Mar 26, 2005 8 min read

With sig and photoBy Glenn Tunney For the Herald-Standard

The Reader Roundtable has come up with answers to several of the reader inquiries that we passed along last month. The first question was posed by Sheridan Avenue’s Edwin Brand, who has unearthed several items over the years while gardening in his back yard.

“I dug up a flat metal object,” Edwin told me last month, “about six inches long, that bears the words ‘Mardorff Printing Company, Brownsville, Pa.'” Edwin also described two old milk bottles that his shovel turned up, one bearing the words ‘Nick Camino, Pure Milk, South Brownsville, one pint liquid,’ and the other labeled ‘Woodfill Brothers’ and ‘Low Hill Dairy.’

“I wonder if any of your readers know anything about the Mardorff Printing Company of Brownsville,” Edwin asked, “and I am interested in knowing more about either of those dairies or about the bottles themselves.”

Readers have come up with some information for all three of Edwin’s questions. One reader, 103-year-old Jean Gelder, a sharp-minded Brownsville native who lives at the Masonic Home in Elizabethtown, Pa., e-mailed me (via her friend, Hazel Minto Johnson) that the Mardorff Printing Company was located either in or beside the Plaza Theater in Snowdon Square. Thelma Pringle Rose of Brownsville also confirmed in a telephone conversation that the firm was located in the immediate vicinity of the theater.

“I think it was to the right of the Plaza Theatre,” Thelma told me, “possibly under Earl Storey’s stationery store. My late mother, Helen Geho, worked at Mardorff’s. I believe there was a double door, with one leading into Storey’s store and the other down to the basement.”

Brownsville native Hannah Millward Fisher found advertisements for Mardorff’s in her collection of old high school yearbooks. The 1926 South Brownsville High School yearbook, the Peptimist, contained a paid advertisement which identified “Mardorff Printing Company, Snowdon Place” as the “Headquarters for Dennison goods, party favors, greeting cards for all occasions.” Five years earlier, an ad for Mardorff’s appeared in the 1921 Peptimist, proclaiming “when in need of office furniture, just remember that we carry a very nice assortment in stock of roll top, flat top, typewriter desks, office tables, chairs, bookcases, filing cabinets and General Fireproofing Safes.”

As for the milk bottles that Edwin Brand unearthed, Harold Neil of Low Hill called to say that his farm is the former Woodfill dairy farm. The farm is located where the four-lane Route 43 ends and joins a two-lane road near Low Hill. According to Harold, the farm was operated by three Woodfill brothers, all bachelors, until the last of the brothers died on the farm in 1944. Harold was aware that the brothers did some wholesale dairying, but he was unaware of a retail operation called Low Hill Dairy, which is the dairy identified on Edwin’s milk bottle.

The label on the other milk bottle mentioned Nick Camino of South Brownsville. Hannah Fisher informed me that Nick Camino was a resident of Brownsville for 45 years and that he died at the age of 78 in April 1944.

“Nick Camino and his family lived across from my family on Lewis Street,” Hannah told me, “in the old stone house that is supposed to be a pre-Revolutionary War structure. They had a huge chicken coop and also ran the American or Acme store in town. I didn’t know about them having a dairy, but it well could be.”

Another question to which our readers responded was posed by Mary Dalson Wenick of Belle Vernon, who wrote to say, “I was born at a Lying-In Home (a maternity hospital) on Front Street, as was my sister, Katherine Dalson Sally. We were delivered by a woman doctor named Dr. Matta. I wonder if anyone knows anything about Dr. Matta or her hospital in Brownsville. Perhaps she was actually a midwife and just delivered babies. I think, although I am not sure, that she may have been the mother of John Matta (former Brownsville Telegraph editor).”

The Roundtable appears to have nailed down the location of the hospital while also turning up some additional information about Dr. Matta.

In Jean Gelder’s message describing the location of Mardorff’s, she added that “Mrs. Matta lived on Front Street, right up from Mr. Taylor’s home (now the Fecek residence), and I think she just delivered babies.”

Hannah Fisher, who is a librarian at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library, added, “In the 1925 AMA (American Medical Association) Directory, there is a Florence Belle Wyant. It appears her last name was Matta, but I do not know if Wyant was her maiden name. She was licensed in 1903, was a doctor in Brownsville as early as 1918, and died at the age of 55 on April 1, 1932, as documented in the July 23, 1932 issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).”

Hannah believes that Dr. Matta’s hospital was located in the very large brick house most recently occupied by the late Ann Frondorf, three doors up Front Street from Nemacolin Castle on the same side of the street as the castle. I will add that over the years, Ann Frondorf mentioned to me several times that her beautiful home was once a hospital.

When 80-year-old Boyd Jensen of Roanoke, Va., read Mary Wenick’s question, he immediately e-mailed to say, “I can’t furnish much information other than the fact that my birth certificate says I was born in this hospital in 1924. The attending physicians were listed as F.H. Matta, M.D. and L.C. Waggoner, M.D.”

To summarize our readers’ findings, it appears that the lady who delivered Mary Wenick and her sister was a doctor, not a midwife, and that the hospital in which they were born was most likely the red brick house at 217 Front St., now a private residence. As for Mary’s suggestion that Dr. Matta may have been John Matta’s mother, Hannah Fisher speculated, “I don’t think this physician was the mother of John Matta, the newspaper editor, because he was born in Sharon.”

In my Feb. 6 Brownsville Time Capsule article, I described a vicious dog attack which occurred 60 years ago. It happened in February 1945, when 21-year-old Gertrude Cottle of Lynn Station was attacked by a pack of dogs while walking to her job at the old Brownsville General Hospital at Fifth Avenue and Church Street. Gertrude was rescued from the dogs by William Yoder of National Pike East, who beat off the pack with the crank from his car.

Conway Keibler e-mailed that he remembered hearing of that dog attack. He recalls that the teachers at school told the students about it to stress the importance of avoiding stray dogs, particularly in packs.

“Did Miss Cottle survive?” Conway asked in our recent Roundtable column, “and does anyone know of her whereabouts?”

Yes, Conway, Gertrude Cottle did survive the attack. I spoke last week with her younger brother, 80-year-old Bill Cottle of Grindstone. He told me that if Mr. Yoder had not intervened when he did, “those dogs would have killed her.”

“You remember the attack?” I asked Bill.

“When it happened, I didn’t know about it,” he said, “because I was not here when the attack took place. I had been drafted and was serving in the Army. But Gertrude did recover from it, and she married and had several children. She is now a widow living in Detroit, Mich.”

During the past several weeks we have received more local history inquiries from readers, and we will share some of them with the Roundtable next week. However, we are presenting one of those questions today. It involves identifying the photograph of a store that was located somewhere in Brownsville.

Russell Urick of Zulu Street in California was born and raised on Fifth Avenue Extension in Brownsville Township. Russell’s father, Mike, passed away years ago, and recently Russell went through a box of papers and memorabilia that had belonged to his father. In the box Russell found a photograph of a grocery store called The Brownsville Progressive Cooperative Store. He brought the photograph to me, hoping that some member of the Roundtable will be able to identify its location or provide information about it.

While we were talking, Russell said, “I also recall another grocery store either near or inside the Brashear house (at Sixth and Market, North Side), and I wonder if any reader can tell me more about that store.” Any reader who recognizes the store in the photograph or may know about a grocery store in or near the Brashear house is invited to contact me.

Next week, we will present the Roundtable with new questions on such varied topics as Mary Magaldi, the Capuzzi Brothers bus line, Stewart’s Distillery, Kobacker and Siegel Clothiers, the Big Ten Fayette County Hall of Fame, the Village of Dunlap (Garwood Works), and the introduction of fluoridated water in Brownsville – all questions that have sprouted from the fertile minds of our inquisitive readers.

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 East Church St., Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to begin mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com end

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