Father Pitt

Why should the beautiful die?

Bigham House, Chatham Village

Today this house is used as a clubhouse for residents of Chatham Village. It was built in 1844 or 1849 (Father Pitt has seen both dates) for Thomas James Bigham, a notorious abolitionist who was rumored to harbor fugitive slaves here. Fortunately for him, there was not much sympathy for slave laws in these parts: Pittsburgh was riddled with Underground Railroad stations.

These pictures were taken in late evening light (individual pictures taken with a Canon PowerShot S45, then stitched with Hugin to produce the wide angles you see here). There’s a fair amount of grain if you look closely. Low-light performance is one aspect of digital cameras that has definitely improved, and Father Pitt would do much better in low light with a more recent camera. He would also pay about a thousand dollars for a more or less equivalent camera, rather than the six dollars he paid for the old Canon.

See a random picture
and become a better person

You could buy this book
if you wanted a book.

Father Pitt

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One response to “Bigham House, Chatham Village”

  1. Joe Hoesch

    The house was built in 1849 according to Bigham’s son Kirk. He mentions the date in a family history book he wrote entitled “Major Abraham Kirkpatrick and His Descendants.” My family lived in the Bigham House from 1943 to 1965. My father worked on constructing Chatham Village in the 1930s and was hired by Charles Lewis of the Buhl Foundation after construction was completed to work as a maintenance man. I wrote the history of the Bigham Family in the early 2000s because of the Underground RR connection. My bedroom was the 3rd floor attic with the double windows at the peak that faced Pennridge Rd. and was also Bigham’s black maid Lucinda Bryant’s bedroom. She fled there if a stranger showed up at the house and also hid escaping slaves there.

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