"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.
Through the coal country with a camera... This photograph was taken in a school classroom somewhere near Shenandoah, PA and appeared in an 1892 magazine article by journalist and photograph Frances Benjamin Johnston. Read more of the story.
"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.
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.
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.
When the Coal Strike of 1902 turned violent, Pennsylvania sent armed troops into its mining towns. This photograph from Leslie's Illustrated captures the 8th National Guard patrolling the streets of Shenandoah, a Coal Region flashpoint, caught on camera by a local photographer. Read more.
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.
V-J Day comes to Girardville | The Coal Region celebrates the end of World War II | 1945 When the news broke on August 15, 1945, Girardville took to the streets. This photograph captures the celebrations — and the moment a coal mining community exhaled after four years of war.
Walking in the footsteps of Schuylkill County soldiers in Albuquerque | 1916 While in Albuquerque for work, I kept walking past the same adobe church that Coal Region soldiers wrote home about in 1916, on their way to the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa raids. Their letters home are full of curiosity and surprises.
When the Soviets sealed off West Berlin in June 1948, Lt. Joseph Elonis of Donaldson was already flying C-54s into the blockaded city around the clock. He wrote home to the West Schuylkill Press-Herald about what it looked like from the cockpit - and what was at stake. Read the story.