Lieutenant John Ryan of Pottsville was captured during Pickett's Charge and spent nine months in Libby Prison. He came home with scurvy, dysentery, blackened teeth, and an ulcer eating through his leg. Explore more of his story of survival during the Civil War.
In June 1859, the coal miners of Wiconisco Township put down their tools over eight cents a car. It's the earliest documented strike from these collieries — and it didn't end well for the men who walked out. Read the story.
Sergeant John Williamson was a young laborer from the Coal Region village of Eckley who enlisted in the United States Army in 1861. One year later, he was killed during the brutal fighting at Charles City Crossroads in Virginia. Today, a photograph preserves the story of his short life in his hometown. Read the Full Story.
An investigation into one of the world's richest men, his basketball team, and an attempt to go around the NBA salary cap sent me looking back to investigative journalism of the past. In a rapidly devolving media landscape, the digging done by Pablo Torre and his team is reminiscent of how the muckrakers of the Gilded Age uncovered the truth about the world's richest and most powerful men. Read my full reflection.
In April 1862, Salmon P. Chase boarded a special train to tour the coal mines of Wiconisco Township with the recently disgraced Simon Cameron. Washington took notice. Within a year, the mines they visited together would be at the center of a corruption scandal involving Cameron and Henry Thomas. Read the full story.
After a striking miner was shot dead on September 21, 1900, Pennsylvania sent the National Guard into Shenandoah, PA - artillery, machine guns, and all. These photographs from an official Guard publication document the occupation of the mining town. Read the full story and see the images.
In 1892, Colonel Frederick Hitchcock stood before a room of fellow veterans in Scranton, PA and said what needed saying — that the nation's treatment of the nearly 200,000 Black men who fought for the Union during the Civil War was "an everlasting shame." Read the full story.
In 1875, a travel writer gazed down into Williams Valley near Tower City. Coal breakers loomed like "enormous black spectres," ridgelines fading blue toward the Susquehanna — the industrial and the sublime, side by side. Read the story.
In a letter to the "Miners' Journal," Private James K. Helms of the 6th Pennsylvania describes the scenes as the US Army crossed the Potomac River at Williamsport, MD in June 1861. The young soldier's account vividly describes their first march toward the enemy in Virginia. Read the full letter.
Inside an alleged Molly Maguires gathering place at Mahanoy City. Allan Pinkerton's detective agency described it room by room - the bar, the dining hall, the upstairs meeting room where a murder was allegedly planned. The Emerald House at Mahanoy City still stands today at 324 West Centre Street. Read the story and more about the Molly Maguires.