Letter from Aeneas Mackay, Pittsburgh, to Governour Penn

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Pittsburgh, June 14, 1774.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOUR: The deplorable state of affairs in this part of your Government, at this time, is truly distressing; we are robbed, insulted, and dragooned by Conolly and his militia in this place and its environs. All ranks share of his oppression and tyranny, but the weight of his resentment falls heaviest on me, because he imagines I oppose his unwarrantable measures most. On the 27th of last May he ordered a party of his militia to pull down and destroy a sheep house and stable of mine, in a violent and outrageous manner, and told me at the time, he would take the house I lived in, if he wanted it, and countenanced a perjured villain, a constable of ours, that deserted to him, before he was three months sworn in, of the name of Reily, to shake a stick at my nose, before his face, without reproof. This circumstance, together with some more of the Doctor' s conduct, I have communicated to my Lord Dunmore by letter, but what effect that may have time only will show.

Mr˙ Croghan, who has been grossly abused by our Bashaw, lately is gone to Williamsburg to represent every part of his conduct to the Governour and Council, in its true light; although others doubt, I am very certain Mr˙ Croghan is earnest and sincere respecting that intention, for he joins the rest of the inhabitants in charging all our present calamity to the Doctor' s account.

On the other hand, we do not know what day or hour we will be attacked by our savage and provoked enemy, the Indians, who have already massacred sixteen persons to our certain knowledge about and in the neighbourhood of Ten Mile Creek. Last Saturday, a party of the militia, consisting of one Captain, one Lieutenant, and forty Privates, were on their march to join Conolly at the mouth of Wheeling, where he intended to erect a stockade fort; when, on a sudden, they were attacked only by four Indians, who killed the Captain on the spot, and wounded the Lieutenant, and made their escape without being hurt, and the party after burying their Captain, returned with their wounded Lieutenant; so that Conolly' s intended expedition is knocked in the head at this time.

I am your Honour' s most humble and most obedient servant,

AENEAS MACKAY.

To Governour Penn.