Neville B. Craig was born in Fort Pitt in 1787; he was mixed up with many of the old-money aristocratic families of Pittsburgh. In 1851, he published the first comprehensive history of Pittsburgh. It provoked a response from Henry Marie Brackenridge, son of Hugh Henry Brackenridge, who thought that his father’s memory was slandered by Craig’s “perverted and false” account of the Whiskey Rebellion. Craig was “representative of the ‘Neville connection,’” the anti-insurrectionist party that had called in troops from Washington; Brackenridge, on the other hand, had succeeded in gaining an amnesty for most of the insurrectionists. It is fascinating to see that, as late as the 1850s, the animosities of the Whiskey Rebellion were still very much alive among the old families in Pittsburgh.
Craig died in 1863 at his home, “Bellefield.” Today there is a section of Oakland called Bellefield, where Bellefield Avenue, Craig Street, and Neville Avenue are all parallel streets.