Descendants of Robert Clugston (1754-1837)
Robert Clugston emigrated from northern Ireland about 1740 to settle in Chambersburg (Pennsylvania). Robert had seven children, two of whom (Robert and Mary) moved to what was to become Patton Township, where Mary “Polly” Clugston was to marry William Johnston, from one another of Monroeville’s pioneering families; Robert would marry Rachel Calhoun.
Robert Clugston of Patton Township went on to fight in the Revolutionary War, serving as a private solider in the 6th Co., 1st Battalion, of the Cumberland County Militia. After the war Robert returned to the family farm.
Robert’s son William Clugston (1795-1834) married Mary Johnston in 1830, and their son Robert (1823-1873) married Sarah Jane McWilliams. Many of the Clugstons were members of Monroeville’s Bethel United Presbyterian Church.
Robert (the Revolutionary War solider), William and Mary Clugston, and Robert and Sarah Jane Clugston, are three generations of the family that are all buried at the Cross Road Cemetery in Monroeville.
Through the years, Clugstons were to serve the community in a number of public service roles in Patton Township. In 1869, Robert Clugston was appointed, along with Thomas McMasters, and Thomas Penny to a commission to decide on the advisability of dividing Versailles (the area between Turtle Creek and the Youghiogheny River) into North and South Versailles -- a division consummated by court degree in September of that year.
One of Robert Clugstons grandsons (Harold, son of John Audrey Clugston) would become a member of Pittsburgh pioneering radio station, KDKA’s “Little Symphony Orchestra,” a group founded in the 1920s that would continue through the golden years of radio.
In 1892, John Clugston was elected as the first Borough Clerk in Turtle Creek, Pa., and later was named that town’s Burgess. John and his brother were among the first postmasters of that community. And today (in 2006), a member of that pioneering family, John Clugston, still serves -- as a Turtle Creek Fireman.
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Sources:
19th Century Genealogical and personal histories of the Greater Monroeville area, unpublished paper. Paul Damon, 1986.
Geneaology of the Clugston Family, by Cdr. Joan R. Hankey, USN.
History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (1889) Chicago: A. Warner & Company.
Notes from the Turtle Creek Valley Historical Society.
Notes from Harry Fails, Pitcairn, Pa.