Dr. Joseph Priestley, Discoverer of Oxygen, Died at Northumberland February 6, 1804

Dr. Joseph Priestley was born near Leeds in Yorkshire, England, March 13, 1733. He died at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, February 6, 1804.

Joseph was the youngest of nine children. His father and grandfather were prosperous cloth makers, employing, for that age, a large force of workmen. From his parents, who were strict Calvinists, Joseph inherited a deeply religious nature. He attended the school of the neighborhood and at eleven had read most of the Latin authors, and in a few years had made considerable progress in Greek and Hebrew, with some knowledge of Chaldee, Syrian and Arabic.

He began to experiment at the age of eleven, when he selected spiders and insects and placed them in bottles to ascertain how long they could live without fresh air.

A few years later he made “electrifying machines,” and a kite of fine silk, six feet wide, which he could take apart and carry in his pocket. The string was composed of thirty-six threads and a wire, similar to that used by Dr. Franklin, in Philadelphia, to “bring electric fire from the clouds.”

At nineteen, Priestley was sent to Daventry, where he embraced the heterodox side of almost every question, as he afterwards wrote of his three years at Daventry: “In my time the academy was in a state peculiarly favorable to the serious pursuits of truth, and the students were about equally divided upon every question of much importance, such as ‘Liberty and Necessity,’ the ‘Sleep of the Soul’ and all the articles of theological orthodoxy and heresy.”

After leaving Daventry, he preached for three years to a dissenting congregation at Needham. In 1761 he was a professor at Warrington Academy. While here he published several of his books and made such experiments in electricity and “fixed air,” that the results began to be noised abroad. He married, while at Warrington, a daughter of a wealthy iron manufacturer, a Mr. Wilkinson.

In one of his visits to London he met Benjamin Franklin. He became a member of a famous club which met at the London Coffee House, and here he interested Franklin in his experiments, and they became the closest friends. Both became members of the Royal Society and both in turn received its highest honor, the Copley medal. Each obtained from Edinburgh University the degree LL. D. Oxford conferred a like degree upon Franklin, while for a space of a century it ignored his heretical friend.

98In 1860 a statue of Dr. Priestley was erected at Oxford by Prince Albert, afterward King Edward.

Franklin wrote to Priestley, in 1777: “I rejoice to hear of your continual progress in those useful discoveries. I find you have set all the philosophers of Europe at work upon fixed air (carbonic acid gas); and it is with great pleasure I observe how high you stand in their opinion, for I enjoy my friend’s fame as my own.”

When Franklin was in France during the closing days of the Revolution, Priestley was there pursuing literary work. He was afterward made a citizen and offered a seat in the National Assembly.

Shortly before the American Revolution, Priestley wrote anonymously three pamphlets in defense of the colonies. His influence was potent.

Dr. Priestley announced his discovery of “dephlogisticated air” (oxygen) in 1774, to a large assemblage of philosophers who were dining at the house of M. Lavoisier in Paris. This was man’s first introduction to the mighty element that makes one-fifth of the atmosphere in volume and eight-ninths of the ocean by weight, besides forming one-half of the earth’s solid crust and supporting all fire and all life.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Priestley did not have a biographer worthy the name, for his life is full of dramatic incidents, scientific attainment, learning and human interest.

We find him the central figure in the great gatherings of that day, receiving the highest honors of his own and other Governments, and, when the tide turned, denounced, persecuted, the victim of the mob, home and library burned and pillaged. Through all the changes of this eventful life we find him the same able, earnest, fearless and cheerful spirit to the end.

Dr. Priestley, disregarding the warning of David Hume, and against the wishes of his philosophic friends, took up the cause of liberty in religion. In his letters he makes a strong appeal for Christianity. His desire was to revive in France and England the simple spiritual communion of the early church.

He published many works upon his religious views which made him the most hated man in England. He was everywhere detested. The streets of London were strewn with scurrilous handbills and caricatures of him. Even his fellow associates in the Royal Society turned their backs upon him.

But it must be remembered that the men, at home and abroad, who opposed Priestley’s doctrines, were the very men who honored him as a man.

At Birmingham, in 1791, the last great religious riot in England occurred. It is often spoken of today as “Priestley’s Riots,” for the doctor was the chief object of the mobs.

It was during a celebration on the anniversary of the fall of the 99Bastille, at which Dr. Priestley was not present, that the cry of the mob was “Church and King.” Dr. Priestley had favored the agitation, then rife in Birmingham, for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. The mob suddenly marched toward his home and Dr. and Mrs. Priestley, who were playing a game of backgammon, barely succeeded in escaping. The doctor was pursued for several days and his life threatened.

The mob vented its rage by pillaging Priestley’s house and tearing it to pieces. The rioters made a pyre of his furniture, manuscripts, priceless apparatus, a library of 30,000 volumes, his private correspondence, and his diaries, and all were destroyed by fire.

In 1794 Dr. Priestley came to America and settled at Northumberland, Pa. Here he erected a fine house and laboratory, and resumed his experiments, which resulted in the discovery of three new gases. Here he wrote many books.

Dr. Priestley made trips to Philadelphia, where he lectured on historical and religious subjects, founding, in 1796, the first Unitarian Church in that city.

The University of Pennsylvania offered him the chair of chemistry, and afterward its presidency, but he preferred the quiet of his home at the “Forks of the Susquehanna.”

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 statuestatue 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 FebruaryFebruary 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.

100A 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.

When Virginia saw that Pennsylvania was extending jurisdiction over the forks of the Ohio she renewed her claims to that country.

The Earl of Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, asserted that Pittsburgh was outside the limits of Pennsylvania. In this contention he was supported by Colonel George Croghan and many others, who believed that the five degrees of longitude which were to be the extent westward of Pennsylvania placed the Monongahela beyond the limits of that province. Croghan maintained that the limits were at the Alleghenies or Laurel Hill Range, “having heard, among other things, that a degree of longitude at the time of the charter of William Penn meant forty-eight miles.”

At the close of 1773 Governor Dunmore appointed Dr. John Connelly, a Pennsylvanian, as commandant of the militia of Pittsburgh. He took possession of Fort Pitt and changed its name to Fort Dunmore.

Connelly defied Pennsylvania authority and commanded all the people to appear as a militia under the authority of Lord Dunmore.

Arthur St. Clair, Prothonotary, Clerk, and Recorder of Westmoreland 101County, had Connelly arrested and bound over to keep the peace. St. Clair reported his actions to Governor Penn, who sent to Lord Dunmore a draught of the lines of Pennsylvania as surveyed by David Rittenhouse, William Smith and Surveyor General John Lukens, showing that Pittsburgh was east of the westernmost limit of the grant to the Proprietaries.

Dunmore demanded better evidence and that St. Clair should be dismissed from office for committing Dr. Connelly to jail.

A large company paraded in arms through the streets of Pittsburgh, and opened a cask of rum. St. Clair issued an order for them to disperse.

The Sheriff allowed Connelly to go to Pittsburgh under promise to return. He traveled about collecting adherents, and on the day he was to return he appeared before the Hannastown court house at the head of 200 men, all armed and colors flying. He placed sentinels at the door and kept the magistrates from entering unless they agreed to act under Virginia authority, and he demanded their decision in writing.

The magistrates declared they would continue to act under authority of Pennsylvania, when Connelly, a few days later, had them arrested and brought before him in Pittsburgh. When they refused to give bail, he sent them to the court of Augusta County, at Staunton, Va.

Governor Penn advised the three magistrates to get bail, but sent the Attorney General of Pennsylvania and James Tilghman, as commissioners to induce Lord Dunmore to join with the Proprietaries in a petition to the King to have the boundary line run and marked, and in the meantime to agree to a temporary line of jurisdiction, suggesting that the Monongahela River would answer for a line.

The application to the King was consented to, but the boundary was not agreed upon.

The adherents of Virginia increased in strength at Pittsburgh, and it became impossible to collect taxes imposed by Pennsylvania. How these troubles would have ended is unforeseen, for during the latter part of 1774, the attention of all the western frontier was turned to the Indian invasion, since known as Dunmore’s War.

While this war was confined to the western border of Virginia, the inhabitants of Westmoreland County organized, under command of St. Clair, assisted by Colonels Proctor and Lochrey and Captain James Smith, and put the frontier in a state of defense.

On February 7, 1775, by order of a Virginia magistrate, a man named Benjamin Harrison with an armed party broke open the jail at Hannastown and set free the prisoners. Robert Hanna, who was a magistrate, read to them the riot act, but Harrison said he did not regard that act, or those who read it, or those who made it. Two weeks later Hanna and another magistrate, James Cavett, were arrested and confined in Fort Dunmore, where they remained for months.

The controversy got into Congress, but the Revolution brought 102about a more amicable feeling, and by 1779 the Virginians and Pennsylvanians agreed to a settlement.

A commission surveyed the boundary by extending the Mason and Dixon’s line to its western limit of five degrees. There a meridian was drawn as far north as the Ohio.

Ceding her western lands, north of the Ohio to Congress in 1784, Virginia had no further interest in the boundary and the next year Pennsylvania alone extended the meridian to Lake Erie.

After the Revolution, affairs in Western Pennsylvania were generally peaceful.