My favorite fellow brick collector, Jean Bear, recently received an inquiry requesting information on brick making in the Bridgeville area in the late nineteenth century. The questions were posed by a gentleman named Brendan Gallagher, who is the great-great-grandson of James Frain, a well-known local resident in his time. Mr. Frain died in 1896 at the age of fifty-two. His son “lived on Prestley Road with the Schultes and Mayers”. Family lore reports that he or his heirs sold a brick yard to C. P. Mayer. There is also a family rumor that there are bricks with the name “Frain” on them in Carnegie. Mr. Gallagher has visited the Prestley Road property, vacant since a fire destroyed the house in 1970, and found a pile of unmarked bricks that he reported appeared to be “homemade”.
This story piqued two of my interests – local history and brick collecting. It certainly would be interesting to determine if the well documented C. P. Mayer Brick Company was the descendant of a previous operation, rather than a brand-new enterprise created by an accomplished entrepreneur. The topic kicked off a major research project for me, one that has generated a lot of new information and raised a number of additional questions without definitively confirming Mr. Gallagher’s suspicion.
By coincidence, we already were aware of Mr. Frain, thanks to Bob Oelschlager. While we were researching Bridgeville area coal mines recently, he reported that there was a mine at the end of St. Clair Street owned by “Mr. Frain”. The mine entrance was still in existence in the 1940s. We assumed that this was a small, private operation providing coal for Mr. Frain’s residence.
Contradicting this assumption is a copy of Mr. Frain’s will, provided by Brendan Gallagher, dated November 18, 1896. It states, “I direct that the coal underlying my lands shall continue to be mined, removed, and sold and the making of bricks shall be continued and all profits arising from these operations shall be paid to my said wife….”. This certainly suggests that Mr. Frain’s operation was a commercial one and that it was not limited to coal mining. Mr. Frain died three days after the will was signed. It was witnessed by Mrs. Matthew Mallory, Barbra Mallory, and attorney George P. Murray. In early 1902 the Pittsburgh Press ran the following advertisement, “To Let, country coal pit at Bridgeville, contact Mrs. James Frain”. A month later the same newspaper included an obituary reporting Mrs. Frain’s death on March 5, 1902, and Requiem High Mass for her at St. Agatha’s Church. She was fifty-four years old when she died.
We think the Frains had five children. John (“Preston”) was born in 1867, married Mary Ann Kelly in 1894, and died in 1939. Katharine (‘Kate”) was born in 1869, married Nicholas Schulte, and died in 1942. Sarah was born in 1873, married James Nelson, and died in 1947. Margaret was born in 1878, married Francis Gallagher in 1904, and died in 1946. Bridget (“Delia”) was born in 1889, married Tim O’Donnell in 1905, and died in 1948. We also have a record of James Frain conveying lots in Bridgeville to his daughters Sarah and Kate in 1894.
The 1905 G. M Hopkins map of Bridgeville shows the extent of Mr. Frain’s holdings, about nine acres on the north side of Prestley Road leading down to Chartiers Creek. In the days before construction of the Wabash Railroad, Chess Street ran straight through to Prestley; Frain’s property was west of that intersection. The two blocks between his land and Washington Avenue were “the William Der Plan”; it included the Bridgeville Hotel (operated by the Mallorys) and the Zion Lutheran Church.
Nicholas Schulte, whom Katharine married, was the son of Ferdinand and Magdeline Schulte. Ferdinand was the brother of A. J. Schulte, the gentleman who opened the Bridgeville coal mine and whose daughter Philomena married C. P. Mayer. This confirms the Gallagher family legend that there was a tie between James Frain and Mr. Mayer. We have been unable to find any additional information that suggests a link between the two brick enterprises.
We believe that Mr. Mayer acquired the property northwest of the Washington Pike that eventually became Mayer Field in 1915. A legal notice in the May 12, 1915 Post-Gazette reported that forty acres owned by the deceased Dr. Clarence Spahr would be sold on May 22, 1915. The property included a three-story brick house, barn, and outbuildings. Thirty acres of the property was underlain by Pittsburgh seam coal. We presume Mr. Mayer was the purchaser.
The history of the property southeast of the Pike, which includes the site of the C. P. Mayer Brickyard is not as easy to determine. Henry Wright had the original warrant, in 1769, for “Old Fort”, 306 acres. This covered all the land within the Chartiers Creek meander between Bridgeville and the present location of the Kirwan Heights interchange. The warrant north of his was for John Neville’s “Woodville”; it comprised 400 acres. In 1828 Mr. Wright’s grant was resurveyed and conveyed to Christopher Cowan, who then was occupying Woodville. An 1851 map shows Dr. Spahr’s house on the northwest side of the Pike and S. McKown on the southeastern side, suggesting Mr. McKown owned the property in question at that time. This is also suggested by an 1862 Allegheny County map.. The 1892 “Farm Line Map of Allegheny County” shows Samuel McKown owning the properties on both sides of the Pike. Based on this information, it is our speculation that Mayer bought the site of his brick yard from Mr. McKown.
In the process of this investigation we have learned a lot about James Frain and now are convinced that he had a modest commercial enterprise at the end of St. Clair Street in the 1880s, selling coal and pre-Industrial Age bricks. This was an exciting time in the early development of the community.