"For several years, our friend Mr. Yuengling has been engaged in digging into the hill back of his old establishment in Mahantongo Street..." This 1846 article from the "Miners' Journal" newspaper in Pottsville, PA reports on update to D.G. Yuengling's Eagle Brewery. Read the story.
"The anthracite coal strike had a fitting climax in the cold blooded eviction scene that took place on the Jeddo property of G. B. Markle & Co. to-day..." On November 6, 1902, several families were forcibly evicted from company-owned housing in the mining patches outside Hazleton, PA. This is the account of the evictions that circulated in its aftermath. Read the story.
"My duties compelling me to remain below, I had little opportunity of observing the progress of the fight, and was... in a disagreeable state of suspense." Surgeon Robert Weber of Pottsville, PA experienced the Battle of Port Royal Sound on November 7, 1861 aboard the USS Unadilla. He described the battle and its aftermath in a letter to his parents in Schuylkill County. Read the full letter.
“On the 7th of this month we re-planted the glorious stars and stripes upon the soil of rebellious South Carolina, the very hot-bed of Secession..." US Marine Simon Bassler wrote home to the Miners' Journal to describe the Battle of Port Royal Sound on November 7, 1861. The young captain's clerk from Schuylkill Haven participated in the battle aboard the USS Susquehanna. Read the full letter.
In November 1864, Schuylkill County mine superintendent Gilliard Dock took up his pen and journaled about his daily routine at the coal mine just north of Pine Grove, PA. Dock was active in his journal that fall, writing about politics, the prospects for his mining operation, and the chaotic state of American politics in the fourth year of the Civil War. Read the full story.
"I feel at home everywhere in this great Republic, with Freedom's soil beneath my feet and Freedom's Banner, the Stars and Stripes, floating over me." In a letter to the Carbondale Advance, Sergeant Peter Vankirk described the aftermath of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in October 1861 and explained why he had joined the Union army to put down the rebellion. Read the full letter.
“A fearful ride we had of it. God preserve me from ever having another like it.” In November 1861, Colonel Benjamin C. Christ and the 50th Pennsylvania sailed with a vast Union fleet into a hurricane off North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In a letter to his wife, Christ described how he and his soldiers fought to keep their ship afloat in the raging seas. Read his letter.
An 1857 illustration shows how violent, corrupt, and exclusionary American elections once were. Voting was limited, could be dangerous, and was often corrupt - until generations pushed to expand and protect the franchise. Today’s system exists because of that long fight and the quiet work of those who safeguard it. Read the full reflection.
This 1872 Harper’s Weekly illustration shows miners still in their lamps and work clothes casting ballots outside a Pennsylvania colliery - voting before heading home from a shift underground in the Coal Region. Read the full story.
John Gillespie came home from the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry in June 1865, months after the Civil War ended. On Halloween night, he was shot on the streets of Tamaqua. He died twelve days later. Read the full story.