Pittsburgh’s slave-owning history
Pennsylvania’s 1780 “act for the gradual abolition of slavery” is regarded as the first anti-slavery legislation in world history. It was amended 8 years later to close loopholes. Freedom lovers such as myself are underwhelmed by both acts.
University of Pittsburgh history Professor Laurence Glasco has written that the 1780 act actually freed no one. It mandated that those already enslaved there could remain so for life and that children born after March 1 of that year be indentured for 28 years. The offspring of such children could not be be held legally in bondage at all.
The 28 years was a victory for the pro-slavery lobby. It argued successfully that the value of slave children would take that long to be realized. After age 28, those born after March 1, 1780 must be released with meat, drink, and two sets of clothes, “one of which shall be new.”
Widespread advantage was taken of loopholes in the 1780 act. To close them, the 1788 law forbade selling husbands and wives separately; selling children away from their mothers; rotating pregnant women in and out of Pennsylvania so they could give birth to enslaved infants away from the colony and rendered illegal related practices. Enslavers were required to officially register the names, ages and gender of the children of slaves.
We note that until 1799, Pittsburgh was part of West Augusta County, Virginia, and was almost part of a slave state. The town was the subject of numerous border disputes.
When Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon — hired surveyors — drew their now-famous line to the Ohio border and Pittsburgh fell 50 miles north of it, the dispute was resolved. Pittsburgh became part of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Slavery flourished in Virginia until the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Enslaving Pennsylvanians who failed to meet the 1788 requirements to register those claimed as the children of slaves risked losing chattel or term-slavery rights over them.
The registries and census records document ruling class Pittsburgers’ enslaving ways. Towns, villages, neighborhoods, streets, and byways are named for historic Pittsburgh notables today who registered as enslavers. Bereft of sprawling acres of cotton and tobacco farms, Western Pennsylvania slave holders employed mainly domestic slaves.
Slave holders included John Neville, his son Presley Neville, Isaac Craig and Devereaux Smith. Their white opposites included Walter Forward, Jane Swisshelm, Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Dr. F. Julius LeMoyne. John Vashon and his son George and Lewis Woodson were prominent Black Pittsburgh abolitionists.
Revolutionary War General John Neville and his son Presley, the region’s largest post-revolutionary enslavers, together held 27 slaves and 29 children of slaves as indentures. As tax collector during the notorious Whiskey Rebellion, John Neville saw white farmers burn down his house. He moved in with Presley Neville. Neville Street in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood memorializes them.
John McKee founded McKeesport. In 1792 he “sold” Peter Cosco his freedom from slavery.
Colonel Isaac Craig registered eight slaves. He cofounded Pittsburgh’s glass industry. Craig Street in Oakland is named in his honor.
Devereux Smith held two slaves, according to the slave registry. Both the Smithfield Bridge and Smithfield St. in downtown Pittsburgh honor him.
But Black and white abolitionists and other non-slave-owning Pittsburghers are celebrated as well, though not nearly to the same extent as in the case of white enslaving deniers of American liberty to African American and mixed-race American people.
Forward Street in Pittsburgh‘s Squirrel Hill is named for Walter Forward, U.S. secretary of the treasury, who trained George Vashon, the first Black graduate of Oberlin College and first Black lawyer in New York State.
Journalist Jane Swisshelm was an articulate voice in the white female community against slavery in antebellum America. The East end Pittsburgh village of Swissvale honors her.
Hugh Henry Brackenridge, who left Philadelphia to get away from the likes of slaveholders Benjamin Franklin and Princeton classmate James Madison, never owned slaves. Allegheny County, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the University of Pittsburgh were founded by Judge Brackenridge, after whom a Pennsylvania town and Oakland/Hill District street are named. He mocked slaveholders in his writings.
Abolitionist F. Julius LeMoyne was a white medical doctor, who helped train African American Martin Delany in medical practice. LeMoyne House in Washington county, PA honors him.
Black abolitionists worked for the cause of freedom. Internationally peripatetic George Vashon — of Pittsburgh, Ohio, Syracuse, Washington, Haiti, etc. — and his friends Catherine and Martin Delany — of Pittsburgh, Canada and Wilberforce — continued what John Vashon and the Rev. Lewis Woodson had begun in freedom advocacy.
Although the Vashons are honored by the naming of Vashon High School in St. Louis and the Rev. Lewis Woodson’s grandson Howard Dilworth Woodson is the namesake of a Washington D.C. high school, Pittsburgh infrastructure ignores Black abolitionists, even as Pittsburgh celebrates the memory of anti-democratic slaveholders.