We sat down with public historian John Heckman to discuss the 1862 miners' revolt in Schuylkill County.
Podcast – Discussing the 1862 uprising in Schuylkill County
“The Pioneer” – Ashland’s Pioneer Colliery in 1864
A brief look at the history of Ashland's Pioneer Colliery in the 19th century.
“An enduring monument” – A trip inside Williamstown’s opera house and public hall
A newspaper clipping from 1872 takes us into a long-demolished building at the heart of Williamstown, PA.
A ‘wet’ Christmas in the Coal Region during Prohibition
A reporter for the Hazleton Plain Speaker interview bootleggers to get a scoop on the booze situation in 1926.
Then and Now: Williamstown’s Emergency Influenza Hospital
A modern walk to the places that saw the worst of the suffering during the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak.
The 1918 influenza pandemic tore apart this small Pennsylvania family
Influenza swept through the Hensel family of Sheridan, Pennsylvania in October 1918, leaving three dead and lives changed forever.
“Children of the mine” – The Coal Region’s breaker boys at work
"Children of the mine are they, born in the shadow of the culm heaps with the roar of the breakers ever in their ears, with mines beneath their feet."
A patient’s haunting experience in a Coal Region influenza hospital in 1918
What was it like to fall ill during the deadliest epidemic in human history?
“May these sights soon cease” – Influenza in Pottsville, 1918
"Sorrow and woe stalk almost unceasingly in our midst," wrote the Pottsville Republican in October 1918.
A Coal Region editorial from 1900 speaks to income inequality a century later
A writer at the Lykens Register opined in September 1900 about rising inequality in the Coal Region.
