Letters from War: 1861 | Peter Byrne visits his son at Camp Lyon near the Chain Bridge in Washington, DC

Posted on by Jake Wynn

A father visits his son at war - and ends up behind Union lines in Virginia Peter Byrne came to Washington to check on his son, a lieutenant in the 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery. He left having crossed into Virginia in a borrowed uniform, stood behind an artillery battery in the pouring rain, and talked his way back across the Chain Bridge using a pass that called him "Colonel." Read the full letter.

“We’ll fight it out to the bitter end” | A journalist’s account of the impact of the 1900 Coal Strike on Schuylkill County families

Posted on by Jake Wynn

"I'm willin' for the sake of the poor creatures who never have enough to eat that my man shall strike." A Philadelphia Inquirer reporter named Esther Nixon traveled to Shenandoah, PA during the 1900 Coal Strike to interview working class mining families about the intense labor battle between the United Mine Workers and the coal operators. Read the full story.

Massive parade in Shenandoah, PA marked the end of World War 2 | August 31, 1945

Posted on by Jake Wynn

"An atomic bomb of joy" | Shenandoah's Victory Parade draws 20,000 | August 1945 On the eve of Japan's formal surrender, 20,000 people filled the streets of Shenandoah for a Victory Parade that the Evening Herald called "an atomic bomb of joy." Confetti rained from the buildings, Spanish-American War veterans drew cheers, and a sign in the crowd read: "To Our Buddies Who Won't Come Back." Read the full story.

Letters from War: 1861 | Luther T. Dodson mourns his young wife and writes of his regiment’s camp at Great Falls

Posted on by Jake Wynn

A soldier kneels at his young wife's grave - then marches back to war. Luther Dodson's wife Sarah died of tuberculosis at 25, less than a year after their wedding. He came home on leave that August, visited her grave at dusk, and wrote about it in a letter that stands as some of the most moving passages in this entire series. Then he went back to the front. Read the letter.

Letters from War: 1861 | A Pittston correspondent on Washington’s war fever and the “Peace Party”

Posted on by Jake Wynn

A constant rumble of baggage wagons, night and day" | Washington at war, August 1861 A Pittston correspondent spent a week in Washington in late August 1861 and sent back a portrait of a city transformed — cavalry clattering through the streets, tent villages visible from the Capitol, and two armies drawing closer by the day. He also had some sharp words for the "Peace Party" back home. Read the letter.

An account of the Second Battle of Bull Run written by a veteran of the 48th Pennsylvania

Posted on by Jake Wynn

Shot in the foot at Bull Run — and too stubborn to stop moving When a Confederate bullet hit Josiah Wildermuth in the foot during the Second Battle of Bull Run, he got up, fell down, got up again, and kept going. What followed was a days-long ordeal on improvised fence-rail crutches that took him from a field hospital to Centreville, Virginia to Washington. He told the story 38 years later at a veterans' reunion in Pottsville, PA. Read the story.

Illustration of Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers amassed in Shenandoah, PA | 1900

Posted on by Jake Wynn

Bayonets in the streets | The National Guard occupies Shenandoah during the 1900 Coal Strike After a fatal shooting during the 1900 Coal Strike, the Governor sent hundreds of National Guard troops into Shenandoah. This Philadelphia Inquirer illustration shows them massed in the streets — and the striking miners said it amounted to being threatened back to work at bayonet point. Read more.

A letter written by a US Marine from Japan during the “Boxer Rebellion” | August 1900

Posted on by Jake Wynn

Five hundred Japanese laborers coaled the US Navy transport in Nagasaki harbor, working for twenty-five cents a day. Watching from the deck was Philip Messner, a Marine from Loyalton, PA, bound for China. Forty-five years later, an atomic bomb erased the city he described. Read the Full Story.

Letters from War: 1861 | Martin J. Byrne guards the Chain Bridge above Washington

Posted on by Jake Wynn

From his post guarding the Chain Bridge above Washington, Lieutenant Martin Byrne watched General McClellan and President Lincoln ride through a grand review of the division on August 21, 1861. Lincoln, he noted, had "that lofty, though care worn appearance." Read the full letter.

The World War 2 letters of Private Lewis T. Jobe of Muir, PA

Posted on by Jake Wynn

Lewis T. Jobe fought through North Africa and Sicily and was invaded in the Invasion of Normandy on D-Day. Several letters he wrote in 1943 were published in a Tower City, PA newspaper and provide an eyewitness account of the Second World War. Read the letters here.