During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an estimated 300,000 Lithuanians journeyed to America. This number is hard to document fully because census records did not officially recognize Lithuanians as a separate nationality until the twentieth century, and the country’s people may have been reported as Russian, Polish, or Jewish. Several cities and large READ MORE >>
Ukranian Lemkos in the Minersville (Pa.) region. This two-part article was originally published in 2011 and gives an intimate glimpse into family memories and history shared by people in the area of Minersville and the surrounding “patches” of Primrose and Forrestville. In addition, part 2 features information on the Kramer, Olenick, Katchmar, and Pellish families. READ MORE >>
In the autumn of 1931, a reporter from the Millersburg Sentinel sat down with Catherine Myers in her daughter’s home in Lykens to talk about the old days. At the time of the interview, Myers was 91-years-old. Her recollection provides us with something that’s fairly rare in the history of Williams Valley: recollections of the READ MORE >>
“This place is like a time capsule. You guys still talk about Lemkos and Galicia. We don’t even talk about that stuff,” said exchange student Lyudmyla Sonchak during an ethnic festival near Minersville, Pennsylvania. Anthracite Coal Region presents a unique historical demographic. Unlike larger American cities of the industrial heartland such as Chicago, New York, READ MORE >>
The disappearance of a Jewish community in a small mining town in Pennsylvania sheds light on the disappearance of many other small Jewish communities that once dotted the American landscape. Upon arriving in America in the late 1800s, many Jewish immigrants were faced with the same problem—earning a living. They were forced to peddle various READ MORE >>
Today’s Church of St, Patrick in Pottsville, Pa. was the first Catholic church in the lower anthracite coal region; the first between “John Potts and the coal mines” and the New York state boundaries to the east and to the north. It would become the mother church in which many other area Catholic parishes found READ MORE >>
By 1825, the Schuylkill Navigation Company had completed the Schuylkill Canal, which allowed for the transport of anthracite from Pottsville to Philadelphia in barges capable of holding 200 tons. In 1842, the first train by the P & R Railroad (Philadelphia & Reading) from Philadelphia made the trip to Pottsville (Pa.) to compete for the READ MORE >>
The Mahanoy Plane is an engineering feat that moved hundreds of millions of tons of anthracite coal up Broad Mountain, just north of Frackville, PA. What made this mega-machine run was a tandem frictional rope with a 6,000 horsepower steam hoist at Mahanoy Plane. The anthracite coal from the surrounding 48 collieries went through the READ MORE >>
Boilo — making it AND drinking it — is a local obsession here in the Coal Region around the holidays. This spirited beverage is the thing of legend in Schuylkill County and everyone has their preferred recipe and method of producing it. But one thing that remains constant is the almost exclusive use of blended READ MORE >>