"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.
In 1938, Jack Delano photographed a man identified only as a “bootleg miner” in Pennsylvania’s anthracite fields. When regular mining jobs vanished during the Great Depression, men dug coal illegally to feed their families. Read the Full Story.
In 1911, activist Lewis Hine found 13-year-old Willie Brieden working as a nipper 500 feet underground in Pittston, PA - alone in the dark, opening heavy doors as gas hissed nearby. Days later, Willie was home sick, coughing from endless hours in the damp mine. A childhood bent to anthracite's demands, captured in one image. Read the full story.
These 1938 photographs by Sheldon Dick show a landscape destroyed by mining and the efforts of local residents to survive the Great Depression.
Photographer Sheldon Dick made a visit to the Coal Region in 1938 to document scenes of life and work in the mining towns of northern Schuylkill County. On an evening during his visit, Dick made a swing by a bar room in Gilberton, Pennsylvania and snapped three photographs that bring the setting to life. The … Continue reading Scenes in a Coal Region bar room – 1938