I Would Like an H Please

            Founded in 1758 by General John Forbes Pittsburgh is listed as one of the most frequently miss spelled American cities.  General Forbes named the new settlement after the English leader William Pitt the Elder 1^st Earl of Chatham.  Forbes simply added the Scottish –burgh to Pitt’s name and most likely pronounced it in the Scottish fashion Pitts-burro, think Edinburgh in Scotland, burgh being a common ending meaning town.  When the town was formerly created in the 1794 Acts of Legislature the h was included in the spelling.  Again in 1804 when Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough the h was maintained.  (The distinction between a Town and a Borough is extremely confusing and convoluted so we will just move on.)  In 1816 when Pittsburgh was finally incorporated as a city a printing error caused the h to be left off though we are told the original charter did include the h.  This caused serious ramifications for the spelling of Pittsburgh later made even more difficult because the original charter was destroyed in the 1882 Court house fire and could not be used for confirmation of the correct city spelling.  Thanks to a real lack of spelling consistency among the populous during the 19^th century it was not uncommon to find the h left off Pittsburgh in various publications such as news papers and directories.  The h however was always included in municipal documents.  It wasn’t until the United States Board on Geographical names decided in 1890, in an effort to standardize the spelling of city names, that any city or town using the Scottish ending –burgh would drop the h, this helped end the confusion between towns using the German spelling of –burg and those using the Scottish –burgh.  The Board went even further than simply making a blanket statement regarding all cities and towns ending in –burgh however when it singled out Pittsburgh citing the 1816 printed charter which spelled the name Pittsburg.  The board claimed that it was in fact an error with the Post Office that caused it to be spelled Pittsburgh in the first place and the city had always been Pittsburg.  The Boards decision was only compulsory for government agencies.  Many citizens, institutions and the city its self rejected the loss of the h.  There was considerable pressure from the citizens for the board to change the spelling back.  Finally in 1911 the renamed United States Geographic Board bowed to political pressure from Senator George T. Oliver and reversed its decision giving the h back to Pittsburgh.  The h is something that has become beloved in Pittsburgh.  The name simply looks wrong to anyone from the area spelled Pittsburg, and in fact I find it quite difficult to type it that way.  To Pittsburghers the city is frequently simply PGH and most of us are confused to discover our air port code is PIT.  Even the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority’s brand of bottled water is PGH²O.  To those cities and towns who lost their h and never got it back we sympathize and say fight for your h.