1941: SADDENED MOTHER LEARNS THE DUAL MEANING OF “ALOHA”
Ellen Good was among the first Allegheny County mothers to get a soon-to-be-dreaded notice from the U.S. government.
Her twenty-five-year-old son, Staff Sergeant Joseph K. Good, had been one of the more than twenty-four hundred Americans killed December 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “In the mellifluous language of Hawaii, the word ‘aloha’ means both ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye,’” the Post-Gazette reported on December 10. “But yesterday it had no sweet sound and only one awful meaning.
“‘Aloha’ was the last word Mrs. Good had received from her soldier son…when the War Department informed her that he had been killed in Sunday’s surprise Japanese raid.”
A graduate of Oliver High School and a resident of Pittsburgh’s North Side, Staff Sergeant Good had enlisted in the Army Air Corps in June 1939 and hadn’t been home since. In a letter written on Thanksgiving Day, he told his mother he expected a long stay in Hawaii. He assured her the military was taking precautions to protect the giant naval base against air raids.
He closed with this paragraph, according to the Post-Gazette: “‘I hear the blackout signal is going to sound soon,’ he wrote in a hurried finish to the letter Mrs. Good received a week ago, ‘so I must say aloha.’”
“Sunday I had a feeling something was wrong,” Mrs. Good told a reporter shortly after getting word that her son had been killed. “And yesterday I saw his face before me all day long.”
By the time World War II ended almost four years later, about four thousand Allegheny County families would receive the sad news that a loved one had been killed or died while in the armed services.
While the Japanese attack meant immediate heartache for people like Mrs. Good, the Post-Gazette found that many Pittsburghers reacted stoically. “Calm Pervades City On War’s Outbreak,” the newspaper reported the day after the Japanese attack. “For all the clash of men and steel far off in the Pacific, it was just like another pre-Christmas Sunday in Pittsburgh,” reporter Charles H. Allard wrote. “Automobiles streamed through the streets, crowds alighted from street cars and packed about the windows of the stores, so the children could better see the marionettes.”
While the United States remained at peace with Nazi Germany for several days after the Japanese attack, one young resident realized his country was likely to face foes both in Asia and in Europe. “A girl of about 20 mentions ‘Japs’ to her brother, a lad of about 12 in long pants,” Allard wrote. “With a smirk on his face, he did an imitation goose step up Fifth Avenue as she laughed beside him.” Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11.
“Over in the Pennsylvania railroad station a youngster of 4 walked up and down the aisles, shaking hands with uniformed soldiers waiting for their trains. Five carefree young men came walking along together. The fair-skinned blond kid of 20 said to his companions: What will we do—enlist tomorrow?”
They may have.
“Local Offices Are Swamped by Applicants for Armed Forces,” the paper reported December 9. A total of 1,255 Pittsburgh-area men sought to enlist in the army, navy, marines or air corps the day after the Japanese attack. Another 1,190 signed up on December 9, and 1,365 more joined the ranks on December 10.
‘“I quit a good job to fight for my country,’ said a young Marine Corps applicant, putting the whole thing just as concisely as anyone could.” Reporter Charles H. Brown wrote that the recruit was “smiling somewhat self-consciously because he was afraid he might be accused of over-dramatizing himself.” The would-be marine hoped to become one of about 900,000 men and more than 20,000 women from Pennsylvania who served in the armed forces during the war.
“The job has to be done, and we’re going to get it over with,” another young man, seeking to join the naval reserve, told Brown. “That’s why we’re here.”
CHAPTER 4
PITTSBURGH’S PROGRESS
1758: THE CITY GETS A NAME
When General John Forbes gave Pittsburgh its name in November 1758, newspapers, magazines and pamphlets quickly brought the news to English speakers from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Edinburgh, Scotland.
The years between 1754 and 1758 had been among the hardest times ever on the Pennsylvania frontier. Control of the Forks of the Ohio—the place now known as Pittsburgh’s Point—was one of the main goals in the French and Indian War, which was the North American portion of the worldwide Seven Years’ War.
For that reason, many of the opening battles of that long and bloody conflict had taken place in southwestern Pennsylvania. Most had ended in defeats for the British side, including George Washington’s surrender at Fort Necessity in July 1754 and the destruction of General Edward Braddock’s British and Colonial army a year later. A new British government in London, however, led by William Pitt, had decided to follow an eighteenth-century version of the Colin Powell doctrine: maximize the odds of success by sending forces in overwhelming numbers.
An eighteenth-century painting of General John Forbes—the man who named Pittsburgh—is attributed to artist John Watson. Courtesy Senator John Heinz History Center.
Unlike the unsuccessful General Braddock, the new British commander, General Forbes, sought alliances with Native Americans. He was eager to use them as scouts and to keep them from joining the ranks of French and French-Canadian fighters. The British also had demography on their side. By the 1750s, historians estimate, more than a million people were residing in their colonies, although many in Pennsylvania spoke German rather than English. In New France, which included all of eastern Canada and much of the Midwest along the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, there were only about fifty thousand.
By mid-1758, the tide of war clearly was going against the French and their remaining Indian allies.
“The accounts from America begin now to be more favourable than formerly,” begins a report in the January 1759 edition of the Gentleman’s Magazine. The magazine, printed in London “by D. Henry and R. Cave at St. John’s Gate,” goes on to print excerpts from a dispatch sent by General Forbes on his arrival in the smoking ruins of what had been the French-built Fort Duquesne.
Starting from Philadelphia, General Forbes—born like Andrew Carnegie in Dunfermline, Scotland—had slowly maneuvered his army across Pennsylvania during the late summer and fall of 1758. Aided by colonial officers, including the ambitious George Washington, he and his underlings built a series of fortifications and supply depots across the wilderness. Each was located about a day’s march apart. They included Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier, now modern-day Bedford and Ligonier.
Here is some of the text of the General Forbes letter, as excerpted in the Gentleman’s Magazine. A copy of the periodical, bound into book form, is in the collection of the Senator John Heinz History Center.
I have the pleasure of acquainting you with the signal success of his majesty’s arms over all his enemies on the Ohio, by having obliged them to burn, and abandon their Fort duQuesne, which they effectuated up on the 24th instant [November 24, 1758], and of which I took possession with my light troops the same evening, and with my little army the next day. The enemy made their escape down the river, part in boats and part by land, to their forts and settlements upon the Missisippi [sic], having been abandoned, or, at least, not seconded by their friends the Indians, whom we had previously engaged to act a neutral part, after thoroughly convincing them, in several skirmishes, that all their attempts upon our advanced posts, in order to cut off our communications, were vain, and to no purpose; so now they seem all willing, and well disposed to embrace his majesty’s most gracious protection.
Give me leave, therefore, to congratulate you upon this important event, of having expelled the French from Fort duQuesne and this prodigious tract of fine rich country, and of having, in a manner, reconciled the various tribes and nations of the Indians, inhabiting it, to his majesty’s government.
British general John Forbes watches from a litte
r as his troops march into the burning remains of Fort Duquesne in 1758. The painting was done by artist Nat Youngblood. Courtesy Fort Pitt Museum.
Before he left the Forks of the Ohio, General Forbes took one other important action, describing it in a November 27 letter to William Pitt, whom he saw as architect of the British victory. “I have used the freedom of giving your name to Fort Duquesne,” he wrote, “as I hope it was in some measure the being actuated by your spirits that now makes us Masters of the place.”
After a difficult winter journey, General Forbes made it back to Philadelphia, where he died on March 11, 1759. He was buried in that city’s Christ Church.
1786: FIRST NEWSPAPER WEST OF THE ALLEGHENIES
The Pittsburgh Gazette began publishing on July 29, 1786. By September 3, the paper had printed its first reader complaint about the lack of fresh information in the newspaper and had run its first lawyer joke.
John Scull was the first editor of the Pittsburgh Gazette. A rival editor made fun of his name in a satiric poem in 1800. Courtesy Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The early editions of the weekly Gazette included a mix of short local and longer national stories, the latter often reprinted from other newspapers, and months-old foreign news. Advertising categories covered real estate, runaway servants and slaves. Publishers John Scull and Joseph Hall even found room for sports.
“I see by your last paper that you have not been crammed with news,” wrote Gilbert Gichen, of Peter’s Creek. He complained about a Latin phrase, left untranslated, that appeared in a previous issue of the paper. That “scrap of Latin about the lawyers, I confess it is as dark to me as all their proceedings in general are,” Gichen wrote, setting up the premise for his dig at lawyers. “One of our elders, who knows a little Latin, has given me an interpretation of it, but I think he may be wrong.”
“He says it means ‘They labour to put themselves in a terrible rage to fill their pockets.’”
Gichen advised Scull and Hall to rethink their policy on foreign phrases. “If you write any more of this kind still be so good as to explain it,” he suggested. Gichen also asked whether the Gazette planned to publish “essays from one, two or three authors, or is your plan more general.”
The weekly paper’s four pages were open to a variety of opinions, the editors replied. “They will thankfully receive [from any person] essays which may tend to the entertainment or improvement of the readers of this paper.” Space, however, was tight and standards were high. “They are sorry to add, that many pieces have already been received for insert on which, if complied with, would have tended greatly to the injury of the Pittsburgh Gazette.”
While the cover price of the Gazette was quite high—6 pence is equal to a minimum of $1.38 in modern currency—its owners needed lots of advertising to stay in the black. “To Be Sold (For Ready Money Only)” is the first line of a September 30 offer to sell the contract of an indentured laborer. In the eighteenth century, both men and women agreed to work for food and lodging, but without salary, for several years, most often in return for the cost of their passage to America. “A German woman servant, she has near 3 years to serve, and is well qualified for all household work,” the ad states. “Would recommend her to her own country people [meaning German immigrants], particularly as her present master has found great inconvenience from his not being acquainted with their manners, customs and language. For further particulars, enquire at Mr. Ormsby’s in Pittsburgh.”
Even when servants spoke the same tongue as their masters, problems were common. John Wilson, living in Fayette County, offered a fifteen-dollar reward for the return of “an Irish servant named Charles Jordan, 25 years of age, five feet six or eight inches high, short black hair, round face, knock-kneed, large flat feet, has an old sore on the sole of one foot.”
While Pennsylvania had passed a law in 1780 prohibiting future enslavement of blacks, it did not liberate anyone who was a slave at the time the measure took effect. Colonel John Gibson, a former commander of Fort Pitt, was within his rights to advertise on June 2, 1787, “to be sold, to any person residing in the country, A Negro Wench.” The anonymous woman was “an excellent cook, and can do any kind of work in or out of doors.” Since cash was often short on the frontier, Colonel Gibson was willing to accept a barter deal: “produce will be taken, or cattle of any kind.”
From south of the Mason-Dixon line, Samuel Magruder and Daniel Dingle on September 30, 1786, offered a forty-dollar reward for the return to Maryland of a pair of slaves named Sam and Sue. “The negro man is about 27 years of age…a spare, thin fellow, he talks but bad English, the middle finger of the right hand is off at the tip end, occasioned by the frost.” Sue was about twenty-two and “has a large scar upon the back of one of her legs, just above her ankle.”
Lacking professional sports teams for which to root, nineteenth-century Pittsburgh residents could seek diversion—and wagering opportunities—in horse racing. The jockey club announced September 9 that races would “start precisely at one of the Clock” on October 19, 20 and 21. Daily purses would total as much as $120, equal to at least $2,800 today. Potential participants were warned that appropriate attire would be required. “No Jocky will be permitted to ride unless he has some genteel Jocky Habit.”
1800: JEFFERSONIANS SPEAK LOUDLY
Historians describe the presidential race of 1800 as one of the nastiest ever. Pittsburgh’s competing newspapers reflected that era of bad feeling with their owners launching personal and political attacks on each other.
The election of 1796 had resulted in Federalist John Adams becoming president and his chief rival, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, becoming vice president. (Despite its confusing name, Jefferson’s party was the predecessor to the modern Democratic Party and has no link to present-day Republicans.) The result of divided leadership was four years of feuding over foreign and domestic policy and a rematch between the two men in 1800.
John Israel’s newspaper, the Tree of Liberty, began publication in Pittsburgh in August of that year as a pro-Jefferson newspaper backed by lawyer and politician Hugh Henry Brackenridge. Its long-established rival was John Scull’s the Pittsburgh Gazette. Colonial newspapers made no pretense of objectivity and made no distinctions between news and opinion columns.
Israel, most likely with the aid of Brackenridge, a novelist and poet, took particular pleasure in crafting puns that made use of his rival’s last name. When the Gazette introduced a new nameplate, Israel greeted its appearance on September 20 in the Tree of Liberty with almost-rhyming couplets:
Pray Sap-Skull John, Why did you get
That handsome head for your Gazette;
Adorned with flourishes and flashes,
And other such outlandish dashes?
When your own head wants alteration,
As much as any in the nation—
Your thickish, sappy, dunder skull,
As hard as any ten year bull,
Demanded that it should be shaven,
As neat at least, as that engraving
In its September 13 issue, the Tree of Liberty provided minimal information on the “federal ticket” for the upcoming U.S. congressional and state senate races. For Congress, “NO BODY!!!” the paper reported. For state senate, “NO BODY worth mentioning.”
“The REPUBLICAN Ticket Which will be supported in opposition to the above, by the great bulk of the honest and independent yeomanry of the county is for Congress ALBERT GALLATIN [and for] Senator JOHN HAMILTON of Washington cty.”
The Federalists had given up on the national and state races, according to the Tree of Liberty, but hoped to hold on to country offices, including coroner and commissioner.
They failed.
“This year the Republicans will carry every candidate from the Coroner to the Congressman,” the Tree of Liberty crowed on October 18 after the ballots were counted. “This election gives the final stroke to the aristocratic party here.”
Pennsylvania’s representatives
to the Electoral College—which selects the president—were chosen by the state legislature in 1800 and included both Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. As a result, Jefferson and Adams split the state’s electoral vote eight to seven. Jefferson, however, won the overall vote in the Electoral College, seventy-three to sixty-five.
Here’s where it gets really complicated. Jefferson and his vice presidential running mate, Aaron Burr, received identical numbers of electoral votes. That threw the race into the U.S. House of Representatives, which took thirty-six ballots before selecting Jefferson as president on February 17, 1801. He was inaugurated March 4.
Following years of partisan feuding, Pittsburgh politicians from both parties came together, at least for one evening, according to the March 14 edition of the Tree of Liberty.
“On the evening of the 4th of March a large body of Republican Citizens of Allegheny and Washington counties, joined by a number of the most respectable Federal characters in that neighborhood, met at the house of Capt. Andrew M’Farlane, near the Monongahela river, to celebrate the election and induction of Thomas Jefferson, Esq. into the Presidency of the United States.”
Following what the newspaper called “an “elegant entertainment,” participants raised their glasses in tributes to Jefferson, Burr, Adams, the Constitution and the memory of George Washington. “At each toast a volley of small arms were fired.”
“Afterwards the Citizens with lighted Tapers, marched to the Monongahela river, and returned in the same order to the house, where they spent the remainder of the evening with the greatest hilarity.”
1804: PITTSBURGH ALMANACK MIXES PRACTICAL, POETIC
Pittsburgh had a population of less than sixteen hundred when the community got its second newspaper.
Remembering Pittsburgh Page 6