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The start of southwestern Pennsylvania exploratory activity in 1750 came from the Ohio Company of Virginia, a partnership of Virginia gentlemen (including a brother of George Washington), a Maryland frontiersman, and a London merchant.

It was organized in 1747 to engage in land speculation and trade with the Indians in a territory claimed by Virginia west of the mountains. This included part of Pennsylvania somewhat vaguely described in early British land grants.

The company petitioned the English king for a land grant in the upper Ohio Valley, 200,000 acres to be granted at once on condition that 200 families be settled on the land in seven years.

This was the motivation for explorations by Christopher Gist and others in 1750 and 1751, and came after the governor of Virginia was ordered to make the grant in 1749.

Gist and some others shortly settled on a tract of land in Fayette County as a part of this effort. Also in the picture at the time was the French threat to move into the area.

About the same time, a fort-storehouse was built near what later became Brownsville.

When the French captured the uncompleted Fort Pitt, a war and many other of the more familiar activities followed.

Christopher Gist is a familiar name in local history, the first white American to explore in depth the Ohio River lands, ahead of Daniel Boone by 18 years.

Gist was born in Maryland in 1706, where his father (of English descent) was one of the commissioners who laid out Baltimore in 1729. He was accompanied into this area by George Washington on several occasions, and twice saved Washington's life.

Gist apparently resided at Yadkin, N.C., when he was employed by the Ohio Company to locate its conditional grant on the Ohio River. He returned home after one early 1750s trip into this area, and found Indians had burned his neighborhood and killed many neighbors.

He continued his field explorations, some in Kentucky and the Midwest, after the defeat of Braddock in 1755, but died of smallpox in 1765.

A son, Thomas Gist, remained at the Fayette settlement between Connellsville and Uniontown until the son's death in 1786. After that, the tract was sold to Col. Isaac Meason. He gave it the Mount Braddock name and built a stone mansion there.

An agent of the Ohio Company, as late as 1770, tried to renew the British grant unsuccessfully. The claim was exchanged for two shares in the Vandalia Company.

Vandalia was a commercially proposed settlement in the Ohio Valley in the early 1770s, but never materialized. It was typical of many land speculation efforts of that time.

Betwixt the Ohio Company effort and the border dispute between the two states, which wasn't settled until after the Revolution, the Penns and Pennsylvania prevailed. They were helped by strong opposition to the Vandalia project, also spawned by Virginians, which shortly faded out.

THIS DATE IN HISTORY

Although the first week in August is not the busiest in history, it has been eventful in this area, particularly Aug. 5 rather than Aug. 4.

One major event in Aug. 4 history came in 1763 when two surveyors by the names of Mason and Dixon were commissioned to determine the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. That action had far-reaching implications.

Otherwise, Aug. 4 events were few. The first daily issue of the Washington Reporter was published in 1876. Youghiogheny River valley residents in 1908 were demanding river improvements. In 1917, four children from an Export family were killed in an explosion.

Aug. 5 was considerably busier, starting as early as 1763 with the first day of the two-day battle at Bushy Run.

The first post office was established at Greensburg in 1791, one of the earliest in the region. The pioneer horse car operated at Pittsburgh in 1859.

Duquesne Light Company was formed by consolidating a number of smaller Allegheny and Beaver county companies in 1903.

The new Butler Plank Road (Route 8) was a big boost for Pittsburgh-Butler travelers when it opened in 1933.

GETTING TO CHURCH NOT EASY

The hazards of getting to Sunday morning church services today are not nearly those of the early 1800s.

An elder of the Ligonier Reformed Church was en route to 'the old Dutch meeting house" when he was met by a bear. The bruin climbed a tree, and Henry Brant discharged his rifle several times, then climbed the tree himself in those days when traveling armed was necessary.

Severely wounded, the bear was still alive and wrestled Brant as they fell to the ground, before the animal's wounds felled him. Brant barely escaped with his life, history records, but he was too late for church.

BASKETBALL HISTORY IMPACT

Sports history is a relative newcomer to the spectrum of the past. Southwestern Pennsylvania figured strongly in football's early days, and to a lesser extent for baseball. Lesser known, however, are the distinctions that came with basketball.

Geneva College, for example, was one of the first three college basketball teams, along with the universities of Chicago and Iowa.

The only major sport that didn't have starts in other countries, the sport was "invented" by Dr. George Naismith at the International YMCA Training School at Springfield, Mass., in late 1891.

It was originally an outdoor sport using a soccer ball. Much of its national interest was a part of the then quite popular YMCA recreation program.

Colleges were slow to pick it up, since it was not conceived as a winter sport until it became an obvious candidate to fill the winter void. It required special indoor facilities, which developed slowly. It didn't really gain momentum until the number of players was lowered from nine or whatever in 1895 to five by Dr. Naismith in 1895.

How did Geneva get involved? The college, which earlier had moved from Ohio to Beaver Falls, in 1890 completed a new gymnasium. The school employed C.O. Bemies that year, a graduate of YMCA Training School, to teach and supervise its physical education project for both boys and girls.

He started strongly by organizing Geneva's first football team in 1890, playing halfback himself. In the spring of 1891, he reorganized the baseball team there.

Then, on a visit back to Springfield and his school, he learned in 1892 about Dr. Naismith's new game, which he adapted to his program.

The Convenanters played a game in April 1893, which researchers say was the first game involving a college team, defeating New Brighton, possibly a YMCA team.

The University of Chicago had a 6-1 record against YMCA opponents in 1894. In what was said to be the first game between college teams in February 1895, Minnesota School of Agriculture bested Hamline, 9-3, with nine-player teams.

The five-player debut in collegiate ball came in 1896 when Chicago defeated Iowa at Iowa City. The Iowa team, incidentally, was a YMCA aggregation with all its members enrolled at that school. The sport at Chicago was installed by Amos Alonzo Staff, the noted football coach who had been a member of the first basketball team at the Springfield YMCA school.

What was said to be the first major Eastern college game under the new rules was Yale's 32-10 win over Pennsylvania in 1897.

Some other schools of local interest, and the year of their first games:

1896 — Allegheny and Bucknell; 1897 — Penn State; 1898 — Grove City and Notre Dame; 1902 — Lehigh; 1904 — Waynesburg and West Virginia; 1905 — Juniata; 1906 — Pitt (then Western U. of Pa.); 1907 — Carnegie Mellon (then Carnegie Tech); 1913 — Washington & Jefferson; 1914 — Duquesne; 1917 — Thiel; 1926 — Slippery Rock; 1927 — Indiana. There were other early ones, including Westminster.

Some scores were unusual, to say the least.

Waynesburg's first game was an 80-1 loss to West Virginia. Penn State's initial game in 1897 was a 24-4 loss to Bucknell, that outcome reversed in a later game that season.

Bemies stayed four years at Geneva, and had a powerful leadership impact on its sports program.

The YMCA impact on the sport in its early days was further emphasized when Pitt's first win was over Greensburg YMCA. Its second was over West Virginia.

Penn State's most frequent early-day opponent was the nearby Williamsport YMCA squad.

Various other distinctions involved southwestern Pennsylvania in basketball history. Westminster, on Dec. 29, 1934, played St. Johns in the first collegiate doubleheader at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The modern era in the sport, after the center jump was eliminated after every basket, began in the late 1930s. Before that, the sport had endured such things as the 1926 season when City College of New York, then a power, beat Villanova, 11-9, but lost to Carnegie Tech, 13-12.

But, as basketball histories point out, in 1937-38 Hank Luisetti of Stanford changed basketball. One opponent was Duquesne, and Hank scored 50 points with many one-handed shots as the West Coast team won, 92-27.

In 1951-52, Dick Groat of Duke (from Swissvale) set a national scoring record of 1,886 points. While it didn't last long, the local baseball-basketball announcer brought nationwide attention.

Still another bit of basketball distinction was Feb. 28, 1940, when Pitt took a 57-37 decision over Fordham at Madison Square Garden in the first basketball experimental telecast.

Currently, many observers say that a new era in local basketball has arrived with the new arena at the University of Pittsburgh, and the renewal of college basketball interest it is causing.

Certainly, it's a far cry from a half-century ago in 1951 when Pitt vacated the long outmoded pavilion under the football stadium to move up to the Field House. High school basketball championships moved with it, a major advance then.

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