518 Annals of the Carn'egie Museum. 



important public positions, and was a member of the first Congress of 

 the United States under the Constitution of 1787. On the hearing 

 before Lord Dunmore, he was bound over to appear for trial at a court 

 for Augusta county, Va. , to ht held at Fort Dunmore on December 20, 

 1774. 



DISTRICT OF WEST AUGUSTA. 



The Augusta county court was not opened, however, on December 

 20, 1774, but on December 12th. A writ had been is.sued by Dun- 

 more, in the name of his British Majesty, adjourning the county court 

 of Augusta county from Staunton, Va., to Fort Dunmore, accompanied 

 with a new commission of the peace, embracing with the old justices 

 of the parent county the names of such of the adherents in the Mo- 

 nongahela valley as were regarded as pro]jer persons for Virginia 

 magistrates. 



The District was called the District of West Augusta, and in its ter- 

 ritory now in Pennsylvania it was bounded on the east by the Laurel 

 Hill mountains and extended along the east side of the Allegheny 

 River some distance beyond the Kiskeminitas, embracing all of West- 

 moreland, Allegheny, Beaver, Washington, Greene, and Fayette 

 counties. 



The first term of this Virginia court was held at Fort Dunmore on 

 February 21, 1775, when George Croghan, John Campbell, John 

 Connolly, Thomas Smallman, Dorsey Pentecost, John Gibson, George 

 Vallandigham and William Goe appeared, took the qualifying oaths, 

 and occupied their seats as justices. George Croghan, settled about 

 where Lawrenceville now is, at first a Virginia adherent, had become 

 c[uite a Pennsylvanian during Dunmore' s war, but he was now made 

 the presiding justice of Dunmore' s court, and this brought him back 

 once more among the Virginia partisans. From this date there were 

 not only two different sets of magistrates, with their subordinate offi- 

 cers, assessors, and commissioners, over the same people in. the 

 Monongahela valley, but within a few miles of each other there were 

 established two different courts, one at Pittsburgh, the other at Hanna's 

 Town, regularly or irregularly administering justice under the laws of 

 two different governments. 



On the next day after the first sitting of the court, to wit, on Feb- 

 ruary 22, 1775, Robert Hanna and James Caveat, two of the West- 

 moreland county justices, were arrested for the performance of their 

 duties as Pennsylvania magistrates, and confined at Pittsburgh for 



