Clearfield County: Land of Natural Resources

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Clearfield County: Land of Natural Resources Clearfield County, believed named for the cleared fields found by early settlers in the area, belies its name; 83 percent of the county’s 1,143.5 square miles is still forested today. Its present timber, however, is second and third growth. Although its forest lands support some lumbering, the county’s economic life depends mostly upon coal and clay in­dustries and the manufacture of...
read more

The All-Too-Youthful Proletarians: Breaker Boys of the Anthracite Coal Region in the Early 1900s

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The All-Too-Youthful Proletarians: Breaker Boys of the Anthracite Coal Region in the Early 1900s Many Pennsylvanians have long forgotten one of the state’s major claims to national prominence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-the anthra­cite coal industry. In those years, clean-burning anthracite heated more homes in the northeastern United States than any other fuel, and a 1,700 square-mile area in northeast Pennsyl­vania produced almost all of the nation’s...
read more

Fayette at the Crossroads

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Fayette at the Crossroads Fayette County has always been at the crossroads, both literally and figuratively, its destiny shaped by its location, the incredible riches of its natural resources and the vi­tality of a people descended from al­most every nation of Europe. It has a son of dual personality, geo­graphically divided between mountains and lowlands, historically divided into two almost equal eras of economic...
read more

To Organize the Unorganized

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on To Organize the Unorganized The year 1919 was marked by an explosion of activity in the American labor movement. Discontent surged among industrial workers as promises of wage increases and improved working conditions, made by employers during World War One, failed to materialize. Telegraph operators, theater ushers and textile workers joined firemen, policemen and dock workers to oppose some of the country’s most...
read more

A Salute to the Bicentennial of the Keystone State

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Salute to the Bicentennial of the Keystone State The current Bicentennial celebration commemorates not the birth of the United States, but the proclama­tion of thirteen British-American colonies that were “free and independent states” as of July 4, 17.76. When they formed a loose compact in 1761, their articles of confederation declared that “each state retains its sover­eignty, freedom and independence.” The...
read more

The Depression Strikes Indiana County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Depression Strikes Indiana County The Great Depression of 1929-32 without question was one of the watershed periods in American history. Joseph Alex Morris once wrote that “people later would speak of ‘before 1929’ or ‘after 1929’ as Noah’s children may have spoken of the days before and after ‘The Flood.'” The personal deprivation and social upheaval of those times sent shock...
read more

Historical Sketch of Luzerne County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Historical Sketch of Luzerne County The Proclamation Line of 1763 was a stopgap devised to give England a chance to gather her forces and to adopt a policy for further expansion of the American colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. The Treaty at Fort Stanwix in 1768 resulted in a pre-revolutionary division of Indian land to establish a boundary between the Indian hunting grounds and the white settlements. The treaty was the last...
read more

The Lattimer Tragedy of 1897

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Lattimer Tragedy of 1897 Sheriff James Martin of Luzerne County in Pennsylvania was vacationing in Atlantic City, New Jersey, when he received an important telegram on Saturday, September 4, 1897, from George Wall, his deputy. The message indicated that Superintendent Lathrop of the Lehigh Valley Coal Company requested the sheriff’s presence at Hazleton to deal with a deteriorating strike situation that was...
read more

Lackawanna County: The Last Shall Not Be Least

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lackawanna County: The Last Shall Not Be Least The history of the Key­stone State’s sixty­-seven counties is often quite similar to family histories. Its portrait is a rich composite of Native American legend and lore, early trans­portation, marine and mari­time heritage, industry and industrialists, pioneers, capitalists and the working classes, religious communes, inventors and the Industrial Revolution …. And the county, whose...
read more

That Magnificent Fight for Unionism: The Somerset County Strike of 1922

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on That Magnificent Fight for Unionism: The Somerset County Strike of 1922 During 1920 and 1921, western Pennsylvania’s coal mine operators campaigned vigorously to slash wages of the miners they employed. Because demand for coal declined after World War One the operators were forced to reduce production, resulting in stack, or in some cases, the complete shutdown of operations. Many miners drifted to factory jobs in nearby cities, or simply clung to hope -and...
read more