Source:Sykes-1941-10-22

From Pittsburgh Streets

Edward C. Sykes. I Remember. Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Oct. 22, 1941, [p. 16]. Newspapers.com 523618034.

I Remember

And maybe you recollect when Marshall Avenue, North Side, was a narrow dirt road and was known as Black Lane. Attorney Morris D. Canter writes me that "about 1885 old Allegheny Councils renamed it Marshall Avenue, for 'Glorious Old Tom' Marshall, who had settled in Black Lane in 1863." Judge Thomas M. Marshall, of Common Pleas Court, is a grandson of the famous lawyer.

—Remember the Sons of Vulcan, an organization of rollers and puddlers? Miles S. Humphreys, who was appointed chief of the Pittsburgh Fire Department in 1891, was its first president. That body finally developed into the old Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. It was while Humphreys was president that the first sliding scale was adopted.

—When Thomas B. Riter, of the old Riter Conley Company, died, in 1913, he left an estate valued at nearly $4,000,000. He owned a large interest in that concern, of which he was the head. He directed the income be paid to his widow, Sophie A. Riter, during her lifetime and then to his son, Joseph Riter. The balance of the estate was distributed according to the intestate laws.