Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, lawyer and United States congressman, Robert McKnight was born on January 27, 1820, the fourth of seven children of William McKnight (1775-1848) and Catherine McClurg McKnight (b. 1791). After attending a private school in Xenia, Ohio, Robert McKnight attended Princeton College. After his graduation in 1839, he returned to Pittsburgh to study law in the offices of Biddle and Bradford. He passed the bar in 1842 and entered into partnership with Henry S. Magraw.
In February, 1846, Robert McKnight was chosen as solicitor for the borough of Birmingham, on Pittsburgh's South Side. Politically, McKnight was, originally, a member of the Whig Party and met President William Henry Harrison in 1841 and presidential candidate Henry Clay in 1845. Robert McKnight was also associated with the Pittsburgh chapter of the Clay Club and the Clay Executive Committee and, in 1846, was nominated as Inspector of Elections during William Jordan Howard's campaign for re-election to the office of mayor. Robert McKnight was a city councilman from 1847 to 1849 and, as a member of the Republican Party, was elected to the 36th and 37th Congresses of the United States House of Representatives, from 1859 to 1863. He was a ruling elder of the Presbyterian Church of Allegheny and a delegate to the church's General Assembly and the Pan-Presbyterian Council, held in Ireland in 1884.
On May 27, 1847, Robert McKnight married Elizabeth O'Hara Denny (1824-1896), one of the daughters of Harmar and Elizabeth Febiger O'Hara Denny. The McKnights had ten children: Harmar Denny McKnight (184871900), Woodruff McKnight (b. 1850), Kate Cassatt McKnight (1852-1907), Bessie Denny McKnight Gregg (b. 1854), Henry McKnight (b. 1856), Flora McKnight Pierce (b. 1858), Mary Spring McKnight (died in infancy), Robert McKnight (1861-1889), Philip Sidney McKnight (died in infancy), and Alice McKnight (1866-1884).
Harmar Denny McKnight was the owner and founder of the Pittsburgh Alleghenys (established 1881, first season 1882 in the American Association, owned by McKnight through 1886)- Pittsburgh's first major league baseball team. The team joined the National League in 1887 and became known as the Pirates in 1891. Denny briefly managed the team in 1884 for 12 games. He was a powerful figure in baseball's early professional history who helped create and served as president of the American Association from 1882-1886. Following the 1890 season, McKnight became a minority owner in the team formed after the Players' League Burgher team returned to the Alleghenys.
Robert McKnight died in Pittsburgh on October 25, 1885, and was buried in Allegheny Cemetery.
This collection includes five volumes of original manuscript diaries with positive photocopies and two additional volumes of typed transcripts. These diaries provide a daily record of the events and activities of a young man's personal and professional life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the period of his study of the law and early years of legal practice, from October 28, 1839, to May 29, 1847. Major subjects covered in the diaries are the daily and social life, activities, and personalities of Pittsburgh, including births, deaths, engagements, and marriages, particularly of members of the McKnight family; local and national politics and elections; public lectures and preaching; the study of law with accounts of individual trials and legal cases; the buildings and sights of the city; weather, temperature, and climate; and local fires and floods. There are several passages in the diaries concerning Robert McKnight's courtship of Elizabeth O'Hara Denny during the course of 1847, and many activities are undertaken in conjunction with his friend, lawyer Charles Bonaventure Scully (usually identified in the diaries as "C.B.S.")
The Robert McKnight diaries also contain passages of unusual interest, notably descriptions of the July 27, 1840, Tippecanoe celebration, a political rally in Steubenville, Ohio; political conditions in Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania, and Wheeling, West Virginia, during the presidential election in the autumn of 1840; the death and funeral cortege of President William Henry Harrison in 1841; public reaction to the elopement of Mary Croghan with Captain Edward W. H. Schenley in 1842; a meeting with Charles Dickens on March 31, 1842; the organization of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Henry Clay Club in June, 1842, and a meeting with Henry Clay himself on August 9, 1844; an account of the "Great Fire" of Pittsburgh on April 10, 1845; the dedication of the Allegheny Cemetery on September 20, 1845; and descriptions of travels to Niagara in 1840, the resort at Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, in 1841, and Cincinnati and Xenia, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., in 1844.
The Robert McKnight diaries are housed in two archival boxes and are arranged chronologically by year.
This collection is open for research.
These materials came in three accessions and were combined into one collection in 1997.
Acc# 1955x Unknown, (Diaries, 1839-1841 and 1843-1846. According to an article in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, March 25, 1955, the diaries were "discovered" at the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania by C. W. W. Elkin, secretary of the society, in March 1955.)
Acc# 1993.0163 Gift of Anne McKnight Murdoch, (Photocopies, 1839-1841 and 1843-1846. Ms. Murdoch is the great-granddaughter of Charles McKnight (1826-1881), the younger brother of Robert McKnight.)
Acc# 1996.0206 Gift of Mary Elizabeth Ford, (Diary Transcripts, 1842 and 1846-1847. Ms. Ford is the great-granddaughter of Charles McKnight (1826-1881), the younger brother of Robert McKnight.)
Diaries of Robert McKnight, 1839-1847, MSS #176, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.
The original processor of this collection is unknown. The inventory was revised by Jack Eckert on October 21, 1997.
Revision and rearrangement for the encoded version of the finding aid provided by Jennifer Marshall in June 1999.
Property rights reside with the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permissions to reproduce or publish, please contact the curator of the Archives.