Dec 11, 2004 By Glenn Tunney For The 8 min read

In last month’s Roundtable column, we passed along reader questions on such topics as the location of the Redstone Academy, the origins of the road surfacing material we know as “red dog,” and the title of pre-1934 Brownsville High School yearbooks. True to form, our Reader Roundtable has managed to uncover the answers to every question we posed. Pre-1934 Brownsville yearbook

In our November Roundtable column, Hannah Millward Fisher inquired, “I know that after South Brownsville and Brownsville boroughs merged into Brownsville borough in 1934, the yearbook of the newly-consolidated Brownsville High School was called ‘On The Mon.’ Prior to the consolidation, the South Brownsville High School yearbook was called ‘The Peptimist.’ Do you have any idea what the ‘North Side’ or Brownsville High School yearbook was called before 1934?”

The answer to Hannah’s question came from North Side native Norman (Bill) Patterson, who poked around in some old boxes at his Wesleyville home and struck pay dirt.

“It is a little the worse for wear,” Bill told me as he described the 82-year-old Brownsville High School yearbook that he found among his family’s keepsakes. “The red paper cover is detached and dog-eared, but the title, ‘The Red and Black – 1922,’ is apparent, and the pages are all there. I have reason to believe it was the first Brownsville High School yearbook, because it is notated ‘Volume 1.'”

The yearbook’s title page confirms that it is one of the publications about which Hannah Fisher was inquiring. The inside title page reads, “The Red and Black – published by the Class of 1922 of the Brownsville High School – Brownsville, Pennsylvania – Volume 1.” Thirty-five years after graduating its first class (of two students) in 1887, Brownsville High School published its first yearbook in 1922. The reason for its publication may be discerned from the following phrase in the 1922 yearbook’s foreword: “We, the class of Nineteen Hundred and Twenty Two, the first to graduate from the new four year course of the Brownsville High School . . .”

In 1922, Brownsville High School Principal Jesse Coldren expanded the school’s curriculum to a four-year (freshman/sophomore/junior/senior) program. The yearbook includes a year-by-year listing of the members of each Brownsville High School graduating class since 1887. No graduating class is shown for 1921 because a senior year (12th grade) was added to the curriculum for the following year.

The Class of 1922 boasted eight graduates. Perhaps readers will recognize some familiar Brownsville names from the past: Harry S. Brown (class president), Louise Caine, Ruth Ann Cooper, Thomas H. Kinloch, John T. Matta, Gertrude L. Spence, Elizabeth Szabo and Paul J. Wolfe.

Redstone Academy

A Uniontown reader asked, “I am trying to find out if anyone has ever heard of Redstone Academy. I do not know where it was located, but a female ancestor of mine attended there, probably in the 1890s.”

Several readers responded with information about Redstone Academy. Monongahela-born Jeff Antol of Williamsburg, Va., West Brownsville native Chuck Fuller of White Oak, and former Nemacolin resident Robert A. Cutler of Palm Desert, Calif., each sent me the following information from the “Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Fayette County, Pennsylvania” (Gresham and Wiley, 1889).

“Professor Solomon F. Hogue,” the information reads, “one of Pennsylvania’s leading educators . . . was educated in the common schools, Waynesburg College, and Edinboro Normal School, where he graduated in the class of 1872. He afterwards spent three years at Cornell University. He is also a graduate of Waynesburg College and the University of New York.”

After serving as superintendent of common schools in Greene County, Pennsylvania, Hogue moved on to teach at Edinboro Normal School and then became president of Defiance Normal College in Ohio. “In May, 1887,” the reference book continues, “he became principal of the training department of California Normal School. In July 1888, he came to Uniontown and organized Redstone Academy, a select private school for young men and young ladies, and for boys and girls, in a suite of rooms in the First National Bank building; but owing to the growth and prospects of the school, larger and more suitable rooms have been secured for it in the new Commercial block, centrally located at the corner of Church and Morgantown streets.”

The source of this information is an 1889 publication, so there is no indication of how long Redstone Academy operated or when it ceased to exist.

Red Dog

Judy Florian of Girard, Ohio, sought information about a once-familiar road surface in our area called “red dog.”

“I did not know until recently just how red dog was made,” Judy wrote. “I learned that it is slate that has burned, but exactly how did that process work?”

We heard from quite a few readers on this topic. Former Centerville resident Chuck Scott of Auburn, Calif., wrote to tell me how red dog was created. “Red dog was indeed the result of burned slate,” Chuck explained. “However, the burning was accidental rather that intentional. Large piles of the slate that was removed from mined coal were usually located close to where the mining had occurred. Because the piles were so large, the weight of the material and the pressure exerted on the bottom of the pile caused it to spontaneously combust.

“Once ignited, it would continue to burn for many years. The resulting byproduct of this combustion was ‘red dog.’ I don’t know when it was first used for roads, but it was used extensively for rural lanes and back alleys where we lived in Centerville for as long as I can remember. It probably became popular as a road surface because it was so plentiful, very durable and likely inexpensive.”

“When I was growing up, my dad used to haul red dog,” added Louis Doutt of Waynesburg.

“It was found at various mines that had been worked out. The slate that was left behind in huge mounds had ignited and burned away, leaving a reddish-pink ash that had a sulphur smell. It was a good base for driveways, which was the main reason my dad hauled it. The red dog was excavated from the mounds by way of a large power shovel and was sold and loaded onto trucks. It was a heavy material, and would last a long time.”

Red dog could be messy in wet weather, particularly if it was too fine, in which case the road surface would turn to a red quagmire. It turns out that red dog also constituted a health hazard, and that may have helped speed its demise as an inexpensive road-surfacing product and an anti-skid material. Meredith Leonard of Shaffner Avenue, Brownsville, sent me information that she acquired from the minutes of the Oct. 30, 2003, meeting of the Pennsylvania State Conservation Commission at State College.

“When tested,” Mike Klimkos of the State Conservation Commission reported at that meeting, “this material (red dog) is often found to have crystalline silica, which can be a respirable health hazard. DGRP (Dirt and Gravel Roads Program) staff, in consultation with the PSU (Penn State University) Center for Dirt and Gravel Roads Studies, has evaluated the risks associated with these products and is recommending that the DGRP not provide funding to purchase these materials and not endorse the use of these products as a material for road surface, road base repair, or maintenance.”

That policy statement was unanimously approved.

So as slate dumps and red dog slowly disappear from this region, there remains the question: Why was this material called ‘red dog?’

Meredith Leonard passed along one plausible explanation that, if true, would give the term ‘red dog’ an agricultural origin.

According to dictionary.com, “‘red dog’ is the term for the lowest grade of flour in milling. . . . It is chiefly useful as feed for farm animals.”

“In sifting, the bran and middlings (cereal) are removed,” adds Theodore R. Hazen in “The History of Flour Milling In Early America.”

“The ‘middlings’ also was called ships stuff or red dog and was used for ship’s biscuit. Red dog was named after a New England Native American who was named Red Dog. He made a deal with a New England miller in trade for all of the middlings the miller could supply his tribe.”

In our early history, the least desirable refuse of the grain milling process was known as red dog. Likewise, the coal mining process produced an unwanted refuse of its own called slate, which when burned became the grainy road-surfacing material we know as red dog. Could the reason we call that road-surfacing material ‘red dog’ be connected to our agricultural past?

I extend my thanks to all of the helpful members of the Reader Roundtable for their responses to our readers’ questions.

Next week I will pose a few more challenges for the Roundtable, and we will dig a bit deeper into the background of a gentleman I mentioned in this column a few weeks ago: Rosey Rowswell.

Glenn Tunney may be contacted at 724-785-3201 or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, PA 15442. Comments about these weekly articles may be sent to editor Mark O’Keefe, 8-18 E. Church St., Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com

All past articles are on the web at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/