tional, 22; Pentecostal Church, 7; Unitarian, 4; Church of the
Brethren, 4; Seventh Day Adventist, 3; Church of Christ, 3;
New Jerusalem, 2; others not enumerated 154.
The first formal religious services by white men were held
in Pittsburgh in 1749 by Father Bonnecamps,a Roman Cath-
olic chaplain attached to Captain Louis De Celoron’s expedi-
tion. A few years later, when the French from Canada seized
the fort at the Point, naming it Fort Duquesne, they had
with them Father Deys Baron, a Roman Catholic priest of
the Order of St. Francis. The French erected a chapel at the
confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers which
they dedicated “The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin of the
Beautiful River.” In the archives at Montreal there is a regis-
ter of the baptisms and deaths at Fort Duquesne. From the
time the French evacuated the fort, the Roman Catholics in
Pittsburgh had no resident pastor for a half century.
On November 24, 1758, the English flag was hoisted at
the Point by Colonel Armstrong and a few days later a Presby-
terian minister, who was attached to the expeditionary forces,
conducted the first Thanksgiving Day services west of the
Allegheny Mountains.
Presbyterians were in Pittsburgh as early as 1758. The
Presbytery of Redstone was organized in 1781 at the Pigeon
Creek meeting house, Washington County. Three years
later the Rev. Joseph Smith was sent by the Redstone
Presbytery to preach in Pittsburgh, he thus becoming the
first local resident minister of this denomination. In 1784
the Presbytery of Pittsburgh was incorporated. The Penn
heirs gave a site to this denomination for religious purposes
at Sixth avenue and Wood street. The first Presbyterian
Church, a log structure, was erected in 1785. This property
has remained the site of the First Church of this denomina-
tion in Pittsburgh.