevant and necessary to complete the story begun within a few miles of Fort Pitt in the days of Col. Henry Bouquet here, 1763–1764.
Then, too, Girtys Run commemorates this notorious family and the passing of the three renegade brothers, James, George and Simon, from even the rude civilization of the border to savage life among the Western tribes. Simon was the last to go, and he became the most notorious, but undoubtedly carried many of the sins of his fierce brothers.
Simon might have remained here with his mother, his brother, Thomas, and his well-loved half-brother, John Turner, on the lands they had settled on in the Squirrel Hill district had the colonial authorities granted him a commission in the Continental Army. His association with Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliott rendered him a subject to suspicion to the patriots, so that when the commission was refused him he became soured and morose and needed little urging to go along with McKee and Elliott in their flight from McKees Rocks in March 1778.
James R. Albach, in his book, "Annals of the West," published in Pittsburgh in 1848, states that McKee and Elliott were also solicitous of commissions and were dissatisfied for the same reason that Girty was. There was good reason for distrusting McKee. Elliott was thoroughly contemptible. He was a spy and a traitor. The history brought up by the mention of these names has a Pittsburgh side and takes us back to thrilling days here. Some of this history is pertinent today.
Simon Girty seems to have been kind and humane at times and a thorough savage at others. With young John Turner he had served in a company that left here for service during Lord Dunmore's war in 1774. A comrade was Simon Butler, celebrated in Western history under his changed name, Simon Kenton.
A strong and lasting friendship sprang up between Kenton and Simon Girty which was turned to most excellent account when Girty met Kenton in 1774, a naked, blackened captive, condemned to the stake. Girty was successful in saving Kenton's life. It is an accepted fact of history that Girty was present at the burning of Col. William Crawford and had no mercy for that unfortunate man. Dr. Knight, surgeon under Crawford in the expedition, providentially escaped. In his "narrative" he fully describes Girty's conduct on that occasion.
It was on Saturday night, March 28, 1778 that the three subsequent notorious tories, McKee, Elliott and Girty, fled from McKee's house. In many accounts of the attack upon Fort Henry, now Wheeling, W. Va., it is stated that Simon Girty led the Indians. This is manifestly an error, for Girty was about Pittsburgh yet, and did not flee until six months later.
In the second attack upon Fort Henry the Indians were led by George Girty. This was September 11, 1782, shortly after the destruction of Hannastown, Westmoreland county. Someone has mixed the attacks and the leaders in the Fort Henry history.
Last week's story stated that George Girty had followed the good traits of the mother and her sons, Thomas Girty and John Turner. This statement is an inadvertence and can not be substantiated. Yet it is not any more at variance with the truth than many other statements of border history especially some concerning the Girty family.
Many facts mentioned last week were taken from a neat little booklet entitled "Squirrel Hill and Its Memories," published by the congregation of the Mary S. Brown Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1906. This church is the successor of the original Turner chapel of 1843. May 28, 1905 the congregation met in solemn service, the book states, to pay homage to the memory of the "Early Settlers of Squirrel Hill."
On this occasion an interesting historical address was delivered by Samuel W. Stewart, a member of the congregation, and many of his statements therein were accepted. Some of them are at variance with standard writers of history. For instance, he attributes the murder of the elder Girty to an Indian. Albach, Hanna and other writers state that John Turner, Sr., murdered Girty in order that he might marry Mrs. Girty.
Albach is specific on this point. He states Girty came to Pennsylvania from Ireland about 1737; calls him a man of bad character (he could have said vile) and of dissolute habits. Beaten and abused by Girty, the poor wife turned to any kind heart near and that man happened to be Turner. George Girty was a typical Girty, Of the five sons of this woman Thomas Girty and John Turner, Jr., turned out upright men and that they did so seems wonderful, considering their environments. They were honest men—so, too, was Simon Girty, in many ways, as will be shown.
Henry Howe in his "Historical Collections of Ohio" has pages of history referring to the Girtys. Mr. Howe travelled over the state in a buggy and made it his business to search out elderly people who knew the facts he wanted. He met some real old people in those years between 1845–48, who had been captives among the Ohio Indians and some who had met the Girtys, one or all of them. Traces of them were lost shortly after the close of the war of 1812.
Mr. Howe also quotes from the many early histories to which he had access and presents many facts and much interesting history. For instance, in the sketch of Henry county (the Howe history is by counties), he states that Simon Girty for some time resided in a log cabin on the Maumee River and that in his day this place was known as Girty's Point.
Quoting from Campbell's sketches of border life, Howe gives this history:
Simon Girty was from Pennsylvania, to which his father had emigrated from Ireland. The old man was beastly intemperate, and nothing ranked higher in his esteem than a jug of whisky. Grog was his song, and grog would he have. His sottishness turned his wife's affection. She yielded her heart to a neighboring rustic who, to remove all obstacles to their wishes, knocked Girty in the head and bore off the trophy of his prowess.
Four sons of this interesting couple were left. Three of them, Simon, George and James, were taken prisoners in Braddock's war. George was adopted by the Delawares, became a ferocious savage and died in a drunken fit. James was adopted by the Shawanese and became as depraved as his other brothers.
Simon was adopted by the Senecas and became an expert hunter. In Kentucky and Ohio he sustained the character of an unrelenting barbarian. To the women and children in particular nothing was more terrifying than the name of Simon Girty. At that time it was believed that he had fled from justice and sought refuge among the Indians, determined to do his countrymen all the harm in his power. This impression was an erroneous one.
Being adopted by the Indians he joined them in their wars, and conformed to their usages. This was the education he had received, and their foes were his. His influence was great, and when he chose to be merciful it was generally in his power to protect the imploring captive.
His reputation was that of an honest man, and he fulfilled his engagement to the last cent. It is said that he once sold a horse rather than incur the odium of violating his promise. He was intemperate and when intoxicated ferocious and abusive alike to friend and foe. Although much disabled the last 10 years of his life by rheumatism, he rode to his hunting grounds in pursuit of game; suffering the most excruciating pains, he often boasted of his warlike spirit. It was his constant wish that he might die in battle. He was at Proctor's defeat, and was cut to pieces by Col. Johnston's mounted men.
So much for Campbell's story. Proctor's defeat was on the River Thames, 86 miles from Detroit, October 5, 1813. There the great Shawanese chief, Tecumseh, was killed. We commemorate his name in a street in Hazelwood. Col. Johnston's men were Kentuckians. Proctor was the British commander.
Howe quotes Campbell as in the foregoing and in his own text says he has some anecdotes and facts which will throw doubt over Campbell's estimate of Girty's character. Howe makes Simon the leader in the Indian attack on Fort Henry at Wheeling. He quotes Dr. Knight and one Col. John Johnston, as to Girty's conduct at Crawford's death, Johnston saying: "Crawford and Girty were intimately acquainted in the early settlement of Pennsylvania. I knew a brother of Girty at Pittsburgh in 1793."
Which brother? Either Thomas Girty or John Turner who was also known as John Girty. Indeed Mrs. Turner, the mother, again became known as Mrs. Girty. Crawford and Girty became acquainted about Fort Pitt and prior to 1778. That much is certain, and not in the early settlement of Pennsylvania, but in the early settlement of the region about the forks of the Ohio, Augusta county, Virginia, for many years and Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, with conflicting claims and Virginia in power. Crawford was an adherent of the Virginia party.
So history rolls itself along—opening wider at the mention of each border name. Few think that the mention of the well-known suburb, McKees Rocks, or an equally well-known run, Girtys; a city church on land granted to pioneers; an olden time graveyard; can each and all bring up the same train of historical facts and the whole story of thrilling events on our Western border from Braddock's defeat until after the victory of Anthony Wayne, a period of 40 years—four decades of war and savagery.
To return to "Howe's Collections"—In his travels he met an old man near Bellefontaine named Daniel M. Workman, who gave this story:
In 1812 I went to Malden, Canada, and put up at a hotel kept by a Frenchman. I noticed in the barroom a grayheaded and blind old man. The landlady who was his daughter, a woman about 30 years of age, inquired of me, "Do you know who that is?" pointing to the old man. On my replying "No," she rejoined, "That is Simon Girty." He had been blind for about four years.
In 1815 I returned to Malden and ascertained that Girty had died a short time previous. Simon Newton informed me that Girty left the whites because he was not promoted to the command of a company. I was also so informed by my father-in-law, who was taken prisoner by the Indians. Girty was of extraordinary strength, power of endurance, courage, and sagacity. He was in height about 5 feet 10 inches and strongly made.
Possibly there is some truth in this story. Kenton's part may be right, at least. Remember, when Mr. Workman was at Malden in 1812, he was in an enemy's country. It would add much to the story if he had told or Howe had thought to have asked him where he went from. The War of 1812 was then going on and few Americans were touring Canada of their own accord.
Mr. Howe ran across a man named Oliver M. Spencer who had been taken prisoner by the Indians in 1792, the year after St. Clair's defeat. Mr. Spencer lived with an old Indian medicine man at Defiance or where Defiance now stands and during his captivity met the Girtys of whom all the frontiersmen had heard. Spencer described Simon. Two visitors came to the medicine man's cabin, one a chief named Blue Jacket, the other Simon Girty.
Whether it was prejudice associated with his look, the fact that he was a renegade, the murderer of his own countrymen racking his diabolical invention to invent new and more excruciating tortures or not; his dark shaggy hair; his low forehead; his brows contracted and meeting above his short, flat nose; his grey sunken eyes, averting the ingenious gaze; his lips thin and compressed, and the dark and sinister expression of his countenance, he seemed, to me, to be the very picture of a villain. He wore the Indian costume but without any ornament, and his silk handkerchief while it supplied the place of a hat, hid an unsightly wound in his forehead. On each side of his belt was stuck a silver mounted pistol and at his left hung a short broad dirk, serving occasionally the uses of a knife.
He made of me many inquiries, some about my family, and the particulars of my captivity, but more of the strength of the different garrisons, the number of American troops at Fort Washington and whether the President intended soon to send another army against the Indians. He spoke of the wrongs he had received at the hands of his countrymen and with fiendish exultation of the revenge he had taken. He boasted of his exploits, the number of his victories and of his personal prowess, then raising his handkerchief he exhibited the deep wound in his forehead (which I afterwards learned was inflicted by the tomahawk of the celebrated Chief Brandt in a drunken frolic) said it was a saber cut which he had received at St. Clair's defeat, and that he had sent the ⸻ Yankee officer to his grave—the latter saying with a great oath. He ended by saying that I would never see home, but if I should turn out to be a good hunter and a brave warrior, I might one day be a chief. His presence and conversation rendered my situation painful.
Before Spencer was liberated he had a much more unsatisfactory interview with James Girty, who threw a great scare into the captive by pretending to sharpen a knife with which to kill him. Mr. Howe closes his account of the Girtys as far as Henry county is concerned by an extract from the manuscript of one Jonathan Alder, who knew Simon and to attest that Simon was not altogether destitute of kind feelings.
Alder said:
"I knew Simon Girty to purchase at his own expense several boys who were prisoners, take them to the British and have them educated. He certainly was a friend to many prisoners."
We can note that Mr. Howe makes no effort to reconcile his various testimonials. Spencer, whom he quotes, was probably between 60 and 70 when Mr. Howe met him and doubtless of sound mind and memory, a capable witness, but the reconciliation of the accounts of Simon Girty as an old man, a rheumatic hunter finally killed in battle, and a pathetic decrepit blind man is somewhat difficult.
James R. Albach, historian of our "Western Annals," states that the rest of the Girtys after their capture in 1756, were ransomed from 1758 to 1765, and that only the mother and Simon returned. He may be right in this, despite the fact that a warrant for land on Squirrel Hill was applied for in George's name. Albach states George remained with the Delawares until his death. He became a perfect savage, adopting entirely the manners of the Indians. To consummate cunning he added the most fearless intrepidity. In his latter years he gave himself up to intemperance and died drunk about 1813 on the "Miami of the Lake"—evidently a misprint for Maumee.
Albach says the Shawanese adopted James as a son. As he approached manhood he became dexterious in all the args of savage life. To the most sanguinary spirit he added all the vices of the depraved frontiersmen with whom he frequently associated. "To this barbarian," attests Albach, "are to be attributed many of the cruelties charged on Simon, yet this monster was caressed by Proctor and Elliott."
These two were British officers, the latter, Matthew Elliott, who had fled with Simon. No mention is made of John Turner by Albach. John was undoubtedly released among those forced from the Senecas, Delawares and Shawanees by Col. Bouquet in 1764. He was 10 years old when he was returned to his mother at Pittsburgh. Albach says Thomas Girty alone of the sons returned to civilized life. This is not true. We know Simon did, and remained about Pittsburgh, serving in Dunmore's war, and taking up land on Squirrel Hill, and leaving this vicinity in March, 1778. And there are records showing James returned, but, liking savage life, went again to the Indians. Albach says Thomas was one of the celebrated Sam Brady's spies in the Indian wars after the Revolution and that he died in 1820, probably in Butler county, Pa. He is not of record, any more than John Turner, his half-brother, is, of any connection with Indian life aside from their enforced captivity.
Albach attests that Simon Girty was scrupulously exact in the paymetn [sic] of his obligations, also that he was a great lover of rum. Albach recounts the Thames battle version of Simon's death—and adds: "This, however, is not certain."
Let us depart from the story of these renegades and come again to the part of Pittsburgh where their mother and good brothers dwelt and where Simon lived, too, until he became an enemy to his countrymen; to the pleasant hills and valleys of former Peebles township of Allegheny county, to memories of the Turner Chapel, the Turner neighborhood and the mention of those pioneers who attended it and the mention also of some of Pittsburgh's foremost citizens, who maintained luxurious homes in the vicinity of the original Turner holdings and on parts of it.
Squirrel Hill is rich in memories. It was a beautiful suburban district when annexed to the city in 1868, and for some years afterwards, and then streets came and the rustic beauty of the region began to depart and is now about gone.
Albert K. Smith, who spent 14 years of his early life in the Squirrel Hill region, writes from his home in Crawford county, Pa., where he has lived for 40 years. He says:
I can send you a little story of old Squirrel Hill. My father, Dill A. Smith, moved his family there from Colwell street, in the original Sixth Ward, in March, 1854. I was then about 11 years old. Excepting the three years I was in the army I spent the succeeding years up to 1868 in our Squirrel Hill home, and a delightful rural section it was.
Our neighbors were John W. Butler, a retired commission merchnat; Abram Garrison, of the foundry firm of Bollman & Garrison; William H. Williams, a banker; John G. Martin, a bank official; William McKee, a blacksmith, and Joshua Tunstall, a milkman. There also was the Lytle family, John I. House, J. D. Collingwood and some others I cannot recall.
Our old home is in Greenfield avenue, about Kaercher street, and is now occupied by Emil Ertzman. There was a frame school house about a mile from us, where I attended. The teacher's name was Wilkinson. Two or three miles to the east of us there was a little Methodist brick church where we used to go with the girls of the neighborhood, most frequently to the revivals that were held there. We would cut across the fields, climb the hills, and climb over the many worm, or rail, fences, that abounded. The girls were always assisted over the fences.
We had no means of transportation to the city except by private conveyance or by walking. Later in the 50's the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad came in along the Braddocks Field plank road, as Second avenue was then called, and it gave us two stations near, one about what is now Greenfield avenue, called Frankstown Station, and the other at Four Mile Run, called Laughlins Station, from James Laughlin of Jones & Laughlin, who had their original Eliza furnace about opposite. There was a rolling mill at Frankstown owned and operated by John Grey & Co. I have been out around the old neighborhood several times, but could find no one I knew in my boyhood days. More than 60 years have rolled away since I first dwelt there. All is changed. Much is memory now.
Mr. Smith on a recent visit to Pittsburgh and since writing the above lines, was shown the picture of the Turner chapel. He said:
That's the little brick church where we attended revivals in the fifties. Oh, yes! I remember the old graveyard. I knew the Brown boys, too, Capt. Sam and W. Harry Brown, and am glad they have remembered their mother in so practical and beautiful a manner as in the erection of the Mary S. Brown Memorial Church.
About 1864 or 1865 my brother sold his first home on Squirrel Hill to B. F. Jones of Jones & Laughlin, father of the present head of that firm. My father built a smaller house on a tract adjoining which he owned. This home he sold to George F. McCleane of the Soho Rolling Mills, the firm then Moorhead, McCleane & Co. This was in 1868, when my family left Pittsburgh. Both places were noted for the beautiful and well-kept grounds, handsome floral effects and abundant fruit trees. This was customary then about all suburban homes and Squirrel Hill had as handsome as any other suburb.
Mr. Smith was shown the memorial booklet of the Mary Brown Church and read over the list of many Squirrel Hill pioneer families. Others may do the same. Many of these can be read on the tombstones in the burial ground donated to the township by John Turner, some of the dates of birth going back to colonial days. Adam Burchfield died in 1826, aged 64. We have Burchfield avenue from this family name. Elizabeth Attison died in 1828, aged 73, showing she was born in 1755, the year of Braddock's defeat. Rachel Castleman died in 1832, aged 82, her birth antedating Braddock by five years. John Turner's wife, Susannah Clark, died April 1, 1833, aged 71; John Turner died May 20, 1840, aged 85; Margaret Sutch, born January 1, 1776, died July 29, 1849, so the old tombstones tell the story of pioneers who lived in thrilling years. There were interments as late as December 30, 1878, to-wit: "Delmont Jones, in the seventy-sixth year of his age."
There were many burials without a mark of any kind and some with only a plain stone. One soldier of colonial wars, John Turner; one Revolutionary veteran, Abraham Boother (buried with military honors in 1820); one soldier of 1812, William Craig; one of Mexico, Henry Brewno, and three of the Civil War—seven soldiers sleep there and flags fly on each Memorial Day and flowers are strewn on their graves in memory of their services. The Civil War veterans were William Nelson, John Clark and Samuel Fowkes.
Many other names appeal as pioneers—McElroys, Pankes, Herberts, Dukes and Mitchels. There is known to be a record of a house built at a place on the Monongahela called "Summerset" as early as 1760; one by Hugh Reed in 1765, both near Squirrel Hill. Jacob Castleman, William Redding, Francis Wilson, James Blashford, James Fleming, David Irwin, William Craig, John McDonald, James Guffey and John Grace are names of Squirrel Hill pioneers that are reminders that descendants of them are still here.
And there are many others.
