The predecessors to Pittsburgh\u2019s industrial forbearers were \u201cborn in a rural Ireland steeped in fairy lore,\u201d Gilmore says.<\/p>\n
Gilmore points to a 1906 book by Presbyterian pastor Dr. John Walker Dinsmore, in which Dinsmore describes his childhood in rural Washington County, Pennsylvania. In The Scotch-Irish in America, Dinsmore writes, \u201cHence, in our strong, forceful, serious, pious forefathers, whose minds dwelt much on the spiritual and the unseen, there was the intermixture of certain superstitious notions and ideas. They always denied it in words, but their imagination was always more or less overshadowed by these occult influences.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the spirt of Halloween \u2014 itself steeped in folklore where Irish and Scottish fairies battled for the province of Ulster \u2014 Pittsburgh City Paper shares some of Gilmore\u2019s work on the superstitions and occult practices in the Ohio Valley.<\/p>\n
An early legend goes that, in 1773, Thomas Bigger and and Elizabeth Moore, a farmer and a weaver, married and immigrated to Pennsylvania from County Antrim, Ireland.<\/p>\n
In the region at the time, anyone outside \u201cthe shadow of Fort Pitt,\u201d Gilmore says, was subject to a \u201cseemingly endless cycle of tit-for-tat, killing, rage, and massacres.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bigger, Moore, and their infant son headed west to seek out Bigger\u2019s older brother at Fort Dillow \u2014 at the time a \u201ccrude stockade,\u201d Gilmore says \u2014 located on present-day Raccoon Creek in Beaver County.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it was to this stockade on one night in 1778, that a lone horseman approached,\u201d Gilmore says. \u201cHe called out, \u2018Thomas Bigger!\u2019 Thomas was awake, and he recognized the voice as that of Quinn, a man he knew back in County Antrim.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn warned there was a war party crossing the Ohio River, telling Bigger he had to flee. Bigger tried to warn his neighbors, who sneered at him and said the message had been a dream. But the family left and hid in the forest. Accounts hold that by dawn, a war party arrived, and nearly every inhabitant of Fort Dillow was rounded up, taken to a ravine, and tomahawked.<\/p>\n
Years later, Bigger saw Quinn and thanked him for saving his family\u2019s life. Quinn was \u201cdumbfounded,\u201d insisting he\u2019d never been to Fort Dillow. Bigger \u201cwent to his grave\u201d insisting he\u2019d heeded Quinn\u2019s warning.<\/p>\n
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A trail along Raccoon Creek\u2019s backpacking loop in winter Credit: CP Photo: Colin Williams<\/p>\n
Gilmore, also ruling elder at Sixth Presbyterian Church, says other less-than-traditional Christian beliefs appear in church records from the 18th and early 19th century.<\/p>\n
In 1790, elders of the Associate Reformed Congregation of the Forks of Yough investigated if farmer John Reed used \u201cunlawful means\u201d to rid his whiskey distillery of enchantment.<\/p>\n
In Pittsburgh in 1816, the Associate Presbyterian Congregation confronted two men, one a recent Irish immigrant, about reports they\u2019d been casting lots (using objects like sticks or stones to make a decision with the belief God influences the outcome). The Irish Presbyterian church condemned fortune-telling for secular purposes, and was apparently so concerned that it incorporated new strictures against it in a book of church government the following year.<\/p>\n
Similar advice was given against \u201cmagical charms,\u201d still \u201cknown to be practised [sic] in this land.\u201d Charms were said to offer protection or cure disease in people and cattle, and to find lost objects. Some rural Irish Presbyterians believed that witches could \u201cmerely look\u201d at livestock to stop milk production or kill them in their tracks.<\/p>\n
One tale of witchcraft involves the fate of Colonel Hugh Davidson. Hailing from eastern Allegheny County, Davidson was a militia officer, judge, sawmill owner, and prominent landowner in the 1780s, when many farmers were being foreclosed on. According to John J. Lolla Jr. in The Creek Runs Deep, Davidson \u201cfamily lore\u201d held that the colonel loved to roam the countryside with his pack of hounds.<\/p>\n
Somewhere on a walk in the mountains of Central Pa., his dogs got hungry and tired, and Davidson spotted an old Irish woman making a pot of mush at a nearby cabin. He ran over, snatched the pot, and dumped the mush pot to feed his dogs.<\/p>\n
Seeing the theft, the old woman cursed Davidson from her cabin doorway, shouting, \u201cI now pronounce this curse upon you \u2014 None of your children will die in their beds!\u201d<\/p>\n
Legend holds that over the years, \u201cviolent death after violent death came to the extended Davidson family \u2014 one after another.\u201d Davidson\u2019s daughter died falling off a horse, his granddaughter by slipping on a scythe. Another family member was gored by a bull, and another bitten by a snake.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people heard of the terrible occurrences they would shake their heads and say, \u2018The curse again \u2026 the old Irish curse!\u2019\u201d Lolla Jr. writes.<\/p>\n
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Campbell\u2019s Run Rd. in Harmar Township is the site of the 13 bends urban legend. The tale includes stories of ghost sightings when driving down the road at night. Credit: CP Photo: Mars Johnson<\/p>\n