Roundtable members get chance to help readers
– Rosalie Renshaw Coughenour of Hopwood wrote, “My husband is interested in the Stapleton Dairy in Brownsville. He has a milk bottle in his ‘treasures’ that came from that dairy. The bottom of the bottle has the date ‘1938.’ He was born in 1935 and doesn’t remember anything about the dairy, but perhaps someone in the area will.”
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Ross Snowdon of Madrid, N.Y., e-mailed, “I hope the Roundtable can give me information on a group of young people who belonged to the Christian Endeavor Society at the Central Presbyterian Church, which was located near the end of the Intercounty Bridge in Brownsville. The building is now the Masonic temple. Between 1935 and 1940, about 25 of us young people were very active in the CE Society, and I wonder if any of them are still living and where I might write to them.”
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Another reader hoping the Roundtable can help him renew an old friendship is Paul Broadwell of Phoenix, Ariz.
“I formerly lived in Brownsville,” Paul wrote, “and finished high school in 1939. Even at my age, I still get homesick for that area. I have been enjoying myself reading your columns, and I have been wondering about an old friend named Pat Pasquale. He worked for the newspaper, and the last time I saw or talked to him was in 1964 during a brief visit to Brownsville. If Pat is still with us, I would like to contact him and renew our friendship.”
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Brownsville native Russ Moorhouse, now of Stevensville, Md., is searching for information about a military unit called the “Brownsville Blues.”
“They served in Annapolis during the war of 1812,” Russ wrote. “I am seeking a list of its members. I have found references to the unit in Ellis’ ‘History of Fayette County’ and on the ‘Mid-Monongahela Valley History and Genealogy’ Web site, but no list of members.”
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Don Laughery of Catonsville, Md., hopes the Roundtable can produce a picture of a once-familiar Brownsville scene.
“I left Brownsville in 1948,” Don explained, “but I returned from time to time to visit friends and family. On one such trip, my brother, R. W. Laughery, now of Lucasville, Ohio, and I drove out to Alicia, where we found that the coke ovens were working. They had been dark for many years, and we were surprised to find them lit up.
“We returned after dark, and I took quite a few pictures. Everyone who saw the slides commented that they looked like pictures from Hell. Later, the ovens were shut down permanently, and, over the years, the slides were lost. Could you ask your readers if they have any pictures of these ovens?”
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George Svokos of Chalk Hill asked, “Does anyone know anything about a confectionery in West Brownsville that was owned by Louis Caralis in the 1940s?
“I believe it was located near the end of the old Brownsville bridge.”
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Rhoda Novak of Los Angeles, Calif., wrote, “My husband’s grandfather, John Novak, lived in the Novak log cabin near Brownsville on Telegraph Road. It was used by the Pony Express and was burned down by vandals around 1994. I would love to hear from people who remember that Novak cabin or other original log cabins in the area.”
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Former Uniontown resident Don Kollar, writing from Clarkston, Mich., inquired, “I have been told that there is a gentleman in Brownsville who sells high school yearbooks from the past. If this happens to be true, I would appreciate knowing his name or how I might contact him.”
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Uniontown native Barry Townsend e-mailed, “My father was a salesman for the Ward Baking Company in Uniontown. He died while working for the company in 1961, and I left Uniontown later that year. Can anyone supply information about the history of that company?”
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A West Coast reader purchased a Brownsville-related item at an estate sale in Redding, Calif., then e-mailed me to find out more about it.
“It is a little fold-up hook thing that was in an old sewing basket,” she wrote, “and it says ‘Claybaugh-Milliken, Brownsville & Charleroi’ on it. Can you help us figure out what it is? I’d be happy to send you a picture.”
She e-mailed a picture of it to me, and I immediately forwarded the picture to Bill Claybaugh in Kailua, Hawaii.
“Glenn,” Bill replied promptly from the Pacific, “these were used before my time, but I did see a few around. They were for buttoning-up shoes, when shoes had buttons. You would put the hook thru the eyelet on the shoe, put the hook around the button and then pull the button through the eyelet. You were then all buttoned up and ready to go. I do not have any idea when shoelaces came into being. I was born in 1931, and I do not remember seeing anyone in button shoes in my lifetime.”
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There you have it, Reader Roundtable – a rapid-fire round of 13 questions that are submitted to you, with high hopes. Each reader of this column is automatically a member of the Roundtable, and I invite you to contact me if you feel you can help any of these folks find the information they seek.
In the meantime, I am pleased to tell you that over the past few weeks, readers have been contacting me with answers to earlier questions we had posed about the fate of the Brownsville High School football trophies of the 1940s, the location of Wolf’s Harbor, the story of the former Woodward farm in Hiller and a number of other inquiries that were included in our most recent Roundtable article in mid-November. Next week, I will share with you some of the information that the Roundtable has uncovered on those topics.
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Glenn Tunney may be contacted at 724-785-3201, glenatun@hhs.net or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, Pa., 15442. Comments about these weekly articles may be sent to Mark O’Keefe (Managing Editor – Day), 8 – 18 East Church Street, Uniontown, Pa. or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com . All past articles are on the Web at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/