The Golden Triangle Boundary of the Allegheny

As I begin my riverfront ramble around Pittsburgh I need to pay homage to the first recorded rambles around the point: the surveyors for the Penn Family. Obviously they were not the first walkers nor the first to record visits in their journal...but they were the first to methodically walk along the riverbank for the purpose of creating boundaries...boundaries that still impact our infrastructure and neighborhoods.

The boundary near where my hike started, below the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge, was marked by George Woods and Thomas Vickroy as surveyors for the Penn Estate in 1784. The descendants of William Penn were preparing to sale the last of the their lands originally provided in the 1681 Charter from Charles II to their ancestor.

My journey started very near the upper right corner of this map...where Watt Street meets the Allegheny River.

The legal property transfers went like this:

(1) Since the Penns took pride in actually purchasing its land from the native Americans, the Penns acquired 'clean' title to the Pittsburgh area by the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix

(2) In preparing their lands for sale the Penns tended to separate the most valuable lands for their future use. The lands were called Manors and the Manor of Pittsburgh was laid out in 1769.

(3) While the Penns struggled to remian neutral during the Revolutionary War, they could not deny that their claim was derived from English Royalty...the loser. During the War the Pennsylvania Legislature divested the Penns of all their land by statute...but they were kind enough to pay the Penns for the divested land and allowed them to keep their Manors. But the Penns were no longer deriving income from their original Charter...so they eventually needed to sale their remaining lands.

(4) To prepare the lands for sale the Penns asked that its Manor be subdivided into Lots. George Woods and Thomas Vickroy were slected for the job.

Thomas Vickroy recalled the event some half a century later:

We arrived in Pittsburgh in the month of May, 1784, and the first thing we did was to circumscribe the ground where we intended to lay the town out. We began up about where Grant Street now is, on the bank of the Monongahela, and proceeded down the Monongahela, according to the meanderings of the river, to its junction with the Allegheny River. Then up the Allegheny River on the bank, keeping on the bank a certain distance, up to about Washington's Street; from thence to Grant's Hill, thence along Grant's Hill to the place of the beginning. I made a draft of it in Mr. Woods' presence, throwing it into a large scale to see how it would answer to lay out into lots and streets. After that there was a good deal of conversation, and the ground was viewed by Mr. Woods and the persons who lived at the place to fix on the best plan to lay out the town with the greatest convenience.

The Penn's first sale of land in 1784 was to James O'Hara and it was the area between Fort Pitt and the Allegheny River. The legal traditions of recording property ownership in Allegheny County started during this period.