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Stapleton’s Dairy remembered

9 min read

Our January article about Uniontown’s Garner Dairy stirred the memories of some Brownsville readers who can recall Stapleton’s Dairy, a thriving business in West Brownsville during the first half of the 20th century. Stapleton’s Dairy was located in a building on Ashland Alley between Railroad and Middle streets. It was about a block north of the Lincoln Baking Co. and a block south of the former West Brownsville fire station. The dairy itself faced Middle Street, and behind the dairy was the Stapleton home, which faced Railroad Street.

J.R. Stapleton Dairy was founded in 1903 by John R. Stapleton and his wife, Mary Brazell Stapleton, and it operated until the early 1940s. The dairy was actually a creamery, processing milk that was purchased from the area’s farmers, who welcomed a convenient outlet for their product. Twenty-six years after the company was created, a Brownsville Telegraph article described the dairy’s early years.

“From a milk route using three gallons a day in 1903,” reported the Telegraph, “to a thoroughly organized milk distributing depot handling the entire dairy output of 26 large and modern farms, is the record of Stapleton’s Dairy. The original route was started by Mrs. John R. Stapleton in February 1903. At that time, Mrs. Stapleton was the only dealer in milk in the three Brownsvilles [Brownsville, Bridgeport and West Browns-ville].”

“It is said that more milk could have been handled from the beginning had it been available,” the Telegraph observed. “By the summer of 1904, the farmers of the district had become acquainted with the fact that there was a new outlet for their milk supplies in the Brownsvilles, and the sources of milk became a little more dependable. By the fall of that year, Mrs. Stapleton was handling about 35 gallons of milk.”

The dairy’s first headquarters was in the cellar of the Stapleton home on West Brownsville’s Railroad Street. The original means of delivery was a horse-drawn vehicle that can be seen in a circa 1909 photograph taken in front of the Stapleton house. In the driver’s seat of the horse-drawn delivery vehicle is stern-faced Mrs. Stapleton, accompanied by three of her four sons.

There is little doubt that Mary Stapleton was the driving force behind the growth and success of Stapleton’s Dairy.

“My grandmother was the matriarch who kept things running while she was alive,” Thom Stapleton said. “She kept her recalcitrant brood in line with her buggy whip. Her sons were typical Irish men who were always fighting with each other. If they started fighting in the house, she would take her whip and run them outside. Yet she was a good woman who bought shoes and clothing for a lot of kids who didn’t have any during the Depression.”

Alma Jean Stapleton Blunt, who now resides in Rochester, Mich., is a granddaughter of Mary Stapleton. Her father, Howard, was one of those four Irish boys who flirted with danger at the business end of their mother’s wicked whip. Alma remembers her dynamo of a grandmother.

“She had red hair and a fiery temper,” recalled Alma, “and she ran the dairy. Grandma Stapleton was the boss, while her husband spent his time whittling with other men, sitting quietly on a bench.”

Woe to the farmer who sent an unsatisfactory shipment of milk to Stapleton’s Dairy. Grandma’s wrath could be a fearsome thing to behold.

“Grandma would not accept an inferior milk delivery,” said Alma. “Once there was a dead rat found in one of the deliveries. Grandma Stapleton was furious. She kicked the milk can down the alley and swore a blue streak.”

The dairy’s reputation in town was excellent, and Mary Brazell Stapleton was not going to have it jeopardized.

By 1929, the horse and wagon were long gone, replaced by a fleet of five modern trucks. J. R. Stapleton passed away in 1927, but his widow and her sons kept the business growing. The 1929 Telegraph article describes Stapleton’s Dairy as a partnership consisting of Mrs. Stapleton and three of her sons, Clyde, Jim and Jack.

In 1903, the business had delivered three gallons per day. By 1929, Stapleton’s was delivering 700 gallons per day to retail customers, including more than 500 gallons of pasteurized milk, 75 gallons of chocolate milk, 90 gallons of buttermilk and 15 gallons of cream. These totals were in addition to the dairy’s daily wholesale output.

“The dairy,” the Telegraph reported, “now furnishes steady employment for 14 people. Its equipment makes it one of the most modern dairy plants of the valley. Its machinery includes a 12-ton, ice-making machine with which they operate their cooling plant, a 350-gallon pasteurizer, a 100-gallon pasteurizer, a cream separator, an automatic bottle washer, a Milwaukee bottle filler, a cream cooler and a milk-pre-heating device. The Milwaukee bottle filler fills and caps the bottles automatically, removing all possibility of milk contamination after the milk has been pasteurized.”

Thom Stapleton remembers some of the delicious dairy products that proudly bore the Stapleton’s label.

“In addition to regular milk,” he said, “we sold chocolate milk, cottage cheese, coffee cream, whipping cream, buttermilk and some butter, sweet and kosher and, for a short period, strawberry-flavored milk. The milk was sold in quarts, pints and half-pints, and for a while buttermilk was sold in gallon jugs. That didn’t last long, because the gallon jugs were too fragile and too popular for other uses, so they never made it back to the dairy for refilling.

“I have a few quart bottles and a couple of half-pint bottles from the dairy, but I have never been able to find a pint bottle,” Thom added. “I’m still hoping to find one for sale. A fellow in West Brownsville had two of the one-gallon jugs that he used to haul water from a spring. He always jokingly told me that he would leave them to me in his will. They are probably the only ones still existing.”

Chocolate milk from Stapleton’s Dairy still holds a special spot in the memories of those who enjoyed chug-a-lugging it more than 60 years ago.

“I remember the Stapleton Dairy very well,” observed Conway Keibler of Pittsburgh. “I was friends with Marilu Stapleton [Thom’s sister], whose grandparents founded the dairy. We were both members of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at South Brownsville Methodist Church, and in the World War II era, we got as many as 50 kids to our meetings on Sunday evening.

“Perhaps the real reason they came out in such numbers is that after almost every meeting, we went to someone’s home for refreshments. The favorite place to go was Stapleton’s, because Mrs. Stapleton always gave us chocolate milk from the dairy. Some kids, mainly guys, would down a whole quart. I’m sure we drank our way into the profits, but the Stapleton home was always open to young people.”

Marilu Stapleton Coppinger now lives in Phoenix, Ariz., but she has not forgotten those youth fellowship gatherings.

“When I was a freshman in high school,” she told me, “we used to have parties at home. My mom, Valera ‘Dutch’ Stapleton, always sat the chocolate milk out. My friends loved it, and they would drink it by the bottle.

“We did have the reputation of having the best buttermilk in the Mon Valley. It was rich, tart and delicious. I remember my mother telling me about getting fined for having too much cream in the milk. In those days, skim milk was only fit to ‘slop the hogs,’ and it was illegal to sell it. But during the Depression, when so many people were hungry, Mom wouldn’t throw the milk down the drain, as we were supposed to do, but instead gave it to anyone who wanted it.”

Paul Broadwell, also of Phoenix, was another West Brownsville native for whom Stapleton’s chocolate milk hit the spot.

“I lived in West Brownsville in the 1000 block of Middle Street from the summer of 1935 until after graduation from high school in 1939,” Paul told me. “I attended the junior high school on Front Street, then the high school on High Street, and it was roughly a mile to my home from both schools. My friends and I frequently went home for lunch, and our route was always the same. We would run all the way from the high school, down the hill and across the bridge. We would keep running down Middle Street, which was one-way for several blocks, until we reached the concrete divider blocking part of Middle Street to let people know that it had become a one-way street. We would run up to that divider, then walk the rest of the way home.”

After a long jaunt like that, it is not surprising that Stapleton’s Dairy, which was just a few blocks beyond that divider, provided a tempting place for the boys to linger for a moment.

“A couple times a week,” recalled Paul, “Stapleton’s Dairy would have chocolate milk for 5 cents a quart. It was a day old, but oh so good! We would share it whenever we could afford to buy a quart.”

One of the most vital individuals in keeping the dairy operating smoothly was a fellow named “Litchie.” Next week, we will venture inside the dairy and see how, under Litchie’s guidance, Stapleton’s delicious chocolate milk, thick cream, cottage cheese and other dairy delights were produced and delivered.

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 E. Church St., Uniontown, Pa., or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com. All past articles are on the Web at a href=”http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/ http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/ end

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