John Oyler: Bridgeville - What’s in a name?

Most of us are familiar with the accepted story of how Bridgeville got its name.

In the early days, James Ramsey owned the western half of what is now Bridgeville. He assumed his property extended to the center of Chartiers Creek.

At the point where the Black Horse Trail, the main road from Washington, Pa., to Pittsburgh, crossed Chartiers Creek, Ramsey made significant improvements and stationed a toll collector there to charge the local farmers for passing through.

This idea did not sit well with the locals. In 1793, they built a barge at Canon’s Mill, loaded it with flour, waited for a heavy rain, and floated a cargo to the Ohio River for shipment on to New Orleans. This action prompted the Pennsylvania legislature to pass a bill declaring Chartiers Creek was a navigable stream.

The main consequence of this was moving Ramsey’s property line back above the high-water line, making it possible for local farmers to build a toll-free bridge there.

The bridge was an immediate landmark — “Meet you at the Bridge” became a popular saying. Naming the nearby village Bridgeville was an obvious consequence. We are sure there are flaws to this story, but in principle, it probably is accurate.

Recently, John Schneider asked me when Bridgeville got its name. I guessed in the 1830s. Since then, I have had the opportunity to search through newspaper archives, looking for the earliest appearance of the name in print.

Based on my research, it appears my initial guess was good — the Oct. 5, 1830, Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette includes an endorsement of “Shears” by John McDowell and Daniel Hickman of Bridgeville.

According to their statement, “We the subscribers have purchased and made use of Shears made by P. A. Bemis & Co., Pittsburgh, and consider them superior to any in use in this section of the country.”

Bemis & Co. must have found the endorsement to be effective; they ran it 10 more times that year, 35 times in 1831, and twice more in 1832. We presume the shears were used to shear wool from sheep. This is the earliest mention of the name Bridgeville we have found in old newspapers.

The next mention was in connection with an advertisement, this one for Darley’s Arabian Heave Remedy. It appeared in the Dec. 26, 1851, Monongahela Valley Republican. The medicine was intended “for the cure of Heaves, Thick and Broken Wind, Coughs, Colds, and all diseases that affect the wind of Horses.”

The advertisement utilizes five paragraphs to sing the praises of the product and ends with a list of local establishments where it can be obtained, including H. H. Morgan, Bridgeville. This, of course, refers to Hugh Morgan who had a well-known store, and Post Office, on the east side of Washington Pike, close to the location of our current post office.

The Pittsburgh Gazette mentions Bridgeville once in 1854 and again in 1855, reporting property litigation settlements. The next year they reported the presence of the Bridgeville delegation in a large parade supporting John C. Fremont for president.

Although the formal incorporation of Bridgeville as a municipality was still decades away, it appears that the name had stuck by the 1850s and was recognizable to the general public.