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PROLOGUE

In order to understand thoroughly the difficulties by which Pittsburg was founded, and the methods by which titles to land purchased by the first settlers were granted, the reader must glance at our early history and its effects upon private settlements in Western Pennsylvania. 

All of the present state of Pennsylvania was granted on March 4, 1681, by Charles II, king of England, to William Penn for marine services, which his father, Admiral Penn, had rendered the English government in European wars.  This debt was about 10,000 pounds and the grant in payment was made directly to the son, William Penn, so that Pennsylvania was granted solely to an individual and not to a company or colony.  William Penn began a settlement at Philadelphia in 1682.  It was never called a colony as other settlements were, but a province, indicating in some degree, that its government was under the direction of one man.  The heirs and descendants of Penn were called proprietaries and their civil government was called a proprietary government.  From William Penn’s first settlement in the province his policy was primarily one of peace with the Indians.  Though his title to the land was pre-eminent, yet he purchased these lands from the Indians; these lands which were already his by a royal grant.  In this way the province was saved much bloodshed and only when the spirit of his pacific principles in dealing with the Indians was forgotten or disregarded, or but nominally adhered to, were the settlements deluged in blood.  His grant began at the Delaware river near the 40^th degree of North latitude and extended west in a straight line a distance of five degrees of longitude, and thence in a straight line north to Lake Erie,  When it was finally surveyed there was no room for doubt about its boundaries, but at the time of the first settlement in Pittsburg the boundary of Virginia conflicted, as it was then believed, with our territory.  In 1609 the Virginia Company had been chartered by James I.  By their charter, though it had been revoked in 1624, they laid claim to southwestern Pennsylvania and Ohio and practically to all of the territory westward to the Pacific Ocean.  The Virginia authorities, however, never disputed Penn’s right to the land for five degrees west from the Delaware, but they claimed that by measurement this land would not reach beyond the Allegheny mountains, or at all events not west of the Monongahela river.  This river flowing nearly north and the Allegheny river flowing nearly south would make, as it seemed to them, a natural and a reasonable boundary for Western Pennsylvania.  The Virginians claimed further that they had fought for this territory around the Fork of the Ohio to wrest it from the French and Indians in the armies of Washington, Braddock and Forbes, and that the territory had been already settled to a considerable extent by people from their colony who had been guarded and protected in every way by Virginia.  These claims were somewhat arrogant and in the main, as we shall see, were ill founded. 

The southern boundary had also been in dispute and in 1767 Lord Baltimore, governor of Maryland, arranged with the Penns that two engineers should survey the land and forever determine the boundaries between Maryland and Pennsylvania.  The surveyors chosen were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who came from England to do this work.  Their authority extended west only as far as Western Maryland.  The line they located has since been known as the Mason and Dixon’s Line, and has perpetuated their names in history for all time.  But the survey did not settle the line west of Maryland, though Governor Farquier and many other prominent men of Virginia never seriously doubted its western location after the survey.  The survey, moreover, settled nothing as to the western boundary (running north and south) of Pennsylvania, and the Virginia authorities continued to claim the land between the Monongahela and the Ohio rivers.  They sold lands in that region at lower rates than the Pennsylvania authorities were selling them in any section, and the latter discouraged all settlements in the disputed territory until the boundaries could be determined.  The reasoning on the part of both colony and province was obvious.  To Virginia it was a clear gain to sell this land at any price, for the authorities scarcely hoped to hold all of it under the ultimate decision, but Pennsylvania had plenty of land to sell in undisputed territory and why, therefore, sell and improve lands which some day might in part at least fall within the limits of Virginia, or which by their improvements, would but quicken the zeal of Virginia in claiming them.  Then it was the policy of the proprietary government to settle lands gradually as they came west so that the frontier settlers might unitedly protect themselves against the Indians. 

But there was another reason far above all these why, so far as possible, they not only discouraged but prohibited all settlements in this section.  William Penn, not only purchased or re-purchased his lands from the Indians, but he so thoroughly emplanted this principle in the minds of his sons and representatives that though he had been dead nearly fifty years, when Pittsburg was settled they were still at least pretending to follow his precepts in this matter.  The proprietary government never willingly permitted any one to settle on land in a district which had not been purchased them from the Indians.  The Indians, it is true, were gradually receding before the white race, and were perhaps forced to sell their lands or be driven from them without remuneration.  They were by nature a wandering people and the white race as a whole naturally progressive and aggressive.  These purchases from the Indians were made at treaties held between them and the white men.  Both races were in all cases represented, but no territory was supposed to be ceded by the Indians to the white race, that is purchased from them, except for a valuable consideration on the part of the whites and especially upon a mutual agreement entered between the representatives of both races in a treaty.  These treaties from time to time secured the Indians in their possession of certain districts over which they were to have dominion, and this security was in return for lands which the Indians for other valuable considerations, sold to the white race. The districts thus ceded to the white race were called “purchases” because they were supposed to purchased from the Indian.  It is true that some times with but slight provocation the Indians broke their treaties, but it is doubtful whether they as a race flagrantly broke a regularly authorized treaty without some considerable and unnecessary provocation or reason given them by the white settlers. 

At the Treaty of Albany in 1754 all lands practically lying west of the Susquehanna river were supposed to be ceded to the white race by the Indians, but the latter very soon discovered that their representatives in the treaty did not understand the points of the compass as well as the white representatives; for by this treaty they had parted with all their rights to lands as far west as Ohio,  Much of this land they in reality meant to retain and it had been virtually secured to them be former treaties between the white race and the Six Nations, a condfederacy formed of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Tuscarora tribes.  To say the least, the purchases at the Albany treaty were irregularly if not fraudulently gained from the Indians.  So flagrant was this treaty deception perpetrated on them that Governor Morris in 1755 issued a proclamation in which he denounced the Albany Purchase as little less than criminal and as an affront to the whole world.  It took from the natives, he said, that which had been virtually ceded to them, and that which they had not knowingly parted with, and was, moreover, so sweeping in its dimensions that it left the Indians no country east of the Ohio to roam over and call their own.  The white representatives of the Albany Treaty defended their actions by giving out that they, too, were ignorant of the geography of Western Pennsylvania, and by the terms of the purchase had received a much wider territory than they expected or intended to gain.  This may have been true, at least in part.  The hardship of this treaty on the Indians aggravated them and was an additional incentive which prompted them to unite with the French in opposing Braddock and which spurred them on to the violences and bloodshed which followed in the next three years after his defeat.  The white race had paid dearly for the actions of their incompetent if not dishonest representatives in the Albany Treaty. 

This was the great reason which induced the proprietaries to oppose and forbid the settlement of the Pittsburg territory.  They had no right to grant lands in this section, if they kept their faith with the Indians, except by right of the Albany purchase, which they admitted was fraudulently obtained.  There were several of these treaties by which the lands of the Indians were purchased from them, but the treaties of 1682, 1718, 1736, 1754, 1758, 1768 and 1784 were the principal ones. 

But far above and paramount to the rights of the proprietaries were the reserved privileges of the English crown.  At will His Majesty had a right to send armies anywhere in America, to make conquests, to open and keep up highways, to establish military posts and to support a standing army in our midst if he thought fit or if his policy demanded it.  When the Crown secured the Canadas, as well as the boundless west by the termination of the French and Indian War, the military posts built by the French fell into possession of the English.  These had to be kept up for the purpose of supplying them alone, if for no other purposes, a communication had to be kept open between them and with the eastern settlements which served as a base of supplies for the garrisons.  Most of the forts, whether built by the French or English, were regularly garrisoned.  Generally the commandant was an English officer.  To these commandants were delegated the power under certain restrictions to grant military permits to any one to settle on, cultivate and improve lands near the forts or on the military roads leading from one fort to another.  This was necessary for the sustenance of the garrison.  These settlers, particularly after the first year, were able to raise farm products in abundance and were glad to sell a sufficient amount of them to supply the garrison.  In this way alone perhaps the garrison could be supported.  It was a scheme of the great war minister, William Pitt, and was worthy of him, the shrewdest intellectual force of his century in England.  The commandants did not grant absolute titles, but titles which may be perfected afterwards by complying with such regulations as the Proprietaries might require.  The English government never recognized the Indian’s claim to the land, and of course never questioned Penn or his successors’ title to it. 

In the meantime hundreds of settlers, fur traders, farmers and merchants located in this region, some of them with military permits and others in direct disobedience of the mandate of the Proprietaries.  To restrain these illegal settlements George the Third, King of England, as early as 1763 issued a proclamation to the effect that a line was drawn around the head waters of all rivers in the colonies which flowed into the Atlantic Ocean, and all emigrants were forbidden to settle west of that line.  All of the territory west of the line was reserved for the Indians as far west as the Spanish territory west of the Mississippi river.  Pittsburg was, of course, within the Indian territory.  If the anxious-to-go-west people ever heard of the king’s proclamation they paid no attention whatever to it.  One writer says—“the hardy pioneer cared no more for the king’s proclamation than he did for the bark of a wolf at his cabin door.  The ink with which the document was written had not dried before emigrants from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania were hurrying into the Valley of the Monongahela.”  They squatted on land which they though desirable and hoped finally to become its owners.  It was wisdom on the part of the Proprietaries to keep these settlers out of the forbidden territory for their presence was constant menace to the Indians, who did not and could not know, and would not believe that they were not there by the sanction of the Penns, and, therefore, in violation of their treaty.  The Indians laid in many complaints because of these encroachments, for they saw the inevitable result to their race.  General Gage was then commander-in-chief of the armies of the colonies and put every effort to stop it, but was in vain.  Finally on February 13, 1768, an Act of Parliament was passed which provided that any one having settled here without permission and who should fail to move after a legal notice was served on him to do so should, after being convicted of such neglect, “be punished with death without the benefit of the clergy.”  There was also a severe penalty, imprisonment and a fine, imposed on those who even hunted deer or other wild animals in the prohibited district.  Of course these drastic measures did not apply to those who had long before carved out homes in the woods of this district, nor to those who settled by military permits.  Many adventurous pioneers who were determined to come here evaded the law in a measure by securing military permits, and these were granted right readily by accommodating commandants.  The permit gave the settler permission to live on and cultivate a certain tract of land which was fairly well described and bounded, and in return the settler was to submit to all orders of the commander-in-chief, the commanding officer of the district and of the garrison.  Finally General Gage with his troops began to remove settlers by force, and a great many of them were so ejected from this section, but as soon as the soldiers returned to the garrison the hardy pioneers moved again on to their farms or clearings.  It was impossible to enforce the law for the penalty of death could not be inflicted on a whole community; so the settlers came and the murmurings of the Indians became louder each month.  The fear of an Indian uprising was, of course, the great reason why the Proprietaries were so determined to enforce the law prohibiting settlers from the district.  Had there been nothing to prevent its settlement but the Indians all of these valleys would have been filled up almost in one season with an aggressive pioneer element who would have made short work of the Indian race.  Settlers came west by both the Forbes and Braddock roads, the only ones open at that time, and both of them terminating at Pittsburg, made this a stopping place for all westward bound pioneers. 

The Indians were always at war with themselves and no doubt often killedeach other, but when a dead Indian was found the killing was invariably attributed to white settlers.  In this conection Colonel George Croghan, a brave, loyal and most capable diplomat, then living at Redstone, reported that many Indians had been killed by white settlers in times of peace around Fort Pitt, and insisted on the Proprietaries devising some means of stopping it.  The settlers, it may be inferred, were an aggressive people, accustomed to rough usages, and Croghan’s representations have never been disbelieved.  The leaders in this community saw in this situation only one result, namely an Indian uprising.  Accordingly in April 1768, a preliminary treaty was held at Fort Pitt.  Colonel Croghan was the leader among the white representatives and there were from 1,700 to 2,000 Indians present, among whom were the chiefs of the Six Nations and also representatives from the Delawares, Shawnees and Muncys.  Many presents were given to the Indians but no agreement or settlement of the difficulties could be arrived at.  It was, however, a friendly meeting and the uprising among the Indians was somewhat allayed.  During the summer the settlers came continually and those who were here would not remove.  By the close of the summer the authorities knew that unless something was done to prevent it, a general Indian war might break out at any time.  At the Fort Pitt meeting it was clear that the only safety was to purchase this territory from the Indians. 

One of the most prominent men then in America was General Sir William Johnston.  He lived near the present city of Johnstown, New York, and was, all things being considered, the ablest diplomat in Indian affairs in this country.  He had managed many treaties, was thoroughly honest and was trusted implicitly by both races.  He had, at the age of nineteen, come to America in 1734 because of a disappointment in love in Ireland, it is said, and settled in the Mohawk Valley in New York, where gradually acquired and managed large tracts of land and traded with the Indians.  He became very wealthy and built a stately mansion of stone which is yet standing.  On its mahogany staircase are to be seen the marks of the tomahawk made by the Indian chiefs who were friendly to him, as a sign to all Indians that this house was to be spared from the torch.  He was married to a German woman, and upon her death married a handsome Indian girl, and this was perhaps the secret of much of his power with the race.  He was clearly a leader, whether among the well-bred citizens of his native land or among the savages of America, adapting himself readily to the customs and habits of either.  He had been a major-general in the French and Indian War and for these services was knighted by George I, and was afterward known as Sir William Johnson.  The Crown also gave him large tracts of land and these with those he purchased, made him the largest land owner in America excepting the Penns.  He had a marvelous power in harmonizing discordant elements among the Indians and white race and in leading or preventing Indian outbreaks. 

The time had now arrived when the Indians of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio were rapidly putting on their war paint.  The trembling wife and mother scarcely knew then she parted with her husband and child in the morning whether she would ever see them again or not.  Under these circumstances all parties turned to Sir William Johnston as the chief arbitrator of the differences between the white and Indian races.  He suggested and called a convention at Fort Stanwix in New York in the fall of 1768.  His chief assistant here was Colonel George Croghan.  It was largely attended by Indian chiefs and other representatives of the Indian race and by white representatives.  By his great power over the red men most the Indian grievances were redressed, tomahawks were buried, arrows were broken and peace and harmony secured.  The final treaty was reached November 5, 1768, and by its terms the lands east of the Allegheny river as far north as Kittanning and southward and eastward of the Ohio down to the mouth of the Tennessee river “and extending eastward from every part of the said line as far as the lands between the said line and the purchased lands or settlements,” were purchased from the Indians and conveyed to the Proprietaries.  This treaty was held at Fort Stanwix near where Rome, New York, is now built.  The district is yet called the “New Purchase” and embraced the land upon which Pittsburg was built but did not cross the Allegheny river or include the land on which Allegheny City was located.  It was the last purchase made by the Penns from the Indians.  The consideration paid them is said to have been equal to about $10,000 in provisions and money, and an unlimited supply of rum. 

This of course opened up the territory of southwestern Pennsylvania so that the Proprietaries could in good faith grant lands in this section south of the Ohio and east of the Allegheny rivers, if they saw fit.  There was accordingly a great rush for lands all around the head waters of the Ohio.  Perhaps the very fact of settlements in this section having been so long prohibited, made the pioneer all the more anxious to locate here.  The East, they said, was overpopulated and their anxious young men who wanted more land could not be provided for.  We were not then far removed from England with its large landed estates.  The use of coal had not been discovered and every land owner thought that he should have enough timber to furnish fuel in clearing land they, nevertheless, reserved an abundance.  Our people were almost purely an agricultural people and nothing so pleased them as unnumbered acres of land.  Particularly was this burning desire for large land possessions true of those who had recently came from Europe. 

It was the custom of William Penn and his successors to reserve for themselves surveys of land in each section of the country opened up for general sale and settlement.  Their purpose in thus reserving land was to hold it until the improvements of lands around it would make the reserved surveys more valuable.  They generally reserved about one acre for every ten sold.  This custom was begun about 1700 and kept up constantly as they came westward for three quarters of a century.  There was a very important reservation here called the “Manor of Pittsburg.”  The reader must now look into this matter and also into the manner adopted by the Assembly of divesting the title of the Penns to all other parts of the state. 

The reader has had some intimidation that a hostile feeling had gradually grown up between the Penns and the majority of the people of the Province.  The people were opposed to large estates like those reserved by the Penns, and to their holding unbounded acres under their original charter.  Benjamin Franklin was a leader in this line of thought and for many years held that the entire system savored of the feudalism of England.  Nevertheless the power of the Penns and the title to the lands was not seriously disputed prior to the Revolutionary War.  Since the settling of the province the political authority of the Penns as granted to William Penn and his successors in the original charter by Charles II had been exercised by them or those whom they appointed.  When the Revolution began John Penn, the grandson of William Penn, was at the head of the provincial government.  The political power of the province was mainly vested in him or in him conjointly with his uncle, Thomas Penn, who was a son of William Penn, the son of Richard and grandson of William Penn, in company with Aurthur Lee of Virginia was sent to England by the American congress bearing the last petition of that body to the crown.  Richard Penn was there subjected to a very severe examination by the House of Lords.  His testimony was so much in favor of the provincialists in their rising dispute with the crown that he incurred the wrath of the peers.  He said: “When I left Pennsylvania they had 20,000 men in arms,” and he said further that there were 60,000 men in the provinces able to bear arms.  Lord Littleton said: “With all the caution with which Mr. Penn guarded his expressions he, nevertheless, betrayed through the whole of his examination the strongest indication of the strongest prejudice.”  Richard Penn was in reality the only one of the Penns who was loyal to the American cause and who remained so during the Revolution.  Had all the members of the Penn family been as loyal as he they would doubtless have fared better with the law-making body of the state of Pennsylvania. 

The impression rapidly grew upon the people that the proprietary tenure of the land within the limits of Pennsylvania and the rights which the Penns had reserved in the form of quit rents payable from year to year should not be allowed to continue.  Particularly did this sentiment grow when the state was thinking of its ultimate freedom and when the Penns were apparently opposed to the liberty of the people.  The reserved powers of the Crown could not be interfered with at that time.  This hostile feeling toward the Proprietaries grew very rapidly after the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  It did not seem even reasonable thereafter that vast domains of unimproved lands should remain the property of the Penns who in the very titles they granted recognized and acknowledged their allegiance to Great Britain.  This land was moreover unproductive so far as contributing its share of the expense of the war then coming on was concerned.  Controversy had often arisen even in the days of William Penn, who died in 1718, over the quit rents which patented land was subject to from year to year.  The grievance of the citizens was, therefore, not new but it was year by year growing more violent.  The time had arrived when a remedy in the shape of a divesting act which would take from the Penns their original rights must be applied.  It is to the credit of the men of that day that though in the midst of the Revolution when precipitate measures might have been overlooked they met the question with firmness and dignity and without any unnecessary violation of the rights of others. 

President Reed in a message to the Assembly in February, 1778, called attention to the character and effect of the claims of the Proprietaries, saying that “to reconcile the rights and demands of the state with those of private justice and equity in this case will be worthy of your most serious attention.”  The Assembly took up the matter by giving due notice to John Penn of what it had in mind.  He requested time to more thoroughly examine into the rights of the proprietaries of whom he was the acknowledged head.  On March 18^th, his counsel asked for a further delay, which was readily granted by the assembly.  After this five days were given over to the argument of the question in the assembly.  On March 21^st, it asked for the opinion of Chief Justice McKean on the legal points of the controversy.  The questions asked him were relative to the authority of the Crown to grant the original charter, the nature of the grant, the extent of the concessions of the first purchase with the rights of the Proprietaries to reserve quit rents, etc.  These questions were answered by the chief justice.  At that time a great many men denied the right of the Crown to grant Penn and consequently denied the validity of the Penn’s claim.  They strenuously argued that the quit rents were reserved to the Penns for the purposes of supporting the government and should not be paid to them but to the new government which was formed shortly after the Declaration of Independence.  The chief justice denied these favorite propositions, taking decidedly, the unpopular side of the controversy.  The committee appointed by the Assembly was not guided by this opinion.  They did not ponder long over the abstruse questions of the law but adhered firmly to the political question which confronted them and which controlled the situation.  No one looks at the question with the light of the present day will doubt for a moment that the continuance of the Penns’ rights including their preemptions and quit rents, was entirely incongruous and inconsistent with the republican institutions which came with the Revolution of 1776.  The opinion of the chief justice and the report of the committee were ordered to be printed on April 5, 1779, and the legislature adjourned soon after that and before any action was taken.  The new legislature met in October and at once took up the subject and prepared a bill which was referred to the chief justice and to the chief legal adviser of the assembly, now called the attorney-general.  The bill called the “Divesting Act.” Was finally passed on November 24, 1779, by a vote of forty to seven.  The minority vote entered a protest, and John Penn wrote an able but short remonstrance against the proceeding and sent it to the Assembly.  This remonstrance was printed in the Journal.  The Act, as its name indicates, divested the Penns of all their proprietary interests in the public lands and of all quit rents reserved from lands which had already been sold, but it carefully protected their rights in all private property, and regarded the various reservations in the state, among which was the Manor of Pittsburg as private property.  The Assembly did not take these immense possessions from the Penns without compensation, but allowed them 130,000 pounds sterling money of Great Britain, amounting then to almost $600,000, for the rights of which they were divested by the bill.  This money, with interest, was paid to them in full within eight years following the passage of the act.  The law and its compensatory clause probably did justice to both parties, for after the first irritation which the controversy had brought about had passed away, there was very little complaint on either side.  The Penns moreover claimed, and not without reason, that the Divesting Act had been brought about by the action of Great Britain toward the colonies, and whereas the Crown had assured William Penn and his successors forever, these lands in Pennsylvania, they set up a claim against Great Britain for their loss which they estimated at one half million sterling.  Recognizing the Penns’ as loyal subjects who had suffered because of their loyalty to the English government, the Crown agreed to pay them the additional annuity of 4,000 pounds. 

The Manor of Pittsburg was surveyed on March 27, 1769, on a warrant which had been dated on January 5^th.  On May 19^th the survey was returned to the land office.  It called for 5766 acres and an allowance of 6 per cent for roads, etc.  The metes and bounds of the original survey was as follows: 

“Beginnig at a Spanish oak on the southern bank of the Monongahela; thence South 800 perches to a hickory; thence West 150 perches to a white oak; thence North 35 degrees West 144 perches to a white oak; thence West 518 perches to a white oak; thence North 758 perches to a post; thence East 60 perches to a post; thence north 14 degrees East 208 perches to a white walnut; thence across the river obliquely and up the south side of the Allegheny 762 perches to a spanish oak, at the corner of Croghan’s claim; thence South 60 degrees East 249 perches to a sugar tree; thence South 85 degrees East 192 perches to a sugar tree; thence by vacant lands South 18 degrees East 23 perches to a white oak; thence south 40 degrees West 150 perches to a white oak; thence West to a claim of Samuel Semple 192 perches to a hickory; thence South 65 degrees West 74 perches to a red oak on the bank of the Monongahela and thence obliquely across the river South 78 degrees West 308 perches to the place of the beginning at the Spanish oak.” 

This was the most valuable of all the Penns’ reservation in Pennsylvania.  It did not require great foresight in the Penns to foretell that this land between the two rivers at the head of the Ohio navigation would one day be of great value, and hence the reservation.  They reserved the lands south of the Ohio because the hills were even then known to be full of coal.  But the reader cannot but readily see that by the Stanwix purchase the land west of the Allegheny and north of the Ohio was not passed from the Indians.  Since this is the land upon which Allegheny City is now built, it becomes very important.  It was claimed by the Indians, that is, by the Six Nations, up to and including the years of the Revolution.  It included all lands west of the line of the Stanwix purchase of 1768, within the charter limits of the state.  Accordingly a second treaty was held with the Indians of the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix on the 24^th of October, 1784.  In this treaty an agreement was made between the commissioners who represented Pennsylvania and the Indians, whereby their title to all land within the boundaries of the State remained in them after the treaty of 1768, was passed to the white race or extinguished.  The consideration was $5,000 and $9,000 additional, which was expended in purchasing presents for the Indians.  But after this was concluded and the lands passed,  the Delawares set up a claim and with them were united the Wyandots, all claiming an interest in this same land.  The same commissioners who had represented the State at Fort Stanwix were then sent to Fort McIntosh, where in January, 1785, they succeeded in making a final agreement by which they purchased the same land from the Delawares and the Wyandots.  The deed, signed by both tribes, is dated January 21, 1785, and is the same in words, boundaries, etc. as the Stanwix deed except that the consideration of the latter was $2,000.  It was thus the land north of the Allegheny river could not be legally settled till after the above dates, and as we shall see, it was very rapidly taken up. 

The land office was opened for warrants for land in the Stanwix purchase on April 3, 1769.  The method of selling land adopted by the Proprietaries has practically unchanged even to this day.

From the foregoing it will be learned that no warrant for land in Allegheny county antequated April 3, 1769, though even the Pittsburg settlement is older that this date.  Those who had settled on unimproved lands were now allowed to prove their titles by securing warrants and patents.  A preference of location was shown to those who had served in the army and likewise to those who had settled by military permits, but warrants were not issued until 1772 to those who had settled on and improved lands without some right to do so.  After that, as far as possible, without imposing upon the rights of others, the land office authorities when it came to granting titles recognized the claims of the enthusiastic pioneer who had the hardihood to settle here in defiance of law and authority.  But there were many titles in this section which were involved in almost endless litigation.  In some instances these lands were sold often more than once, before a title from the Proprietaries of the commonwealth was possible.  From these kindred complications arose long litigations which for almost a century perplexed the minds of the ablest lawyers and judges we have yet produced.  They were known as land lawyers, a title which is almost unkown to our generation.