Fort Pitt Museum looks back on city’s earliest days in “Pittsburgh, Virginia”
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
A rare powder horn recently acquired by the Fort Pitt Museum is the centerpiece of the exhibit “Pittsburgh, Virginia.”
A slave registry borrowed from Washington & Jefferson College is included in “Pittsburgh, Virginia,” which is at the Fort Pitt Museum through December 2020.
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
But for a few simple twists of fate, we could be driving past “Virginia is for lovers” billboards on local expressways and breaking into choruses of the Old Dominion fight song.
While it’s widely known that West Virginia was carved out of Virginia amid the sound and fury of the Civil War, the fact that Pittsburgh and the region that surrounds it were once part of Virginia is a less familiar slice of history. The era when Virginia’s boundaries swept through this area is explored in the exhibit “Pittsburgh, Virginia,” at the Fort Pitt Museum at Point State Park.
“If history had taken a slightly different turn, we would be saying ‘y’all’ instead of ‘yinz,'” said Andy Masich, president and CEO of the Senator John Heinz History Center. The Fort Pitt Museum is part of the history center’s museum system.
A little more than 240 years ago, this region was a much-coveted slice of real estate. At the confluence of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, its desirability as a strategic locus for warfare and trade made it the subject of a conflict between Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo American Indian nations. Dubbed Lord Dunmore’s War, it was ultimately resolved in 1774, when the Ohio River became the boundary between the British colonies and Indian lands.
A panel at the exhibit, which opened this month and will be on display through December 2020, points out that “the events of this era explain much about the city of today, including the lack of American Indians from its otherwise diverse neighborhoods. They offer glimpses of selfless disregard in pursuit of a common cause, and examples of the darkest depths of human cruelty.”
The exhibit also sheds light on how “little-known, but critical, global forces influenced the history of the region and its place in the new United States.”
In the 50 years since it opened, the Fort Pitt Museum has showcased the history of the region in the 18th century, and “Pittsburgh, Virginia” contains a new and crucial artifact recently acquired by the museum – a powder horn crafted in about 1758 that has images of Fort Duquesne carved into it. The British captured the fort that year and established Fort Pitt on the site.
The powder horn is thought to be one of the earliest objects made in Pittsburgh. It resided in a private collection, and it was recently acquired by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museuum Commission with support from the Friends of Fort Pitt Museum. Once the exhibit concludes, it will be a permanent part of the museum’s collection.
“We knew it existed for about five to 10 years,” said Michael Burke, the exhibit specialist at the museum. “The collector believed it was the only powder horn to depict Fort Duquesne.”
Just as Southwestern Pennsylvania’s onetime attachment to Virginia is not a headlining fact of the region’s history, it’s also not widely known that slaves lived and worked in Pennsylvania well into the 1800s. Slaves had to be registered by their owners in the county in which they lived, and “Pittsburgh, Virginia” contains registration documents on loan from Washington & Jefferson College.
Under this system, registered slaves were the property of their owners until their deaths, while the children of slaves were indentured servants of their owners until the age of 28. It was only the grandchildren of slaves that were fully granted their freedom.
“I think people would be shocked to know that slavery existed in Pennsylvania prior to the Civil War,” Burke said.
Also included in “Pittsburgh, Virginia” are a basket from the 1700s, a rifle that was used by Indians and a pair of leather breeches from that era.
Events accompany the exhibit will be scheduled throughout the year.
For more information, call 412-281-9284 or visit www.heinzhistorycenter.org/fort-pitt.