USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > Uniontown > A history of Uniontown : the county seat of Fayette County, Pennsylvania > Part 71
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Mr. Stewart was married in 1825, to Miss Elizabeth Shriver, daughter of David Shriver, superintendent of the eastern di- vision of the National road, extending from Cumberland, Mary-
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land, to within one mile of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, by which marriage he had six children. His first child, David Shriver Stewart, was born on what was since known as the Hugh Gra- ham farm, three miles west of Uniontown. One son, Lieutenant William F. Stewart, U. S. N., was lost at sea when the British steamer, " Bombay," collided with the United States steamer, " Oneida," off Yokohama, Japan, January 24, 1870.
Mr. Stewart owned the lot on the corner of Morgantown and West Main streets on which he built a row of brick houses known as "Stewart's Row," in which he made his residence while he erected a large brick residence next east of the court house in 1835, and in which he had his law office. This building was subsequently used as a hotel and known as the Clinton House. It was torn away preparatory to the erection of the present court house. In this he lived while he also erected a frame mansion near the eastern part of town in which he spent the latter part of his honorable life, and where he died July 16, 1872, in the eighty-second year of his age.
Mr. Stewart had bought over 80,000 acres of land in Fayette county, and at his death owned between 30,000 and 40,000 acres. His name is perpetuated by the naming of a township in his honor in 1855.
Soon after the Soldiers' Orphan school was established at Uniontown Mr. Stewart magnanimously offered to appropriate the interest of ten thousand dollars to be distributed annually among the children who should leave that school at the age of sixteen years, according to merit, based upon scholarship, in- dustry and good conduct. This happily conceived proposition to assist these dependent children, was faithfully executed for several years, and perhaps ceased only at the death of Mr. Stewart.
From the fact that Mr. Stewart was an _uncompromising advocate of a tariff for the protection of American industries he acquired the sobriquet of "Tariff Andy," and in order that Mr. Stewart may not be misunderstood, the following is his own version of his policy :
" Protect and cherish your national industry by a wise system of finance, selecting in the first place those articles which you can and ought to supply to the extent of your own wants- food, clothing, habitation and defense-and to these give ample and adequate protection, so as to secure at all times an abund-
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ant supply at home. Next select the luxuries consumed by the rich, and impose on them such duties as the wants of the Govern- ment may require for revenue; and then take the necessaries of life consumed by the poor, and articles which we cannot supply, used in manufactories, and make them free, or subject to the lowest rates of duty."
COLONEL ALEXANDER MCCLEAN.
Previous to the partial dispersion of the Highland clans in the rebellion of 1715, a portion of the clan McClean sought a home in Ireland. The father of Alexander was born there and emigrated to America at an early age, and settled on Marsh creek in York, now Adams county, near the eastern slope of South mountain. The Marsh Creek burying ground contains numerous McCleans lying side by side.
Colonel Alexander McClean was born in York county, Pennsylvania, November 20, 1746, and was the seventh son of nine children of William McClean and Elizabeth Rule, who were married February 10, 1732. He was of a family of sur- veyors and received his instructions in the field, as he accom- panied his elder brothers, Archibald, Moses and Samuel, who were engaged in running the New Castle circle, or boundary between this commonwealth and the state of Delaware, in the year 1761, prior to the arrival of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, celebrated mathematicians and surveyors of London, who were employed to determine the line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. They re-surveyed the line run by the Messrs. McClean in 1764, and their field notes of that date testify to the accuracy of the work done by their predecessors thus: "The tangent line of the New Castle circle as fixed by them would not pass one inch to the westward or eastward of the tangent point." The report of Colonel J. D. Graham, engaged in the re-survey of 1850, says: "We are surprised, at this day, that the length of the radius should have been so correctly obtained by such a method as was employed in running the original line."
On January 7, 1765, the famous Mason and Dixon line or the southern boundary of Pennsylvania, was begun, and Colonel McClean was employed to accompany them as far as they ran the line, which terminated at the third crossing of Dunkard creek, near the crossing of the great Catawba Indian trail or
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war path, where Mason and Dixon ceased their labors December 26, 1767. Here the line remained unfinished for fifteen years, owing greatly to the Revolutionary war, and the dispute be- tween Virginia and Pennsylvania, as both claimed the territory.
Colonel McClean was commissioned in July, 1781, to con- tinue the line to the southwest corner of the province, but operations were delayed until November 4th, when arrange- ments were completed that Colonel McClean, on the part of Pennsylvania and Colonel Joseph Nevill, on the part of Virginia, began at the post indicating the terminus of the Mason and Dixon survey, and ran the line twenty-three miles and eighteen perches, by November 17, 1782, this being the distance com- puted by the former surveyors as locating the terminus of the southern boundary of the state. Here they planted a post, thirty miles from any habitation which was intended as a tem- porary location for the southwest corner of the state.
In connection with Mr. St. Clair, on the part of Virginia, Colonel McClean ran the meridian boundary by astronomical observation from the southwest corner to the Ohio river, a dis- tance of 63.6 miles. This was a most difficult part of the line on account of the rough and almost inaccessible route. At the completion of which, Colonel McClean assumed the responsi- bility of issuing to the militia, by which he was accompanied as guards, orders for provisions to be drawn at Beesontown (as Uniontown was then called) on their way home, and to be paid for by Pennsylvania.
The report of Mr. C. H. Sinclare, on the re-survey of 1883, says of this part of the line: "The hills were so steep it was often with difficulty they could be climbed, frequently reaching the height of several hundred feet and impossible to do ac- curate chaining ; but when the date of tracing the first line, and the imperfect instruments are considered, the agreement between the two lines, shows very satisfactory work done one hundred years ago, and represented the best skill of the day."
On May 10, 1786, Colonel McClean was commissioned to assist Colonel Andrew Porter in running the line and marking the western boundary of the commonwealth, by astronomical observation, to the northwest corner. On June 19th, they began at Shenango creek, forty miles north of the Ohio river, to which point Colonel Porter had run the line the previous summer. On the 13th of September the northern terminus of the line was
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reached, and on the following day their camp was pitched on the shore of Lake Erie, and by October 4th, the line was finished to that point; the distance from the Ohio river being 91 miles, 4.778 feet, and from the southwest corner 155 miles, 266 perches.
In Colonel Porter's journal he mentions Colonel McClean as "indefatigable in clearing the way." About twenty-three miles south of Lake Erie a swamp of six or seven miles in length was encountered, which, in the report of the re-survey of 1878, was pronounced to be "the most abominable swamp in the world," and here work was abandoned from December 6, 1878, until the 15th of the following January, and then only by " great and persevering effort " was the line extended through the swamp.
The surveyor's report for the re-survey of 1881, says of the work from the Ohio river to Lake Erie: "The original line had been very carefully run, was practically straight and was very nearly on the true meridian."
Thus we find that Colonel McClean was employed in the running of every foot of the southern and western boundaries of Pennsylvania excepting that portion from the Ohio river north to Shenango creek, a distance of forty miles.
December 18, 1780, the general assembly of Pennsylvania passed an act to settle upon a basis of gold and silver the de- preciation in the pay of officers and enlisted men of the Penn- sylvania line engaged in the Revolutionary war. The officers and soldiers were issued certificates of depreciation which Pennsylvania afterwards redeemed in full.
In pursuance of the above act the general assembly passed an act to lay off a certain tract of land extending from the western boundary of the state to the Allegheny river, and from the Ohio river on the south to the mouth of Mahoning creek on the north, bounded on the north by the line dividing what was known as the Depreciation lands from those on the north known as the Donation lands extending to Lake Erie and which had been previously run by Colonel McClean. This tract com- prised an area of 720,000 acres, and embraced part of what is now the counties of Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Beaver and Lawrence, to be laid off in tracts of not less than two hundred nor more than three hundred acres each. These lots were to be sold at auction, the consideration to be paid in gold, silver or certificates of depreciation; patents to be issued to
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the several buyers; the cash, silver or gold, to be used for the redemption of such certificates as might remain unsatisfied at the close of the sales.
This tract was divided into five districts and a surveyor was appointed for each. Colonel McClean was appointed in 1783 for the first, it being a parallelogram of twelve miles wide by twenty-one in length, aggregating nearly 161,280 acres, the .western boundary of which was the western boundary of the state; the southern boundary was the Ohio river, and extended up said river to the mouth of Beaver creek, thence north to the northern boundary of said lands. The survey of this district was considered to be the most liable to Indian interference, and General William Irwin, then in command at Fort Pitt, was instructed to furnish a guard while the western and northern boundaries were being run, as it was not deemed safe to pro- ceed without.
The district surveyed by Colonel McClean was run off in the summer of 1785, with the exception of the western boundary which could not be run until that line was determined to Lake Erie, which was accomplished, as before stated, by Colonel Andrew Porter and Colonel McClean in the fall of 1786. He was commissioned also to survey the two tracts of three thou- sand acres each reserved by the State; one of these tracts lying in the forks of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers, and the other on both sides of the mouth of Beaver creek, including Fort McIntosh.
When the Penns opened a land office in Philadelphia, April 3, 1769, for the sale of lands in the "New Purchase," Colonel McClean moved to Stony creek, near Stoystown, now in Somer- set county, and from here he moved his quarters to suit his occupation. As soon as titles could be acquired in what is now Fayette county, he was employed in surveying for those who had previously located on "tomahawk rights," which was a precarious right, but generally respected by the frontier settlers.
While employed on the Mason and Dixon line Colonel Mc- Clean was bitten by a venomous serpent and was taken to a frontier cabin at the glades of Coxe's creek, near Stoystown, for treatment where he formed the acquaintance of Miss Sarah Holmes. This acquaintance soon ripened into friendship and she became his bride October 26, 1775, and at which place their
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first child was born September 7, 1776, and here they made their home for about three years.
Moving west of the mountains he purchased the farm that had been warranted to James Stewart June 14, 1769, about one mile east of Uniontown, and now owned by the Stewart Iron company, where the Beeson coke works are now located. Here he made his home until he moved into town, about 1783.
The first survey found recorded as surveyed by him as deputy surveyor within the present limits of Fayette county is dated in the year 1772, while all previous returns, and many subsequent ones, were made in the name of his elder brothers, Archibald and Moses, who were also deputy surveyors, al- though he held commissions as deputy surveyor for different districts from 1769 to 1825, when on account of age he de- clined to have them renewed. His district was extended west- ward of the Monongahela river February 23, 1773, and October 1, 1791, his commission, which was repeatedly renewed, em- braced the territory of the whole of Fayette county, Rostraver township in the counties of Westmoreland and Allegheny, and Mifflin, Brothers Valley and Turkey Foot, together with that part of Quemahoning township lying southward of the great road to Fort Pitt in the county of Bedford. He was com- missioned one of three, February 26, 1773, to run the line of separation between the counties of Westmoreland and Bedford.
In the summer of 1781, the expedition under the command of General George Rogers Clarke was organized to proceed against Detroit, and drafts were made throughout the Monon- gahela valley, and among those drafted was Colonel McClean, but either through the intercession of his brother Archibald, at Yorktown, with the Supreme Executive Council, or by virtue of his commission, held under Pennsylvania as chief surveyor to run the temporary boundary line, upon which work he was about to engage, he was excused from military service. In this expedition Colonel Lochry, with forty-two of his men, was killed on the Ohio river at the mouth of the Miami, August 24th, and Edward Cook was appointed to fill his place as sub- lieutenant of Westmoreland county, and in 1782 Colonel Mc- Clean was appointed to succeed Colonel Cook to that office ; hence he acquired the title of colonel, by which he was ever afterward known. He entered upon the duties of that office in the spring and summer of 1782, holding courts of appeal at
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various times and at convenient places. These courts were held for the hearing of excuses for not rendering military duty, and transacting business of a military character.
In 1782, Colonel McClean was elected also a member of the assembly from Westmoreland county, in order to secure the erection of a new county from this part of Westmoreland, which object was accomplished September 26, 1783. He was re-elected to the assembly October 3, 1783.
Upon the erection of Fayette county, Colonel McClean ap- plied for the appointment to the office of prothonotary, but General Ephraim Douglass secured the appointment and entered upon the duties of that office at the first session of court, and in writing to General William Irvine at Fort Pitt, he pays Colonel McClean the following compliment: "Notwithstanding the disappointment Colonel McClean must have felt at not securing this office, as he has a numerous small family dependent upon him, he received me with a degree of generous friendship that does honor to the goodness of his heart, and continues to show every mark of satisfaction at my appointment."
Colonel McClean, however, was appointed October 31, 1783, by the Supreme Executive Council an associate justice to preside over the first courts held in the new county, as the following commission will witness :
In the name and by the authority of the Freemen [Seal] of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, The Supreme Executive Council of the said Commonwealth :
To Alexander McClean, Esq., of the county of Fayette :
We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your patriot- ism, prudence, integrity and ability, have appointed you Presi- dent of the Court of Common Pleas of the county of Fayette, and giving hereby and granting unto you, the said Alexander McClean, full power and authority to execute and perform all the several acts and things to the said office belonging during pleasure. And hereby requiring all officers, civil and military, and all other subjects of this Commonwealth to obey and re- spect you accordingly.
Given in Council under the hand of the President and seal of the State at Philadelphia the thirty-first day of October in
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the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty- three.
Attest : John Armstrong, Jr. John Dickinson.
The duties of the above office he filled until April, 1787.
The appointment to the offices of register of wills and recorder of deeds for the county of Fayette was conferred upon Colonel McClean December 6, 1783, which office he filled with ability and entire satisfaction continuously for a period of just fifty years. To be sure the business done at these offices at this early date was not sufficient to occupy much of his time, thus affording ample opportunity to attend to many duties be- sides. The first deed was recorded January 13, 1784, and in the entire year the number recorded was ninety-nine, and in the following year fifty, and in that following forty-two; in the same length of time there were sixteen wills recorded, making in the aggregate two hundred and seven instruments recorded in the first three years of the history of the county. The fees then ranged from fifty to seventy-five cents for recording and comparing.
The first term of court of Quarter Sessions and of Com- mon Pleas was held on the fourth Tuesday in December, 1783, in a school house which stood on the Central Public grounds, now occupied by the sheriff's residence and jail, before Philip Rogers, Esq., and his associates, Alexander McClean, Robert Adams, John Allen, Robert Ritchie and Andrew Rabb, all justices in and for the county of Westmoreland.
By the act of assembly founding Dickinson college at Car- lisle, Pa., in 1783, Colonel McClean was honored by being ap- pointed one of its trustees. This venerable institution of learning is still in a flourishing condition.
Early in February, 1784, the partition line separating Fay- ette from Westmoreland county was run, and Colonel McClean, who was executive person, generously agreed to be responsible for the expenses until the commissioners should have the funds to meet them.
In 1788, the State of Pennsylvania decided to lay out a good wagon road from Shippensburg to Fort Pitt, in pursuance of which Colonel McClean was commissioned, with two others, in November, 1789, to make the location from Bedford to Fort Pitt, a distance of over eighty-five miles. Arrangements were
THE OLD HENRY BEESON MANSION.
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made to meet at Bedford the latter part of November, but one of the commissioners being sick and the other failing to attend, the colonel proceeded at once and marked off the course with stakes indicating the amount of fills and cuts and accomplished the task successfully.
When in 1791, John Hopwood laid out the town which he named Woodstock, now known as the village of Hopwood, two and a half miles east of Uniontown, he provided for the found- ing of an " Academy of Learning " for which Colonel McClean was appointed one of the trustees to collect, receive and hold in trust the funds for building and endowing the same. This academy was taken in charge by the Baptist church and was in a flourishing condition in 1794, and doubtless, was one of the first academies in this part of the state.
He was one of the three commissioners who ran the line of separation between the counties of Washington and Greene upon the formation of the latter, February 9, 1796.
Soon after the laying out of Uniontown Colonel McClean purchased several town lots and some out-lots. He owned nearly all the lots on the north side of East Main street from the court house to Redstone creek. On lot number 20 he built for his own use the most pretentious residence in the village. This stood some distance back from the street, and had a covered balcony at the upper windows on the west, and the interior was finished in panel work, carved cornices and other ornamentations unusual in houses of that day west of the mountains. Into this he moved on coming to town, and spent the remainder of his days, although on the 3rd of Sep- tember, 1806, he deeded this property to Thomas Meason, and upon which the Clinton House was afterward erected, and the site is now occupied by the present court house.
Besides the several town lots and out-lots, Colonel Mc- Clean acquired lands in various parts within the present county limits, to the amount of nine thousand acres, which would equal a body of land four miles in length by three and a half miles in breadth. Upon portions of this land some of his sons settled, but none were successful as farmers. When he had reached about his sixtieth year, financial difficulties began to overtake him, and his numerous family, instead of being a support, be- came a burden for him to bear, and debt after debt accumulated,
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and tract by tract of his land was sold at great sacrifice, until a few years before his death all had been swept away.
Not ten years before his death the sheriff sold almost the last tract situated near the foot of Laurel Hill, and Colonel McClean being register and recorder, it was his painful duty to record this deed, which in so doing, he began in his elegant and almost matchless style of penmanship, but his eyes soon fill with tears and his hand trembles, and while recording the words " all his goods and chattels" the faithful old surveyor and recorder, now in his seventy-eighth year, burst into tears and his clerk takes up the pen and resumes the record.
Of Colonel McClean's military record there is much ob- scurity. It is recorded that he served in the McIntosh expe- dition against the Indians in 1780, in which much privation was endured and but little good accomplished. In a letter written to President Dickinson of the Supreme Executive Council, July 16, 1784, he states : "I have shared the fatigues of the most difficult campaign that has been carried on in this country, and was a witness to both the sufferings and fortitudes, and have suffered on fatigue." The Pennsylvania archives, 3rd Series, Vol. 23, page 529, give Colonel McClean as a pen- sioner of the State militia. Frequently at public gatherings he was introduced as a Revolutionary soldier and read the Dec- laration of Independence.
Colonel McClean was described as a stout, heavy-set man susceptible of long continued labor without fatigue; of a com- panionable disposition, and with his fund of information and varied experience was always entertaining in the extreme. Judge James Veech, in his sketch of Colonel McClean, de- scribes him as " a quiet, unobtrusive man, devoted to the duties of his office, and caring little else than to discharge them with diligence, accuracy and fidelity. He held office longer-from 1772 to 1834-than any other man who has ever resided in Western Pennsylvania; and it is not probable that in this re- spect he will ever have a successor, so unyielding is the rotatory tendency of modern 'progress.' As Register, Recorder and Surveyor, for more than half a century, he had been conversant with all the estates, titles and lands of the county, with all their vacancies, defects and modes of settlement; yet with all these opportunities of acquiring wealth, he died in comparative
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poverty-a sad monument to his integrity. He wrote more deeds and wills at seven and sixpence each ($1.00), and dis- pensed more gratuitous council in ordinary legal affairs, than, at reasonable fees, would enrich a modern scrivener or counselor."
His beautiful, copper-plate style of penmanship elicits the highest encomiums from all who search the early records of the office. He made his own pens from the quill of the goose, as steel pens were not in use in his day, and he could write the broad, heavy headlines in Old English text or the whole of the Lord's prayer within the circumference of an "elevenpenny bit."
Colonel McClean's wife, Sarah Holmes, was born at the Glades of Coxe's creek, near Stoystown, now in Somerset county, April 14, 1750. She was a robust, active woman and a fit companion for a hardy frontier settler. She was accus- tomed to outdoor exercise and was an excellent horse-woman and loved to ride to the hounds. She could mount her horse, which she kept for the chase, without upping-block, and fre- quently exhibited her skill by mounting her horse from the ground at the age of seventy-five years. In a sort of a diary kept by Colonel McClean, frequent mention is made of his wife attending the chase, the last mention of which bears the date of February 3, 1828, in which he states that the chase was long and his wife did not arrive home until after midnight, when she put away her horse and came to bed. She was then at the age of seventy-eight years.
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