THE ONLY SURVIVING ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE FIRST

Survey and Town Plan of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Colonel George Woods. Pen and ink on parchment. Pittsburgh, 1784. 13 ½ x 17 ¼ inches sheet. Provenance: Senator James Ross (1762-1847); Private collection, Pittsburgh. References: John Melish, Travels through the United States of America in the Years 1806-07 (Philadelphia, 1812) 54; John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965) 204-206; ibid., Town Planning in Frontier America (Columbia & London: University of Missouri Press, 1980) 181; Bruce Buvinger, Origin, Development, and Persistence of Street Patterns in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, 1972). THE ONLY SURVIVING ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE FIRST PLAN OF THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH. This remarkable document is the only available original manuscript of the first survey and town plan of Pittsburgh and stands as the Penns' charter of Pittsburgh. Every deed issued by Penns' Philadelphia Land Office referred to it and all subsequent real estate ownership in Pittsburgh's "Triangle" is based on this document. Three copies of the original map are recorded, but the other two were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1845, which burned nearly one thousand buildings and leveled nearly half of Pittsburgh. This copy survived as it was held outside the city, at the residence of Senator James Ross. The map was used by Ross, at a Supreme Court of Pennsylvania trial, during 1841. In his recorded deposition he stated "I had it sent to me by the Proprietaries' agent at the trial of the Commonwealth vs. McDonald. This parchment draft I saw in said office of Proprietaries 40 years ago." A two-line attest of authenticity, located at the lower left of the plan, dated December 29, 1841 and signed by James Ross, states "this is the parchment draft referred to in my deposition." On the verso of the document is an Allegheny County clerk's notation, "Recorded in the office for recording deeds . . .," dated February 19, 1842. A copy of the document (complete with Ross's attest of authenticity) is to be found in the Allegheny County plat book. The authenticity of the map has been further verified by Andrew E. Masich, president and CEO of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania who in an article for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (Sunday, November 20, 2005) commented, " . . . it's a legitimate thing. It is one of the earliest maps of Pittsburgh." A settlement is recorded on the site, of what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as early as circa 1760. On March 4, 1681, King Charles II signed the Charter of Pennsylvania and granted the territory to William Penn as payment of a loan in the amount of £16,000. Penn intended this to be a safe haven for persecuted Quakers, a religion he himself had converted to, but which was socially despised in Great Britain. By the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania also became a settlement for new immigrants to America, who found little opportunity in the already settled portions of the original colonies. However, there was little settlement of the western portion of the state due to constant Native American incursions. This was to change during the second half of the century. In 1754 the French and Indian War broke out. The Mississippi and Ohio Valleys had been under the control of the French and their defeat opened the path for settlement in western Pennsylvania. In 1758 Fort Duquesne, built at the strategic point where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet the Ohio River, fell to the British and was renamed Fort Pitt. According to early accounts, a small community of 200 houses, grouped in a tiny grid of rectangular blocks fronting on to the Monongahela, had formed around the fort within two years. Most of the inhabitants were fur traders.