Included among the successful students of the Academy, as recalled by Brackenridge’s son, Henry Marie Brackenridge, was Morgan Neville, an editor of the Pittsburgh Gazette and a fiction writer whose stories included “Chevalier Dubac” and “Last of the Boatmen,” the latter a story about rivermen that led John T. Flanagan to label Neville the “Boswell of Mike Fink.” Neville became a member of the bar and sheriff of Allegheny County. He was among the 26 petitioners supporting the new charter for the Western University of Pennsylvania, the first University of Pittsburgh. According Flanagan, “Morgan Neville was the first notable writer of fiction to be born west of the Alleghenies.”
