When the Molly Maguire era ended in violent repression, hundreds of Irish miners fled PA's Coal Region — some traveling 1,700 miles west to Leadville, Colorado, and bringing their legal troubles with them. Dr. Jim Walsh of UC Denver joins the Transatlantic podcast and as part of their discussion, shares these fascinating connections. Listen to the episode.
“It seemed as if the scenes and characters of the Bible were living again now, before our eyes.” Before he became the Coal Region’s most important folklorist, George Korson served in the Middle East during World War I. His letters and reflections capture a world in transition and a remarkable journey from Pennsylvania to Palestine. Read the Full Story.
“I am Mary Ubaniae, direct me to Hazleton, Pa.” In 1900, a ten-year-old Hungarian girl crossed the Atlantic alone with that tag tied to her dress. Her parents were gone, and relatives in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region were her only destination. A brief newspaper story preserves this remarkable journey. Read the Full Story.
“We still have plenty of room for those who come to us, provided they are the right kind of people.” That line appeared in a Pottsville newspaper in 1888 as thousands of immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe continued arriving in America’s industrial communities. The editorial captures the language of nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment at the moment the Coal Region itself was being reshaped by newcomers. Read the Full Story.
In Sligo, Ireland a bronze family waits forever on the quay—one small reminder of events that sent more than 30,000 people from that port city toward places like Pennsylvania’s coal towns. Read the full story.
In December 1845, as famine loomed in Ireland, a Pottsville newspaper advertised ship passages from Londonderry to Philadelphia. It’s a small notice that reveals how Irish migration began to reshape the Coal Region - and how welcome later turned to backlash. This story traces that turning point. Read the full story.
On March 16, I’ll be in Columbia, Maryland for Historians on Tap: Luck of the Irish. We'll be sharing stories about Irish history in Maryland and Virginia. Join us for drinks, history, and stories that still resonate. Read more and register for free.
In February 1832, an Irish newcomer named Patt Gildea sat down in Pottsville, Pennsylvania and tried to explain this strange new country to his brother back in County Mayo. Fresh from Quebec, Montreal, New York, and finally the booming Coal Region, he laid out wages, work, land prices, and daily life in blunt, practical detail — good prospects for single young men, hard choices for families. His letter, later published in an Irish newspaper, offers one of the earliest on-the-ground views of Pottsville’s “Coal Rush” from the eyes of an immigrant still figuring out if he’d made the right move. Read the full story.
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.
Annie Marion MacLean’s 1908 study of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields lays bare company-owned housing, four-room houses crammed with twenty to thirty boarders, beds shared by day and night shifts, vermin and filth, $1-per-room rents—and the gradual climb to 5 or 6 room homes, parlors, gardens, and disappearing boarders. Read the full story.