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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (U.S.)

by Joe McMillan, 2 June 2000

Pheasant/Bezant?
Coat of Arms
Pittsburgh Ensign or Merchant flag
Pittsburgh City Pennant

See also:

Pittsburgh City Website
Pennsylvania

For those who do not know, Pittsburgh is the second largest city in the state of Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia, and is located in the western half of the state where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet to become the Ohio River.
Walter F. Kawalec III, 9 September 1998

Pheasant/Bezant?

"When Pittsburgh became a city in 1816, officials set out posthaste to obtain an official seal. This duty was handed to the city recorder, Charles Wilkes Jr., who passed it along to a few friends, most notably a theater personality named John R. Jones.

"Jones and contributors chose the coat of arms of the Chatham family (William Pitt, for whom Pittsburgh is named, was the First Earl of Chatham) as a basis for the seal. They removed, as inappropriate for the seal of an up-and-coming city, a stork perched atop an anchor and a stag and lion used as supporters on either side of the Chatham shield. The Chatham motto, "benigno numine," or "Divine Providence," was omitted until 1950, when a council vote added it to the large seals used on mayoral proclamations.

"A castle wall was placed above the shield, which had a blue and white checkerboard design and three gold coins, called "bezants," touting an ancestral Chatham's activity during the Crusades. As local history tells it, an engraver mistook "bezants" for "pheasants," and placed birds inside the gold circles on the city seal."

No mention of the castle having been based on