Letters from War: 1861 | Ario Pardee, Sr. and the recruiting of new regiments in the summer of 1861

Posted on by Jake Wynn

New regiments, new volunteers | The Coal Region rebuilds the Union Army after Bull Run | 1861 After the disaster at Bull Run, the Union's three-year recruiting effort reached deep into the anthracite coal fields. Four new companies were forming at Mauch Chunk, a Hazleton coal operator was outfitting a regiment, and the war that everyone thought would be short was quickly escalating. Read the story.

Walking Elsenborn Ridge | The foxholes and shell craters still cut into the Ardennes forest

Posted on by Jake Wynn

Last month I walked the ground above Krinkelt and Rocherath in Belgium's Ardennes, where the 99th Division held the line in December 1944. The foxholes are still there. So are the shell craters. And so is the story of a Wilkes-Barre soldier who earned a Bronze Star here — and didn't make it home. Read the full story.

A whiskey advertisement from Wilkes-Barre, PA | 1861

Posted on by Jake Wynn

When the 8th Pennsylvania's chaplain declared that bad army liquor should warn Civil War soldiers off drinking altogether, the editors of the Luzerne Union had a different takeaway — and used the opportunity to recommend their favorite local distillery. Read the story.

This 1869 shows a common Coal Region scene – a funeral cortege following a mine disaster

Posted on by Jake Wynn

This Harper's Weekly illustration from 1869 shows crowds following the remains of an Avondale victim to his grave. One hundred and ten men and boys died in Pennsylvania's deadliest mine disaster — and the Coal Region came out in force to mourn every one of them, a scene common to the anthracite coal fields since the beginning mining.

Letters from War: 1861 | “The light of a thousand homes has gone out” – A soldier with ties to Pittston writes after Bull Run

Posted on by Jake Wynn

"What a terrible thing a battle is..." On July 21, 1861, the Civil War turned truly bloody at Bull Run. A soldier with ties to Pittston was there - among the first onto the field, and the last to leave - and wrote home to describe the retreat, the dead left behind, and the moment the war became something no one could take back. Read the full letter.

Letters from War: 1861 | “They fled so rapidly” – A Pennsylvania volunteer writes from a captured rebel camp in Virginia

Posted on by Jake Wynn

A Luzerne County soldier sat down in a just-vacated Confederate camp at Bunker Hill, Virginia and wrote home to a woman in Wilkes-Barre in July 1861. The rebels had left so fast they didn't take their food. The writer shares his unvarnished thoughts about his rebel foes. Read the letter.

Article | “Hitler Is a world problem” – How the Coal Region’s Jewish communities saw the danger in 1933

Posted on by Jake Wynn

In the spring of 1933, Rabbi Louis Levitsky of Wilkes-Barre stood before a women’s club and said what much of the world wasn’t ready to hear. Across the Coal Region, Jewish communities were already organizing, writing, and raising money — while the rest of the world looked away. Read my latest for RealClear Pennsylvania.

“Divine Right” – A short letter from George Baer turned him into one of the Gilded Age’s greatest villains

Posted on by Jake Wynn

"The Christian men to whom God has given control..." Reading Railroad president George Baer meant his reply to a Wilkes-Barre photographer to be private. Within weeks it had been telegraphed across the country and handed the striking miners of 1902 the perfect villain. Read both letters in full.

Letters from War: 1861 | Charles Cyphers writes from Martinsburg after the 8th Pennsylvania’s first battle in Virginia

Posted on by Jake Wynn

"The battle lasted half an hour" After months of drilling at Camp Slifer and a long march south, Charles Cyphers finally had a battle to report. Writing fast from Martinsburg on July 7, he gave Pittston Gazette readers their first eyewitness account of Hoke's Run — and the dozens of locomotives the rebels had burned on their way out of Martinsburg, VA. Read the full letter.

Letters from War: 1861 | “We got the hottest of the fire” – A Pittston photographer writes from Martinsburg

Posted on by Jake Wynn

"The enemy's balls whistled like hail about our ears." Sergeant Francis Woodhouse stood his ground as cannon fire tore through the lines at Hoke's Run and watched two Pittston men fall wounded beside him. He came through without a scratch and wrote home four days later with one of the most vivid firsthand accounts in this series. Read the full letter.