1774-1814
The Neville Family
The Woodville house is an architecturally unique structure in modern western Pennsylvania which stands as a testament to the 18th century tidewater Virginian origins of John Neville; his wife, Winifred Oldham Neville; and the Shenandoah origins of his son, Colonel Presley Neville; and Presley's wife, Nancy Morgan Neville.
Woodville’s John Neville was born near present day Gloucester Virginia 1731, but by that time his family had been in North America for over a half century. The Neville family story begins in Warwickshire England where the elder John Neville, grandfather of Woodville’s John Neville, was kidnapped as a young boy in 1679. He was taken to Gloucester, Virginia, where by good fortune, he was liberated from his captors by emigrants from his hometown in England. He wound up settling in the new world and eventually owned a small plantation, possibly named Woodville, located near present day Ordinary, Virginia. His son Joseph, was born around 1700 in that location and eventually owned and operated several small taverns, known as ordinaries, which catered to the drovers and teamsters traveling back and forth to markets. It was in this area, near Abingdon parish Church which the Neville’s attended, that the younger John Neville was born. John Neville married Winifred ("Winny") Oldham (1736-1797) in WInchester Virginia on August 24, 1754. In the summer of 1755, British Major General Edward Braddock launched a military expedition against French-held Fort Duquesne, located at modern day Pittsburgh. John Neville, then in his mid-twenties, may have mustered with the Prince William County, Virginia, militia that served with Braddock. There is reference in the militia records that show a “J. Neville”, who was with the troops, but it is also possible that it could have been his brother Joseph.
The French and their Indian allies attacked and decisively defeated Braddock's forces on July 9, 1755, not far from Fort Duquesne. Braddock himself was mortally wounded, and what was left of his regular forces soon went into winter quarters in Virginia. About two months after the disaster of the Braddock expedition, Presley Neville was born in that Virginia town on September 6, 1755. Amelia, the only other Neville child to live to maturity, also was born in Winchester, eight years later on April 4, 1763.
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In 1775, John Neville came again to the Pittsburgh area. This time he brought his family with him from Winchester. At the time, Pennsylvania also claimed the land, but to the Nevilles and other Virginians it was part of northwest Virginia.
1775
The Nevilles in Pittsburgh
In late 1774, John Neville and his young family moved from Winchester to Neville's to the northwest Virginia/ western Pennsylvania frontier. In what later became known as Lord Dunmore’s War, the Virginia House of Burgesses ordered him there with a company of Virginia militia to take over the command of the abandoned Fort Pitt, which the Virginians had renamed Fort Dunmore in 1774.Fort Pitt was the largest British built fort in North America, and was built following General John Forbes' 1758 expedition to expel the French from the Ohio River valley and it guarded the strategically important confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers. For the first two years of the American Revolution, John Neville remained in command of Fort Pitt/Dunmore until the spring of 1776. He also was responsible for the defense of several other smaller Upper Ohio River fortifications, including Fort Henry at present Wheeling, West Virginia, and Fort Randolph, located at the mouth of the Big Kanawha River. The most critical fighting in the early days of the Revolution took place in the East, but such posts were important in helping to guard the American "back door" against Indian attacks on western settlements and from potential attacks by the British at Fort Detroit.
1778
Revolutionary War
John and Presley Neville later participated in many Revolutionary War battles and engagements. In September, 1778, John became the colonel in charge of the 4th Virginia Regiment, a Continental Line unit, while Presley served as an aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Lafayette. Father and son saw service at places that now have become legendary in the history of the Revolution-Brandywine, Germantown, Valley Forge, Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth, and in May 1780 at Charleston, South Carolina, where they were captured during Lord Cornwalis’ siege of the city. A dining table, acquired in 2012 and once owned by Major General Benjamin Lincoln, the commanding American officer during the battle of Charleston, now graces the dining room of Woodville.
At the conclusion of the war, Presley Neville, and his new wife Nancy, moved to western Pennsylvania and took up residence at Woodville in November of 1782. John Neville remained at Newburgh NY and oversaw the drawdown of the American army following the revolution. He was mustered out in January of 1783 and moved to his Bower Hill home shortly after. Both the Woodvile and Bower Hill houses were part of a large, thousand acre farm. Evidence indicates that these houses, which did not exist when the Neville men left the area to fight in the Revolution, were completed by members of the large enslaved community that resided on the site from 1774 through 1803. In addition to their “country” homes, both men owned townhouses in the city of Pittsburgh along Water street.
1791
Whiskey Rebellion
In 1791, Congress levied an excise tax on the manufacture and sale of whiskey. George Washington appointed John Neville as the Inspector of the Revenue for southwestern Pennsylvania, and he was responsible for collecting the despised federal duty in this area. In mid-July 1794, an incensed mob of local farmers burned Neville's Bower Hill home following a two day battle, which set in motion the events that today are know as the Whiskey Rebellion.
After the Whiskey Rebellion, John and Winifred Neville lived in Pittsburgh while rebuilding was underway at Bower Hill. Winifred died in 1797, and John advertised Bower Hill for rent in 1799. Two years later, he moved to a newly built estate on Montour's Island, known today as Neville Island, where he died in 1803.
1800
Post-Revolutionary War
Following his father's death, Presley was left to deal with numerous debts, both his own and those of his father. With the decline in the Federalist's political fortunes after 1800, Presley apparently began to think of developing his own Revolutionary War bounty lands in the Virginia Military District of Ohio as well as bounty lands there that he had inherited from his father and from his father-in-law, Daniel Morgan. In 1808, Presley had land agent Jonathan Taylor lay out the current town of Neville, Ohio, situated on the Ohio River about 30 miles southeast of Cincinnati. The Nevilles generated income by selling off lots in the town, and eventually Presley and his family also moved there. Presley died in Neville, Ohio, in 1818. His body was returned to Pittsburgh in 1819 and interred in the family plot in the Trinity Church burial ground on Sixth Avenue. In 1902, a large number of Pittsburgh's early burials, including members of the Neville and related Craig families, were moved to Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood.