Woodville Plantation ~ Neville House

          This is arguably the oldest house in Allegheny County--if you don't include log structures...and maybe even if you do.  The house's name has always been "Woodville Plantation," though you sometimes hear it called Nevillewood.  It was built in 1775 by the aristocratic Neville Family of Virginia.  It dates back to the days when Virginia and Pennsylvania were both laying claims to the land "at the Forks of the Ohio River."  The estate is on Washington Pike between Heidelberg and Bridgeville.  According to the best historical records I can find (i.e., Wikipedia), Washington Pike was one of the first roads carved through the wilderness in 1781 from the town of Washington to Pittsburgh.  Like many early roads, it probably followed older footpaths and horse trails.  (Of course, Washington, PA, is far older than Washington, D.C.)  Today, this stretch of Washington Pike is PA-50, a very busy thoroughfare, but the grounds of the Woodville estate breathe a sacred hush.  

           The Nevilles had a much larger, more magnificent mansion up on Bower Hill, the high land in the upper right corner of this photo.  Both the hill and the mansion were named Bower Hill, but the house was destroyed in the 1790s during the one and only battle of the Whiskey Rebellion.  Now the summit of Bower Hill is occupied by a very large retirement complex known as Providence Point.  Chartiers Creek passes in the unseen space between Woodville and Bower Hill.  I actually know an old woman who lives in that retirement home and gazes out the window at Woodville--which had been her grandparents' house when she was a little girl.

           The Nevilles were a military family who had been appointed to carry out taxation on the whiskey produced by Western Pennsylvania farmers.  In those waning days of the 18th century, the national capital was still at Philadelphia, and farmers in the western marches of the state could only transport their corn, and rye, and wheat crops over the Allegheny Mountains by first distilling them into whiskey.  It's not that everyone here was a drunkard; the local economy relied on the production of whiskey.  The divide between east and west was far deeper in those days than today.  When Hamilton introduced special taxes aimed specifically at whiskey production, westerners took it as just one more attempt by easterners to keep them in grinding poverty.  

          I love few things more than a nice, deep porch.  This one looks across the broad lawn to a little rustic fence that separates Woodville Estate from a deep gorge through which Chartiers Creek passes.  I hope to come back here on a Sunday afternoon, when the house is opened for tours.  Otherwise, it was fun to roam the grounds with no one but my six-year-old daughter...