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A colorful personality in the early development of Economy Borough was an illiterate woman named Mary Eggleston Reed. Mrs. Reed ran a general store located on what is now the Peel property on Mary Reed Road, just before the Bradford Park area. Mary was known to be a clever business woman and an excellent horse trader. She could make business deals with local folk as well as bands of gypsies that came through the area from time to time. One time she traded an old worthless horse of hers for an excellent horse of the gypsies. Rumor has it that she had been a spy for the North during the Civil War. Some of her real estate holdings were settlements for unpaid grocery bills from her store. Mary wore a glass eye which was blinded from a chicken wing hitting her in the eye. Day and night she wore an old woolen hat.
She traveled to Pittsburgh each week to a market up the road that is now called Bock Lane. For many years Bock Lane was nicknamed Buttermilk Pike because Mary's wagon was always so full she tied several cans of buttermilk on the back end of the wagon. She left a trail of buttermilk along the waythus the road was called Buttermilk Pike. She would travel as far as the Baden station, unload onto the train and take produce into Pittsburgh. The hired man brought the wagon and team back home and then met her again the next day back in Baden.
Mary Reed died in 1932 at the age of 95 and is buried at Rehoboth Cemetery. The epitaph on her tombstone reads: