Space was tight in Pittsburgh's newspapers in the early years of the 19th century. Each edition usually was just four pages.

Still it seems surprising that the passing of one of the city's most prominent figures should have merited only two sentences in the Dec. 24, 1819, edition of the Pittsburgh Mercury.

"DIED -- On the night of the 16th inst. (this month) in the 66th year of his age, General JAMES O'HARA, one of the oldest and most respectable citizens of this place," the newspaper reported. "The death of this gentleman is a source of public as well as private grief."

Mr. O'Hara was a one-man military-industrial complex. He had successful careers in the army, in government and, especially, in commerce. O'Hara township is named for him, as was a Navy attack transport that saw service during World War II and the Korean War.

The son of a professional soldier, Mr. O'Hara was born in 1752 or 1753 in County Mayo, Ireland. After studies in Paris at the College of St. Sulpice, he moved to England and joined the British army. By 1772, he had resigned his commission and come to America, turning up in Pittsburgh as an Indian trader. During the Revolutionary War, he raised a company to fight the British.

His talent was in military logistics: moving and feeding armies. By 1780 he was a commissary, in charge of operating a military hospital in Carlisle. He later was promoted to brigadier general and served as assistant quartermaster general for the Continental Army.

After the war he resumed his business career in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At the same time he dabbled in politics. He was an electoral college member in 1789, casting a vote for George Washington for president. During Washington's second term as president, O'Hara served as the army's quartermaster general.

His talent for supplying armies apparently translated well into business.

For many years, he and his Philadelphia-born wife, Mary Carson, lived in a log house near present day Penn Avenue and Stanwix Street. In 1797 he was wealthy enough to construct a new dwelling on the banks of the Monongahela.

By the start of the 19th century he had an interest in most of the lines of businesses thriving in Pittsburgh. "In partnership with Major Isaac Craig he manufactured ... the first window glass and hollow glassware west of the Alleghenies," Rees T. Scully, an O'Hara descendant, wrote in the April 1957 edition of Carnegie Magazine. "He also transported salt from Onondaga, New York, to Pittsburgh; built sea-going ships; ran the sawmill from which Saw Mill Run derives its name; constructed a tanyard, a brewery, a gristmill and a foundry."

He also acquired thousands of acres of land. Mr. O'Hara was, according to Mr. Scully, "the largest landowner Pittsburgh has ever known."

Not quite a month after his death, the Pittsburgh Gazette published a rhymed tribute to the soldier-businessman in its Jan. 14, 1820, edition:

"Though high his glory rise, his wealth -- be great,

He ne'er forgets his own, his youthful state,

Himself a stranger in a foreign land,

The stranger helps with heart, and purse & hand,

A father to the poor, a constant friend,

To all his kind distressed assistance lends,

The hapless widow and the orphan's guide,

For many, great and small, his hands provide ..."

Mr. O'Hara's tradition of "assistance" continued under his best known descendant, his granddaughter, Mary Schenley.

Her inheritance included large tracts assembled by her grandfather. In 1889, she donated the original 300 acres that became the nucleus of Pittsburgh's Schenley Park. She later donated the land in Oakland on which the Carnegie museums, music hall and library now stand.

Mr. O'Hara also had purchased the land at the Point on which Fort Pitt and the Fort Pitt blockhouse were built. In 1892, Mrs. Schenley gave the blockhouse property to the Pittsburgh chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The DAR operates the building, the oldest in Pittsburgh, as a museum.

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