Claude Merchant's April 1865 poem summed up the feelings in Pottsville, Pennsylvania after the Confederate capital fell to US forces.
“Richmond has fallen! Richmond is ours!” – A victory poem from April 1865
Grievances of Williamstown miners against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company – 1886
"We are men and all we ask is to be treated as such," wrote the miners in a public letter published during their 1886 strike.
“Thoughts for Tomorrow” – Remembering the sacrifice of Schuylkill County’s Civil War soldiers
And a plea to consider what the Confederate battle flag meant to the local soldiers who fought and died in the Civil War.
Henry Keiser’s ‘reminisicences’ of Lykens and Wiconisco before the Civil War
In May 1927, Henry Keiser described the Coal Region towns where he grew up as they looked in the 1850s.
Remembering the Stockton Mine Disaster – December 18, 1869
On December 18, 1869, six people were killed when a mine cave-in swallowed their homes in Luzerne County.
Schuylkill County’s first Thanksgiving – November 27, 1845
A new tradition was born when Schuylkill County celebrated its first Thanksgiving in November 1845.
U.S. Navy admiral: anthracite coal won the Civil War
In 1906, Admiral Robley D. Evans declared anthracite coal a vital strategic resource and used the Civil War as an example.
Photographs: A colliery in Schuylkill County
Coal Region photographer A.M. Allen captured images of a colliery near Mahanoy City in the years after the Civil War.
“An enduring monument” – A trip inside Williamstown’s opera house and public hall
A newspaper clipping from 1872 takes us into a long-demolished building at the heart of Williamstown, PA.
Christmas in a Coal Region ‘patch town’
A writer from Kalmia Colliery in Schuylkill County details Christmas celebrations in a newspaper dispatch from 1877.
