Western Pennsylvania Genealogy
Compiled by Douglas H. Lusher


Family Group Record



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Alexander McClurg and Margaret Caskey




Husband Alexander McClurg 1




           Born: 1788 - Colerain, Northern Ireland 1
     Christened: 
           Died: 6 Apr 1873 - Allegheny City, Allegheny Co, PA 1
         Buried: 


         Father: Joseph McClurg (      -1825) 1
         Mother: 


       Marriage: 1845 1

   Other Spouse: Sarah Trevor (      -1840) 1 - 1817 1



Wife Margaret Caskey 1

           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: Aft Apr 1873
         Buried: 


Children

General Notes: Husband - Alexander McClurg


Before his death, which occurred in 1825, Joseph McClurg,

In connection with his father, he erected and operated the first foundry built in Pittsburgh, and indeed the first foundry west of the Alleghany mountains. This foundry may properly be considered to have been the first step in founding the important industry which since brought wealth and prosperity to a great city, and indeed to all of western Pennsylvania. Alexander McClurg was the active spirit of this enterprise, and from this start he rapidly pushed forward in the development of all industries connected with the manufacture of iron, until before many years he was the owner and operator of various foundries, rolling-mills and blast-furnaces in the vicinity of what was rapidly becoming known as the "Smoky City." Perhaps the best known of these industries was the great "Fort Pitt Works." This noted establishment was founded by him and it grew to great proportions, and later, during the civil war it supplied to the government great quantities of ordnance-stores and guns of the very largest dimensions.
In 1825, the rapid development of his many manufacturing and commercial enterprises caused him to remove to Philadelphia, where he was already largely interested in the wholesale dry-goods business. The next ten years were years of great activity. He not only carried on his many enterprises connected with the manufacture of iron, but he established branches of his Philadelphia dry-goods house in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Louisville, and also carried on very extensively the wholesale hardware business. He was the leading spirit in many firms, such as McClurg, Denniston & Co., McClurg, Wade & Co., McClurg, Trevor & Co., McClurg, Darlington & Co. and others, and for years his business enterprises everywhere were aggressive and successful. When, however, the financial crisis of 1837 came, owing rather to misplaced confidence in some of his partners than to want of business skill and prudence, many of his ventures were over-taken with disaster, and once more he returned to Pittsburgh to save what he could from the wreck of his fortune, and here he spent the remainder of his life.

He was always a public-spirited citizen, and an ardent and fearless champion of the political opinions which he espoused. He was one of the early advocates of the abolition of human slavery, and it was a matter of great pride with him that he erected and owned Lafayette hall, at the corner of Wood and Fourth streets, in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where, on the 22d of February, 1856, the national convention was held which inaugurated the republican party, a party which was so soon to carry the country through a great civil war, and finally to free it from the curse of negro slavery.

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Sources


1 —, The History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Part II (Chicago, IL: A. W. Warner & Co., 1889), Pg 295.


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