Erskine Ramsay (September 24, 1864 – August 15, 1953) was an Alabama industrialist.

Biography

He was born September 24, 1864 in

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Allegheny County () is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,250,578, making it the state's second-most populous county, following Philadelphia Co ...

. His family came from

Dunfermline Dunfermline (; sco, Dunfaurlin, gd, Dùn Phàrlain) is a city, parish and former Royal Burgh, in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. The city currently has an estimated population of 58,508. Accord ...

Fife Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

the same town as

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie (, ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans i ...

. Erskine Ramsay's father, a mining engineer, followed Carnegie to Pittsburgh hearing of his success there. The younger Ramsay started working in cooperative store at the mines as a teenager. In 1882, he attended

Saint Vincent College Saint Vincent College is a private Benedictine college in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1846 by Boniface Wimmer, a monk from Bavaria, it is operated by the Benedictine monks of Saint Vincent Archabbey, the first Benedictine monastery in the ...

Latrobe, Pennsylvania Latrobe is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in the United States and part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The city population was 8,338 as of the 2010 census (9,265 in 1990). It is located near Pennsylvania's scenic Chestnut Rid ...

, at the Senior level, graduating at the head of his class, with little previous formal education. He switched to the mining operations side and was quickly advanced being focused on productivity. He was hired away from Pennsylvania in his twenties to fill a managerial post at Tennessee Coal & Iron. He came to Birmingham in 1887 to run the Pratt Mines, where he invented the rotary coal dump, swivel coupling, and many other innovations, eventually holding over 40 patents, according to industry journal Coal Age. From there Ramsay advanced to increasingly senior positions within the company. With a group of investors he took over and managed

Pratt Consolidated Coal Pratt is an English surname. Notable people with the surname include: A–F * Abner Pratt (1801–1863), American diplomat, jurist, politician, lawyer * Al Pratt (baseball) (1847–1937), American baseball player * Andy Pratt (baseball) (born 1 ...

. A key figure in the development of

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

, he also donated $100,000 to

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a public land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama. With more than 24,600 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of more than 30,000 with 1,330 faculty members, Auburn is the second largest uni ...

, the largest single contribution at that time (ca 1925), and the Erskine Ramsay Engineering Hall (1925) was one of the results. Ramsay served as president of the Birmingham Board of Education from 1922 to 1941. In 1930, the city's newest high school was named Erskine Ramsay Technical High School. Today it is known as

Ramsay High School Ramsay High School is a four-year magnet high school in Birmingham, Alabama. It is one of seven high schools in the Birmingham City School System and one of three International Baccalaureate schools in the Birmingham metropolitan area. Originall ...

. He was awarded the

William Lawrence Saunders Gold Medal The William Lawrence Saunders Gold Medal was first awarded in 1927 and recognizes "distinguished achievement in mining other than coal". The award is funded by the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers and named fo ...

in 1937 by the

American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) is a professional association for mining and metallurgy, with over 145,000 members. It was founded in 1871 by 22 mining engineers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Un ...

for improving the manufacturing of coke. He began opening bank accounts for males named for him, and did this for African American

Erskine Hawkins Erskine Ramsay Hawkins (July 26, 1914 – November 11, 1993) was an American trumpeter and big band leader from Birmingham, Alabama, dubbed "The 20th Century Gabriel". He is best remembered for composing the jazz standard "Tuxedo Junction" (1 ...

. Hawkins became a trumpeter and bandleader and helped create the hit song "

Tuxedo Junction "Tuxedo Junction" is a popular song written by Erskine Hawkins, Bill Johnson, and Julian Dash with lyrics by Buddy Feyne. The song was introduced by Erskine Hawkins & His Orchestra, a college dance band previously known as the Bama State Collegi ...

." Hawkins is buried in the same cemetery as Ramsay. Erskine Ramsay died August 15, 1953, in Birmingham, and is buried there alongside his brother Andrew Carnegie Ramsay in Elmwood Cemetery (Block 16).

References

Alabama Hall of Fame: Erskine Ramsay

External links

Sloss Furnaces website
Businesspeople from Birmingham, Alabama American manufacturing businesspeople Auburn University people 1864 births 1953 deaths Burials at Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama) {{US-business-bio-1860s-stub