Thank you, Major Kirkpatrick!

A bottle of wine given by President George Washington to former 8th Va. captain Abraham Kirkpatrick after the Whiskey Rebellion. (Skinner Auctions)

When he was eighteen Marylander Abraham Kirkpatrick killed a man in a fight and fled to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was the original "Dodge City" of the original wild west. Kirkpatrick had some family money, which he used to buy property and establish himself there. When the war broke out he was commissioned the 1st lieutenant of Captain William Croghan’s company of the 8th Virginia. He served the length of the war, and rose to the rank of major.

Kirkpatrick was never one to shy away from a fight. He was wounded at the Battle of Princeton and carried off the field by Private Jonathan Grant. He permanently maimed a fellow officer in a 1779 duel. Later that year he was shot in the eye by a jealous husband, but survived. In the 1790s, he played a central role in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion, famously defending Gen. John Neville’s home from an angry mob.

Despite his evidently very rough edges, Kirkpatrick became part of the post-war Pittsburgh elite. He co-founded the Bank of Pittsburgh and ran an early steel mill. His grandson Abraham Kirkpatrick Lewis was a pioneer in the Pittsburgh coal business, shipping coal on flat boats all the way to new Orleans.
 
In 1794, President George Washington sent Abraham Kirkpatrick several bottles of imported wine to thank him for helping put down the Whiskey Rebellion. One bottle survives, having been kept by the family for over two centuries. Its contents are now evaporated into a dry sediment.  It was put up for auction a few years ago but didn’t sell. Details about the object, including a high-definition image, can be seen at the Skinner auction house website.

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