Informally titled "Schedule of Titles to the real property of James O'Hara West of the Allegheny Mountain", this volume contains 12 pages of O'Hara's Pennsylvanian real property transactions in Westmoreland, Washington, and Allegheny Counties, and "Western Territory." The entries include summary information about specific patents, grants, indentures, deed polls, bills of sale, releases, articles of agreements, and land warrants. In addition, the volume includes seven untitled property maps showing numbered lots in and around the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, Pittsburgh, and Allegheny. The most robust map includes scattered names of owners and renters in Pittsburgh. The volume may have been compiled over a period of time, but the latest portion appears to date after 1798.
James O'Hara was born around 1752 in County Mayo, Ireland. In his mid-teens, he attended the St. Sulpice Jesuit College in Paris. He served in the British Coldstream Guards in 1770, resigned his ensign's commission, and worked as a shipbroker in Liverpool.
At around 20 years old, O'Hara immigrated to Pennsylvania, settling in Pittsburgh. He gained successes working for traders who conducted business with Native Americans in western Pennsylvania and Virginia, and became a governmental Indian Agent in 1774. During the American Revolution, O'Hara served as private and captain of the 3rd Virginia Regiment, commissary of the Carlisle general hospital, and as assistant quartermaster under Nathanael Greene.
James O'Hara began purchasing tracts of land around Pittsburgh before the war, amassed capital, and by 1784 opened his own general store. While the store itself failed, he secured a government contract to provide military supplies in 1784 and served as U.S. Army quartermaster from 1792 and 1796. As a businessman, O'Hara co-established the Pittsburgh Glassworks with Isaac Craig, manufacturing green glass and later white glass. Around the same time he worked to improve transportation of salt from Salina, New York, to Pittsburgh, established or co-established a sawmill, distillery, brewery, and shipbuilding outfit.
James O'Hara and Mary Carson married in 1782, and the couple had six children. O'Hara died on December 16, 1819, and is buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh.
