Fort Pitt Museum: In Search of Tom Hines: A Black Provincial Soldier at Fort Pitt

Abstract

Stories of Pittsburgh’s frontier beginnings are often not fully representative of the broad scope of people who lived and worked here. Of the firsthand accounts that survive, primarily in the form of letters and personal journals, the vast majority are from White, male, European sources. Documents written by or about people of African descent in 18th-century Pittsburgh are far less common, and their stories often appear as snippets in someone else’s narrative. A representative case is that of Tom Hines, a Black provincial soldier who appears briefly in correspondence between Fort Pitt’s commandant, Colonel Henry Bouquet, and General Jeffery Amherst, the commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America during the French & Indian War. The minimal details of Hines’s life come from Bouquet’s preserved papers.

PDF
The Historical Society retains the right to reprint articles in any format or media, and retains the right to grant that permission to others.