One of our editors suggested we devote space to historical
awareness of Pennsylvania. In that spirit…

You’re not the first person to wonder about this. In his book The Spirit that Gives Life: The History of Duquesne University, Joseph Rishel quotes a local ditty that once noted, “No one knows the reason, no one can explain / but everything you look at is named Duquesne.”

And you’re right: Despite spending most of the 1750s in North America, Ange Duquesne de Menneville never did set foot here. Then again, neither did William Pitt. Given the city’s later population losses, maybe it’s ominous that its earliest names belonged to people who never visited. But both names were given by military men caught up in a triumphant spirit.

Prior to Duquesne’s 1752 arrival in the New World, the French carried out what might be the most laid-back invasion in history: They asserted their claim to the region by burying lead plates all over the place. The plates were inscribed with messages like the following: “[T]o reestablish tranquility in certain Indian villages [we] have buried this plate … as a monument of renewal of possession which we have taken of the [Ohio River] and all its tributaries, and all the land on both sides, as far as the sources of the said rivers.”