Exploring the history of Pennsylvania’s Coal Region
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.
On Sunday evening, I had the chance to lead a walking tour of Williamstown, PA to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the community. It was a great time despite the heat and we explored two centuries of stories from this Coal Region community. Read the full article.
Martin Byrne arrived in Washington on August 6, 1861 and found a city locked down by mounted police, drilling soldiers, and the weight of a war gone badly wrong. He wrote home to say his health had never been better — and that he'd gained twenty pounds since leaving Carbondale. Read the letter.
New regiments, new volunteers | The Coal Region rebuilds the Union Army after Bull Run | 1861 After the disaster at Bull Run, the Union's three-year recruiting effort reached deep into the anthracite coal fields. Four new companies were forming at Mauch Chunk, a Hazleton coal operator was outfitting a regiment, and the war that everyone thought would be short was quickly escalating. Read the…
Last month I walked the ground above Krinkelt and Rocherath in Belgium's Ardennes, where the 99th Division held the line in December 1944. The foxholes are still there. So are the shell craters. And so is the story of a Wilkes-Barre soldier who earned a Bronze Star here — and didn't make it home. Read the full story.
When the 8th Pennsylvania's chaplain declared that bad army liquor should warn Civil War soldiers off drinking altogether, the editors of the Luzerne Union had a different takeaway — and used the opportunity to recommend their favorite local distillery. Read the story.
I've started writing on Substack - here's where to find me I've had my fill of Facebook's algorithm and the flood of AI-generated "history" crowding out the real thing. I'm now writing on Substack too - behind-the-scenes looks at my research, public history work, and take on the world. Come find me there.
After the disaster at Bull Run, thousands of unpaid soldiers flooded Harrisburg and turned to rioting — storming the arsenal, ransacking a hotel for the paymaster. A young Carbondale officer watched it unfold and called Patterson a "double-dyed traitor." Read the full letter.
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.
In November 1940, a letter from a telephone operator in London found its way into the pages of the Shamokin News-Dispatch. Alice Watts described incendiary bombs lighting every garden in her neighborhood on fire, whole streets reduced to rubble - and sleeping in her top-floor bed anyway, because a bomb either had your name on it or it didn't. Read the story from the London Blitz.