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.