September 24, 1864

Erskine Ramsay, a mining engineer, investor, longtime Birmingham Board of Education president and well-known millionaire philanthropist, was born at Six Mile Ferry, Pennsylvania. Ramsay grew up in his father’s machine shop and managed a general store at 13. He joined the senior class at St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and graduated as head of the class the following June. At 18, Ramsay became superintendent of the Monastery Mine and set a goal of surpassing four tons of coke per oven per charge. At 20 years old, he oversaw the third-largest coke producer in Pennsylvania. Despite his position, Ramsay handed his earnings to his father, who gave him an allowance. He later was named assistant general manager and made supervisor of Southwest Co.’s Linn Iron Works, forcing Ramsay to move to Pratt City, then to Birmingham. Though unmarried and childless, Ramsay was asked to join the Birmingham Board of Education in 1922, serving as president of the board for 19 years. In 1930, the board named the new Erskine Ramsay Technical High School in his honor. Today, Ramsay is a four-year magnet high school, one of the three international baccalaureate schools in the Birmingham metropolitan area. Ramsay was inducted into the Alabama Men’s Hall of Fame in 1998, 45 years after his death.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Industrialist, engineer and inventor Erskine Ramsay (1864-1953) greatly influenced the coal mining and iron production industries in Alabama during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ramsay also was active in politics and through his philanthropy supported educational development in the state. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, Birmingham Public Library Archives)

Portrait of Erskine Ramsay. (BhamWiki)

Coal operators in conference with President Hoover: (left to right) S.L. Yerkes, Frank Nelson, Erskine Ramsay and J.A. Norman. (Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.