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16
A Short Account of the

who lived on his farm adjoining that of Daniel McAllister. After his marriage John Ormsby opened a trading store at Bedford, Pa., and lived there on his farm of three hundred acres until 1770, when he returned to Pittsburgh with his family, where he had retained his landed and other interests; was a firm adherent of the government of Pennsylvania, although Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, when he visited Pittsburgh, stopped with John Ormsby[1] and endeavored, all to no purpose, to interest him in schemes to establish the claims of Virginia to southwestern Pennsylvania; but failing to do so, found a ready tool in Dr. Connolly, and in consequence, as John Ormsby relates, "my Lord made him a deed of gift of 2,000 acres of land at the Falls of the Ohio, and 2,000 more to Mr. John Campbell, late of Kentucky," who was also supposed to be a party to these schemes, which comprehended murdering those opposed to their purpose. John Ormsby appears as a signer of a memorial to Governor John Penn, dated Pittsburgh, 14 June, 1774, asking for better protection against the Indians,[2] and of another memorial, dated Pittsburgh, 25 June, 1774, in regard to the tyrannical proceedings of Dr. Connolly;[3] during the Revolutionary war, was a stanch Whig and was one of the seven members of Augusta county (Va.) standing committee of correspondence appointed at a meeting held in Pittsburgh, 16 May, 1775, only four weeks after the battle of Lexington, at which strong Whig resolutions were passed.[4] This bold stand was taken by the inhabitants of this section of country in spite of the fact that they were involved in hostilities with the Indians, and were almost on the verge of civil war

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  1. ↑ See the latter's account of Dr. Connolly's plot, The Olden Time, by Neville B. Craig, vol. II, pp. 93-4.
  2. ↑ History of Western Pennsylvania, by I. D. Rupp, app. p. 305.
  3. ↑ American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. I, pp. 483-4; Penna. Archives, vol. IV, p. 526.
  4. ↑ American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. II, pp. 612-5; History of Augusta County by J. Lewis Peyton, pp. 206-8.
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