Nanticoke Archives - Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine

A Culture of Sharing: Family and Community in Pennsylvania’s Anthracite Region, 1900-1940

Posted by John Bodnar on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off Prior to the establishment of widespread governmental assistance programs such as social security and various other forms of social services, the working people of industrial America devised their own means of survival and support. Drawing on the resources of family members and neighbors, ordinary individuals created tightly-knit communities in which limited incomes, food and emotions were...
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A Most Deadly Business

Posted by Charles Joyce on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off During the early morning hours of December 5, 1885, John Lynot labored hundreds of feet underground in the stale air of his “breast,” a black chamber in the coal seam the size of a small room, preparing an explosive charge. An anthracite miner for the Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Company, Lynot earned eighty-five cents for each two ton mine car he filled. Finding the weakest point...
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Schuylkill County: Built on Coal

Posted by Joseph Hanney on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off The history of Schuylkill County is inextricably bound to the story – and drama – of the great anthracite industry in the United States. Despite nearly two centuries of active mining, the county’s 783 square miles still boast the largest accessible reserves of hard coal known in the world. Its lives and lifestyles have been quasi-fictionalized by two of the county’s best...
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Pennsylvania Woman as Pioneer: Hanna Tiffany Swetland (1740–1809)

Posted by John Furlow on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off When the swollen waters of the Susquehanna River roared and smashed over its banks in the Spring of 1972, bringing destruction to property and homes and despair to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania citizens, one of the hardest hit areas was the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania with its many small towns. One such community was the quaintly and historically named Forty Fort. That...
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Born to Organize

Posted by Kenneth Wolensky on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off For nearly two decades, from 1944 to 1963, in northeastern Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley, a center of anthracite mining, Min L. Matheson (1909-1992) and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) were synonymous with notions of “community.” A charitable event? Count on the ILGWU to provide volunteers and raise money. Patients at an area veterans’...
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Burnt Cabins

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off On July 18, 1749, Seneca representatives complained to the Provincial government that white settlers were violating a treaty by building houses on land belonging to the Six Nations. In response, Lieutenant Governor James Hamilton issued a proclamation. “I … do hereby, in His Majesty’s Name,” Hamilton ordered, “strictly charge, command, and enjoin all & every the...
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Baseball’s One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off On Sunday, May 20, 1945, thirty-six thousand spectators packed Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, for a doubleheader that pitted the New York Yankees against the defending American league champions, the St. Louis Browns. The Yankees, who had finished in third place in the previous season, six games behind the Browns, had something to prove that afternoon. Even though the World War II had stripped...
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Lloyd Mifflin: Artist of the Susquehanna

Posted by Irwin Richman on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off While many artists have painted the majestic Susquehanna River, none were as devoted to studying, rhapsodizing about its beauty and, ultimately, painting it in its many moods as was Pennsylvania native Lloyd Mifflin (1846–1921). In many ways, Mifflin typified the romantic, if often improbable, late nineteenth-century image of the artist as an attractive, highly sensitive, elitist dandy who...
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