AFFORDABLE HOUSTON JUVENILE DEFENSE ATTORNEYS

Well, this is one of a series of pictures from my visit to the place where my dad was born, the town of Shenandoah, PA. I went a little off my path from Boston to Colorado to see this town and see if I could dig up any relatives. Well not really dig them up, though I did visit the cemeteries. Not because I am particularly ghoulish (some may disagree?) but, because I was looking for names that would be potential relatives. I have taken on the role of family history researcher and have done a pretty decent job of exploring my mom's ancestry on Ancestry.com. Back to Ireland and Scotland mostly from before the US war of independence. But my dad's family is from eastern Europe and those records have proved harder to find on Ancestry.com. More work to do there and in the Ellis Island records on-line. But thought I might find some evidence of relatives in this little town.

This town was important historically in the production of coal in this country. It is in Schuylkill Cty, PA where much of the coal that fueled our industrial revolution was dug. It lies along the Shuylkill Canal, built to ship the coal by barges from the mines to the industrial and population centers of the country. Barbara Freese, an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota has written a facinating book on the history of coal (called simply "Coal") from it's discovery as an ornamental stone in Britian to it's importance as the energy source that fueled and enabled the industrial revolution on two continents, and finally to it's damage to the environment and attempts to deal with that in her role as an Assistant Attorney General.

My grandfather was a coal miner in Shenandoah until he moved his family to Saint Claire Shores, MI and took a job on the assembly lines of Hudson Motors. My dad lived through the "Great Depression" and with the example of his father (my grand dad) he learned to work hard to reach goals. As I am sure many of the immigrant families that migrated into the places like Shenandoah and MI to take the tough jobs that were available to them did also. Their sacrifices in coming to this country and taking whatever was open to them in jobs made possible the life we all are fortunate to enjoy today. In some ways this small exploration on my part is an attempt to pay homage to what they did. In my next upload I will show some of what I found in the cemeteries above the town. I spent about 2-3 hours there after talking to a couple of locals in the town to asks some questions (where are the mines?, etc.) and get directions to the cemeteries.

I was told there was one other mine remaining that one could visit and have a tour, but it wasn't open when I was there. This was an abandoned mine on the road into Shenandoah. Not sure if it is actually in Shenandoah, or possibly in a town that no longer exists, Ellen Gowan. Ellen Gowan was named after the daughter of the prosecutor who tried and convicted the Molly Maguires back in the 19th century. The Mollies were miners who fought a guerilla war against the mine owners and their treatment of the miners. My dad said that when his dad became part of management - checking the safety of the mines on a daily basis before the miners went in, they got a nice house in Ellen Gowan. I suspect that this was a company town for managment, named as a kind of slap in the face of the miners after the progeny of the hated Gowan.

Stay tuned!