Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania

Fox Chapel is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA, and is a suburb of Pittsburgh located 6 miles (10 km) northeast of downtown.

The population was 5,388 as of the 2010 census.

History

In the 1750s, the Seneca Indians lived in the region. Until the late 18th century, American Indian tribes hunted and fished in the general Fox Chapel area. Virginia and Pennsylvania both claimed the territory. The dispute was not resolved until after the Revolutionary War. Today, less than 1% of its population is Native American.

George Washington

It is probable that in December 1753, George Washington, accompanied by Christopher Gist, pushed his way across Fox Chapel land as he came south from Fort Le Boeuf where he had delivered a letter to the French commander, ordering him, in the name of the Governor of Virginia, to return to Canada.

French and Indian Wars

For the next 10 years, all the land at the forks of the Ohio River was the subject of contention between French and British. Indian allies of both empires fought settlers for control of the region. French soldiers built Fort Duquesne on the site of a former British outpost at the forks of the Ohio in 1754, and four years later British troops replaced it with a fort of their own, Fort Pitt. The bloody battles of Braddock's defeat, Bushy Run, and Colonel Bouquet's relief of the Indian siege of Pittsburgh provided many British and Virginia scalps, which were triumphantly brought home to adorn wigwams situated in what is now Fox Chapel. The Revolutionary War, too, produced further military activity.