Pittsburg and its vicinity witnessed much of the disorder, and some of the violence against person and property, incident to the Whisky Insurrection of 1791-94. Delegates from Allegheny, Westmoreland, Washington and Fayette counties met here on the 7th of September 1791, and passed resolutions severely denouncing the excise tax; and a similarly constituted gathering, on the 24th of August 1792, voted to proscribe all persons who assisted in the enforcement of laws taxing the manufacture of liquor. Thereafter various persons who had paid the excise tax, or had assisted in collecting it, were tarred and feathered or had their houses or barns burned. General John Neville (1731-1803), having accepted the office of chief excise inspector for Western Pennsylvania, his fine country residence, about 7 m. south-west of Pittsburg, was attacked by a mob of about 500 men on the 16th and 17th of July 1794. The defenders of the property (who included a squad of soldiers from the garrison at Pittsburg) killed two and wounded several of the attacking party, but they were finally forced to surrender, and General Neville's mansion and other buildings were burned to the ground. A mass meeting of about 5000 citizens of the above-mentioned counties (many of them armed militiamen), at Braddock's Field, on the 1st and 2nd of August 1794. threatened to take possession of Fort Lafayette and to burn Pittsburg, but cooler counsel prevailed, and after voting to proscribe several persons, and marching in a body through the streets of the town, the crowd dispersed without doing any damage. Upon the arrival in the following November of the troops sent by President Washington, a military court of inquiry, held at Pittsburg, caused the arrest of several persons, who were sent to Philadelphia for trial, where some of them were found guilty and sentenced to terms of imprisonment, but the sentences were not enforced.
The town was made the county-seat in 1791, it was incorporated as a borough in 1794, the charter was revived in 1804, and the borough was chartered as a city in 1816. As early as the year of its incorporation as a borough Philadelphia and Baltimore merchants had established an important trade with it. Their goods were carried in Conestoga wagons to Shippensburg and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Hagerstown, Maryland, taken from there to Pittsburg on pack horses, and exchanged for Pittsburg products, these products were carried by boat to New Orleans, where they were exchanged for sugar, molasses, &c., and these were carried through the gulf and along the coast to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Boat-building was begun in Pittsburg in 1797 or earlier; the galley “ President Adams, ” built by the government, was launched here in 1798, and the “ Senator Ross, ” completed in the same year, was launched in 1799 In 1797 glass works which were the first to use coal as a fuel in making glass were built here; later Pittsburg prohted greatly by the use of its great store of natural gas in the manufacture of glass In 1806 the manufacture of iron was well begun, and by 182 5 this had become the leading industry. On the 10th of April 1845 a considerable portion of the city was swept by fire, and in July 1877, during the great railway strike of that year, a large amount of property was destroyed by a mob. The commercial importance of the city was increased by the canal from Pittsburg to Philadelphia, built by the state in 1834 at a cost of $10,000,000. The first petroleum pipe line reached Pittsburg in 1875. A movement to consolidate the cities of Pittsburg and Allegheny, together with some adjacent boroughs, was begun in 1853-1854. It failed entirely in that year but in 1867 Lawrenceville, Peebles, Collins, Liberty, Pitt and Oakland, all lying between the two rivers, were annexed to Pittsburg; in 1872 there was a further annexation of a district embracing 27 sq m. south of the Monongahela river; in IOO6 Allegheny (q it), although a large majority of those voting on the question in that city were opposed to it, was annexed, and in November 1907 the Supreme Court of the United States declared valid the act of the state legislature under which the vote was taken. See N B Craig, The History of Pittsburgh (Pittsburg, 1851); Early H zstory of Western Pennsylvania and the West, by a gentleman of the bar- J. D. Rupp (Pittsburg, 1848); William H. Egle, Illustrated History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa, 1876); Sarah H. Killikelly, The History of Ptttsburgh, Its Rtse and Progress (Pittsburg, 1906); S. H. Church, ' Pittsburgh the Industrial C1ty, ” in L. P. Powell's Historic Towns of the Middle States (New York, 1899); G. H. Thurston, Pittsburgh and Allegheny in the Centennial Year (Pittsburg, 1876), for a history of the various forts as such, Report of the Commission to Locate the Frontter Forts of Pennsylvanza, vol. 11. (Harrisburg, Pa.. 1896), and for a thoroug study of economic and social conditions in Pittsburg, P. U. Kellogg (ed.), The Pittsburg Survey (6 vols., New York, 1910 sqq.), prepared under the direction of the Sage Foundation.
PITTSFIELD, a city and the county-seat of Berkshire county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., in the western part of the state among
the Berkshire Hills, and about 150 in. W. of Boston. Pop.
(1890), 17,281; (1900), 21,766, of whom 4344 were foreign-born;
(1910 census), 22, I2I. Area, about 41 sq rn. It is served
by the New York, New Haven & Hartford and the Boston &
Albany (New York Central & Hudson River) railways, and by
two inter-urban electric lines. Pitfsheld is a popular summer
resort; it lies in a plain about 1000 ft. above sea-level, is surrounded
by the picturesque Berkshire Hills, and is situated in
a region of numerous lakes, one of the largest-Lake Pontoosuc
-being a summer pleasure resort. On either side of the city
flow the east and west branches of the Housatonic river. Standing
in the public green, in the centre of the city, is the original
statue (by Launt Thompson) of the “ Massachusetts Color
Bearer, ” which has been reproduced on the battlefield of
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The principal institutions are the
House of Mercy Hospital, with which is connected the Henry
W. Bishop Memorial Training School for nurses, the Berkshire
Home for aged women, the Berkshire Athenaeum, containing
the public library, the Crane Art Museum and a Young Men's
Christian Association. Prominent buildings are St Joseph's
Cathedral and the buildings of the Berkshire Life Insurance
Company, the Agricultural National Bank and the Berkshire
County Savings Bank. In the south-western part of Pittsfield,
On the boundary between it and Hancock, is Shaker Village,
settled about 1790 by Shakers. Pittsfield has water-power and
important manufacturing industries. In 1905 its factory
products were valued at $8,577,358, or 49-1% more than in
1900. Fully half of the manufactures consist of textile goods.
The first settlement in what is now Pittsfield was made in
1743, but was soon abandoned on account of Indian troubles.
In 1749 the settlement was revived, but the settlers did not
bring their families to the frontier until 1752. The settlement
was first called “ Boston Plantation, ” or “ Poontoosuck, ” but
in 1761, when it was incorporated as a township, the name was
changed to Pittsfield, in honour of the elder William Pitt. In
ISQI Pittsfield was chartered as a city. It was here, in the
Appleton (or Plunkett) House, known as “ Elm Knoll, ” and
built by Thomas Gold, father-in-law of Nathan Appleton that
in 1845 Henry W. Longfellow (who married Nathan Appleton's
daughter) wrote his poem “ The Old Clock on the Stairs.” For
thirty years (1842-1872) Pittsfield was the home of the Rev.
John Todd (1800-1873), the author of numerous books, of which
Lectures to Chtldren (1834, 2nd series, 1858) and The Studentlv
Manual (1835) Were once widely read. From 1807 to 1816
Elkanah Watson (17 58-1842), a prominent farmer and merchant,
lived at what is now the Country Club, and while there introduced
the merino sheep into Berkshire county and organized
the Berkshire Agricultural Society; he is remembered for his
advocacy of the building of a canal connecting the Great Lakes
with the Atlantic Ocean, and as the author of Memoirs' Men
and Times of the Revolulzon (1855), edited by his son, W. C.
Watson.
PITTSTON, a city of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, U.S.A, on the Susquehanna river just below the mouth of the Lackawanna, about II m. S W. of Scranton and about 9 m. N.E of Wilkes-Barre. Pop (1890), IO,302, (1900), 12,556, of whom 33,94 were foreign-born, (1910 census), 16,267. It is served by the Erie, the Lehigh Valley, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the Central of New ]ersey, the Delaware & Hudson, and the Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley railways; there is an electric railway from Pittston to Scranton, and a
