Apr 3, 2018 4 min read

The spotlight fell on Brownsville history during a recent presentation at the Heinz Regional History Center in Pittsburgh.

Part of a series of five Osher Lifelong Learning Classes, “History 412: Discover the Sites and Stories That Make Our Region Unique,” the presentation of 24 slides, each with its own unique narrative, covered the town’s acclaimed history.

Beginning in the 1700s with Chief Nemacolin, the presentation went on to discuss Old Fort Redstone, Bowman’s (Nemacolin) Castle, the town’s early steamboat enterprises, National Road, Cast Iron Bridge and, most recently, the Frank L. Melega Art Museum, Transportation Museum and new Iron Bridge Amphitheater.

Early in December, the Brownsville Area Revitalization Corporation (BARC) got an email from Robert Stakeley, history center affiliates program coordinator, requesting information on the town for consideration for inclusion the Osher classes, which are offered through Carnegie Mellon University.

The email went out to the history center’s 125 affiliates, and Brownsville was one of 26 that responded. By late December, 16-year-old Nicholas Seto, a BARC volunteer, and former Brownsville Mayor Norma Ryan submitted a rough draft of a PowerPoint presentation.

After careful consideration, a small committee at the history center in late January informed them that Brownsville had been chosen to be featured as part of the class series.

Seto, a resident of Allison and a Brownsville High School sophomore with an interest in area history, worked on the presentation daily, adding to it and making changes.

“Norma and I went through the town’s history and selected the major points for the discussion,” Seto said. “Overall, I must have put in 50 hours of work on the PowerPoint presentation alone.”

For slides, they borrowed from BARC holdings and captured current images of the town on a digital camera. For direction, the duo worked with two representatives from the history center, Mark Diamond and Jon Grogan.

On March 14, 25 lifelong-learning adults attended the hour-long class followed by an extensive question-and-answer period.

“I was a bit nervous, but knowing the PowerPoint inside and out helped,” Seto said. “While Norma spoke more on the town’s history, I told more personal stories about Allison (a coal mining town near Brownsville), of my grandfather who worked in the mines, the company store and how people lived back then.”

In addition to the slides, the presenters brought in artifacts to embellish their narrative. They included an 1859 booklet showing many of the town’s businesses, a Brownsville brewery bottle, a soft miner’s hat and a small replica of the mile markers along the National Road made by the Snowden Foundry in Brownsville.

Stakeley said a colleague who attended the class mentioned that there was considerable interest in the presentation and that the attendees asked more than 20 questions at the end of the session. They even requested that the break they were entitled to be forfeited so they could continue the discussion. Some said the class piqued their interest so much, they intended to make a visit to Brownsville to see some of the sites discussed in the presentation.

“Many of the people who attend the classes are from Pittsburgh, Oakland, Shadyside and the East End,” Stakeley said. “The class was a good opportunity for the presenters to tell the wonderful story of their town’s history.”

Now that the presentation has been delivered, Seto has plans to take it on the road to a history class at his high school and to area libraries and Rotary clubs.

“People seemed surprised to see how much history came from out of our small town,” he said.

“I think it’s wonderful that a student as young as Nick is interested in history, and volunteers his time at BARC to help out with things like registering artifacts,” Ryan said.

With the Osher presentation now on his resume, Seto has his eye on another project, one that calls for the installation of a small pocket park on Bank Street in Brownsville, across from the soon-to-open Cast Iron Strong Photography Gallery.

“It’s now a wooded area owned by the gallery owner, Stephen Beckman, and I plan to have some of the trees removed, plant some grass, put in benches and am talking to the high school about having students paint a mural on one of the nearby walls,” Seto said.