In this episode of Public History with Justin, Jake, and Molly, Jake talks with author David Fleming about the Pottsville Maroons - coal miners turned football stars whose 1925 NFL championship was stripped away. It’s a story of early professional football that still resonates a century later. Listen to the episode.
This episode of the Public History podcast looks beyond the Irish Brigade to the everyday lives of Irish-born Union soldiers. We dig into letters, pension files, class, money, and memory with historian Damien Shiels and why Irish Civil War service has long been misunderstood on both sides of the Atlantic. Listen to the episode.
A century ago, a professional football team from Pottsville, PA bulldozed its way to an NFL title - only to have the championship yanked away in one of the NFL's first great scandals. In this piece, I look back at the 1925 Pottsville Maroons and share a new 100th-anniversary excerpt from David Fleming’s Breaker Boys, the book that brought their story roaring back to life. Read the full story.
In 1834 and 1835, a scientist named Constantine Samuel Rafinesque traveled widely through Pennsylvania in order to document the geology and biology of the Keystone State. In the spring of 1835, the Turkish-born polymath traveled north from Harrisburg aboard canal boats alongside the Susquehanna River to Millersburg. In his book, A Life of Travels, Rafinesque details … Continue reading An 1835 visit to the mines at Wiconisco Township
Elizabeth Ellet documented a trip to the Coal Region in her book, "Rambles about the country."
"Dear Ma" reveals the letters of a Civil War soldier from Schuylkill County.