In 1874 the chemists of America met at Northumberland to celebrate at the grave of Dr. Priestley the centennial of his great discovery. Messages were flashed across the Atlantic to chemists who met the same day at Birmingham to unveil a colossal statue of the man whom that city had, eighty years before, driven from the streets, and burned his home and possessions. Dr. Joseph Priestley was one of the most distinguished adopted citizens of our great State. ---------- Western Boundary in Dispute—Jail at| Hannastown Stormed February 7, 1775 Virginia, by virtue of her “sea-to-sea” charter, made an indefinite claim to all lands west and northwest of her coast line. She therefore held that the region about the forks of the Ohio belonged to her. Accordingly, in 1749, the Ohio Land Company obtained from King George II a grant of half a million acres on the branches of the Ohio. The object was to form a barrier against the French and to establish trade with the Indians. Christopher Gist was sent to explore the country, and, with eleven other families, he settled within the present limits of Fayette County. A fort was begun in 1754 on the present site of Pittsburgh, but the French captured the Virginians, finished the fort and named it Fort Duquesne. In November, 1758, General John Forbes captured the fort from the French. It was rebuilt and named Fort Pitt. Before 1758 the western part of Pennsylvania could be approached from the east only by the route of the Juniata and the Kiskiminitas. In that year Forbes finished as far as Loyalhanna the road previously begun from Fort Loudon by way of Bedford. Many Scotch-Irish settlers seated themselves in the Ligonier Valley at Hannastown, and about the forks of the Ohio, and, with settlers from Maryland and Virginia, they possessed the land in comparative quiet until Pontiac’s War. Pittsburgh, begun in 1760, was cut off from communication during Pontiac’s conspiracy, and had it not have been for Colonel Bouquet’s victory over the savages at Busby Run in 1764 it might have been entirely destroyed. The growth of Pittsburgh was slow. England after the French and Indian War had forbidden colonists to settle west of the headwaters of the rivers in the Atlantic basin, and the settlers on Redstone Creek and the Cheat River were at one time driven off by the same British proclamation. A law was passed by the Assembly of Pennsylvania which imposed a death penalty, without benefit of clergy, for trespassing upon lands not purchased from the Indians. But the continued accession of emigrants into this region made it necessary to erect a new county, and the General Assembly, February 26, 1773, established Westmoreland County, which included all of the southwestern portion of the province west of Laurel Hill. Robert Hanna’s settlement, on the old Forbes road near the present site of Greensburg, was made the county seat and named Hannastown.