Arthur St. Clair (1737-1818)
Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
President, Continental Congress, 1787; member, 1785-87. First Governor of the Northwest Territory (lying between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers), 1787-1802. Earlier, he was Westmoreland County Court Justice after the county's formation in 1773, and Major General in the Revolutionary War, 1777. A native of Thurso, Scotland, he lived his last years on Chestnut Ridge, near Ligonier, and is buried just east of this marker.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Born in Thurso, Scotland, Arthur St. Clair rose to Major General in the Continental Army during the Revolution and served as President of the Continental Congress in 1787. He was later appointed the first Governor of the Northwest Territory, the vast lands between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers being opened to American settlement. A longtime Westmoreland County figure, he spent his last years on Chestnut Ridge and is buried just east of this marker.
Why it matters
St. Clair links the founding of the republic to its first great expansion westward, governing the territory from which several states would be carved.
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Related people
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Westmoreland County
Greensburg, PA · est. 1981
Carved from Bedford County in 1773, Westmoreland was for a time the sprawling frontier of southwestern Pennsylvania and the first place English law reached beyond the Allegheny Mountains. At its early seat of Hanna's Town, backcountry settlers gathered in 1775 to adopt the "Hanna's Town Resolves," a defiant pledge of resistance drafted as revolution stirred in the colonies. Greensburg later rose as the county seat, incorporated in 1799 as the region settled into peacetime governance.
Fort Allen
Hempfield Township, PA · est. 1946
A little to the south once stood a fortified post raised in 1774 by Pennsylvania German pioneers of the Brush Creek and Harrold's settlements. In an era of frontier violence, such a stockade offered ordinary farm families a place to shelter during Dunmore's War and the American Revolution. It was a small but vital node in the network of refuges that let settlement cling to this exposed edge of colonial Pennsylvania.
Hannastown
Hempfield Township, PA · est. 1946
Just east of here stood Hannastown, established in 1773 as the seat of Westmoreland County and the first county seat west of the Allegheny Mountains. Its citizens gathered in 1775 to adopt a bold declaration backing the Revolutionary cause, an early frontier voice for independence. In 1782, near the end of the war, a raiding party burned the town, and it never fully recovered.
Arthur St. Clair
Unity Township, PA · est. 1946
In a quiet hollow south of this spot stood the final home of Arthur St. Clair, a Scottish-born soldier who gave much of his life to the young United States. He fought as a general in the Continental Army, served in the Continental Congress, and became the first governor of the vast Northwest Territory that would one day form the heart of the Midwest. He died in relative obscurity, and his grave lies at Greensburg.