Jake Wynn – Public Historian

On Election Day, November 7, 1876, reporters for the Wilkes-Barre Record roamed the Coal Region city’s streets, noting an unusual calm.

In 1856, at just 17, William H.

In a letter from Camp Graham, home of the 23rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Sergeant Charles Cyphers wrote to yet another letter to his former employers at the Pittston Gazette on October 23, 1861.

A fall of rock crushed Frank Broderick inside Shamokin’s Luke Fidler Colliery.

“On last Saturday morning our division advanced some five or six miles,” wrote correspondent “Shoulder Arms” from the forward camp of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves on October 20, 1861 near Langley, Virginia.

On October 18, 1861, 28-year-old Sergeant James Silliman, Jr. wrote home to a loved one in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, describing the first real combat he had seen with Colonel John White Geary’s 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

In the fall of 1846, the Miners’ Journal of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, warned readers about the dangers of walking the borough’s streets after dark.

In October 1861, a Luzerne County attorney named Caleb E.

On a rainy Tuesday evening, October 8, 1861, working class men gathered at the taverns and barrooms lining Minersville Street in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

“Camp life for a few weeks has been exceedingly monotonous,” wrote a member of Company F, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves to Mifflin Hannum, the editor of Wilkes-Barre’s Luzerne Union newspaper.

As Letters from War: 1861 heads toward its close at the end of the year, I’ll begin sharing what became of many of the people we’ve followed through the series.

In a letter to the Miners’ Journal of Pottsville, Captain Oliver C.

This story about a Lancaster County, PA community that had run out of anthracite coal demonstrates the widespread impact of the 1902 Coal Strike in the anthracite coal fields.

As September drew to a close in the nation’s capital, Sergeant Charles Cyphers wrote home to his former employers at the Pittston Gazette.

On August 29, 1864, a photographer posed 28 men of Company B, 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry on the rocky ledge atop Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee.

On September 21, 1846, the US Army launched its assault on the Mexican city of Monterey.

As summer turned to fall in Harrisburg, tens of thousands of soon-to-be soldiers gathered at Camp Curtin and adjacent military encampments as new three-year regiments were mustered into the United States Army.

On the afternoon of September 10, 1897, several hundred striking mineworkers, mostly immigrants from Central Europe, marched unarmed toward the Coal Region village of Lattimer, on the outskirts of Hazleton, to stand with a newly formed United Mine Workers…

Amid mud and driving rain, Private Luke Higgins wrote a letter to his sister in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

“I saw an awful sight,” Private Joseph Workman of the 96th Pennsylvania wrote to his father in Wiconisco Township ten days after the guns went quiet along Antietam Creek.

In a letter to his friend Henry Ansbacher in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Sergeant Louis Roth of the 20th New York Volunteer Infantry described the scenes around him at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the months after the conclusion of the Civil War, the Miners’ Journal newspaper of Pottsville, PA ran an unusual story in its columns.

I’m a huge soccer fan (I support Everton in the English Premier League – COYB!)

During the first week of September 1861, new troops and units poured into Camp Curtin, the military training ground in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

In the early days of September 1861, Peter Byrne traveled from his home in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C.

This photograph shows labor leader John Mitchell giving a speech at Philadelphia’s Washington Park in September 1902.

In September 1900, a 22-year-old journalist traveled from Philadelphia to the anthracite-laden hills and valleys of Schuylkill County.

With students heading back to school, I wanted to share a photograph I recently came across during some online research.

“An atomic bomb of joy spread over town last evening as the Victory Parade invaded the streets and hearts of a thrilled public,” wrote the Evening Herald of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in their headline story on September 1, 1945.

Amid a dense thicket along the Potomac River, 28-year-old Private Luther T.