A. He was some little distance to the right.
Q. Was he a non-commissioned officer, do you know?
A. No, sir; he was a private.
* * * * *
Doctor John S. Dixon, _sworn_:
By Mr. Lindsey:
Q. Where do you reside?
A. 273 Penn avenue.
Q. Practicing physician?
A. Yes, sir; for ten years, in the city of Pittsburgh.
Q. State what knowledge you have of the riot, and what was done to
suppress it?
A. The first part I took in any suppressing the riot--on Sunday I
stayed at home, thought I might be needed, and that that was the best
place for me. When it got so bad, and the Union depot had been fired, I
thought it was my duty to go to the side of the hill to see what I
could do there, and somebody proposed, or said, that as the grain
elevator had already been set afire, that the next would be the
Duquesne depot, and Mr. Bissell and myself and some others--quite a
number started. I think he and I were the only ones of our party that
got there. We went down to the Duquesne depot, and met a few persons
there we knew and a great many we did not know. I do not know who was
in sympathy with us or not. After being there some time, and trying to
devise means of preventing the depot from being fired, if an attempt
was made, we talked of getting a cable, and shutting off the leading
avenues to the depot. There was a man rode up in a buggy and stated
there was an attempt to fire the lower end of the depot. We were then
at the upper end. We walked down, and there was a party examining a
car. I went up and looked into the car, and there was some smoke and
embers there, which somebody had scattered before I got there, to
prevent it from catching fire. There was a barrel of oil rolled under
the car--I do not know for what purpose it was, I suppose to set fire
to it, and there was one man in particular by the name of David Carney
or Carter. He was arrested afterwards; he was ringleader. I talked to
him, and tried to persuade him not to do anything of the kind. He said
he had been up all day at the fire above, and that he was one of the
advance to set fire to the Duquesne depot. I asked him where he was
from. He told me he was first an engineer on the Oil City railroad, and
then he said he was from Ohio, then he told me he was from Greene
county. He was so drunk and so excited and wild, with the burning, that
he didn't know what he was talking about. He was bound to do mischief,
and we talked to him one after the other, trying to persuade him, while
one was holding him in control, and the party, the rest of the
gentlemen, were interested in protecting the depot. They talked to a
crowd, trying to persuade the people that lived there, if the Duquesne
depot was fired, the whole lower part of the town would be burned, that
the fire department were trying to save property on Wilder street on
the hill, and that there would be several squares of valuable property
destroyed if this depot was set on fire, as it is a mere shell, an old
frame building, and very large. This man who was a ringleader of them,
he said he didn't care a damn; he said that the property holders would
have to pay for it, and the rich would have to pay for it, and he was a
friend of the workingman. I told him if he would burn this property the
working people, so many of them, would be burned out of house and home.
He said there would be good come of it, at any rate, and that he was
bound to burn that, and that they would burn the Connellsville depot,
and that they would burn the bridges, and then they didn't care a damn
what became of the rest of the town. I told him he had better not do
that, that it was a very bad thing to do. Mr. Bissell told him, to try
and keep him under control, that he had sent for policemen. The
policemen came and I made information against him, and as soon as a
couple of policemen nabbed him he wilted right away. He was very
willing to be marched off to the lock-up. In his testimony at court, he
said that he had arrived in the city Saturday afternoon, at two
o'clock, from the oil regions, that he had been working that summer on
his father's farm, some place up there, I have forgotten where he
said--at some place, Parker, Oil City--had been working there during
the summer, and heard there was going to be some fun down in
Harrisburg, and he was coming down to have some of it, and that he had
gotten drunk and didn't know what he was doing--that was according to
his own testimony in the criminal court. He was convicted, I believe,
for something like four years, that was about the total of my
experience. I made an information against him.
Q. How did you learn his name?
A. I asked his name at the time, and he told me. He gave me two or
three names, but his right name is either Carney or Carter. He gave one
four or five days afterwards, at municipal hall, and at first he denied
that he was the man at all--he never had seen me. Said he had been
arrested on the south side for drunkenness, but he was recognized by
Bissell and others, and he owned up he had been there. His name is
Carney _alias_ Carter.
* * * * *
Alexander King, _sworn_:
By Mr. Lindsey:
Q. Where do you live?
A. Pittsburgh, Nineteenth ward.
Q. What is your business here?
A. Merchant.
Q. In what kind of mercantile business are you engaged?
A. In glass material. I am not doing much now--winding up.
Q. Employ a large number of men?
A. No, sir; we have only two. I have been manufacturing heretofore, and
have had quite a lot of them in a glass manufactory.
Q. You may go on and state what you desire to on the subject?
A. I noticed a few days ago, in an evening paper, a statement made by
Sheriff Fife, or said to have been by him--of course, I do not know, I
only read it in the papers--that I had offered the rioters a thousand
barrels of flour.
Q. That was in Sheriff Fife's statement?
A. You gentlemen know, of course, what he did say. It was in the
evening papers. It is altogether unfounded; it was neither flour nor
money, nor have I ever offered nor paid one cent, or spoken to anybody
on the subject. It is utterly without foundation.