Western Pennsylvania Ancestral Heritage

The ancestral heritage of the western third of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that is known as western Pennsylvania goes back to pre-colonial days. Some very early settlements and forts of this country were located in here. Westmoreland County is one of the oldest counties in Pennsylvania being formed from Bedford County in 1772.
The earliest immigrants to the wilderness of western Pennsylvania were mostly Germans from eastern Pennsylvania and Scots Irish immigrants of Virginia and Maryland. During the Revolutionary War, the southwestern region was claimed by both Pennsylvania and Virginia. The settlers here, being dissatisfied with the dual government feud, wanted to create a new state called Westsylvania. The newly formed federal government stepped in and the territorial dispute was settled in 1779 with the establishment of the Mason-Dixon Line setting the boundaries of each state. Washington & Jefferson College was founded in 1781 and is the oldest college west of the Allegheny Mountains and the eleventh oldest in America. This area was the scene of many Indian uprisings including one by Mingo Chief James Logan. The Mingo Indian trail ran very close to what would become the original National Road. The Frontier Rangers who protected the settlers from Indian attacks and aided the federal troops during the Revolutionary War have a long honored history. The Whiskey Rebellion started in western Pennsylvania led by David Bradford of Washington, Pennsylvania and was put down by federal troops led by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Virginia Governor Henry Lee, father of Civil War General Robert E. Lee.
Long before St. Louis was known as the "Gateway to the West", western Pennsylvania could lay claim to that title. With the three rivers, the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio merging at Pittsburgh and the National Road, from Cumberland, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois, passing through the heart of western Pennsylvania, this area was part of the post-Revolutionary War migration westward to Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois. Eastern Pennsylvanians, Northern Neck Virginians and Marylanders most likely passed through western Pennsylvania on their way to these points west. In fact, Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis & Clark expedition began his trip down the Ohio River on his way to St. Louis from the river banks of Pittsburgh on August 31, 1803. So if your ancestors were on the move west in the time frame of 1776 through 1850, they may very likely have resided in or traveled through western Pennsylvania.