Anthracite Coal Miners
Birth of the industry
in 1808, Jesse Fell of Wilkes Barre, Pa. discovered how to burn anthracite coal as home heating fuel. Anthracite coal, or hard coal, quickly became a desirable fuel because it burned more efficiently and cleaner than soft or bituminous coal. The only deposits of anthracite in the United States lay in northeastern Pennsylvania, primarily in the counties of Luzerne, Lackawanna, Carbon, Northumberland, Schuylkill and Dauphin. Mines were established and eventually bought up by the large railroad companies who used the fuel to power their trains and could easily ship it to other locations.
We will now investigate what it was like to be an anthracite coal miner.
You are encouraged to locate additional sources on these topics in order to explore how these incidents have been remembered by local communities and analyzed by various historians.
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- Introduction Lori Shemanski
