Coal Culture Projects

This website was created to identify images and resources that document the lives of western Pennsylvania coal miners and their families from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Special thanks goes to Eileen Mountjoy for her thorough essays on Pennsylvania Coal Culture, processing MG 94: The Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company Media Collection, and her book Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company: the first one hundred years.

Resources

• Coal Culture - Funded by an LSTA grant, this website includes background essays, primary source image search, lesson plans, timeline and bibliography. View the acknowledgments for this website. Visit the informational brochure to learn more about coal mining in western Pennsylvania.
• A Walk Through Time: Pennsylvania Coal Culture - University Museum exhibit co-curated by Harrison Wick and Rhonda Yeager in Fall 2009. The exhibit documented bituminous coal mining and living in company towns in western Pennsylvania. The University Museum exhibit catalog features many essays, photographs, and oral history interviews about western Pennsylvania coal culture from the Coal Culture website.
• Pennsylvania Coal Culture Resources - additional articles, oral history interviews, websites, and other resources about coal mining.

Collections

Search Manuscript Collections housed in the Special Collections and University Archives at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The following manuscript collections document coal mining history in western Pennsylvania.

• MG 5: George Swetnam Collection
• MG 15: Clarence Stephenson Collection
• MG 18: John P. Saylor Congressional Collection
• MG 40: John Brophy Collection
• MG 42: Records of the Central Pennsylvania Coal Producers' Association
• MG 49: Sylvester Garrett Collection
• MG 51: Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company Records
• MG 52: United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 2
• MG 53: John Ghizzoni Papers
• MG 55: Publications of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)
• MG 66: United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 5
• MG 67: United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 3
• MG 68: Pittsburgh Chapter of the Coal Mining Institute of America
• MG 71: Coal Company Payroll Ledgers
• MG 72: Governor John S. Fisher Collection 
• MG 74: America's Industrial Heritage Project (HABS/HAER)
• MG 75: Southwestern Pennsylvania Heritage Preservation Commission Records
• MG 76: Folklife Division Southwestern Pennsylvania Heritage Preservation Commission
• MG 77: United States Bureau of Mine Publications
• MG 79: United Mine Workers of America Local 617 Barnesboro, Pennsylvania
• MG 81: Barnes and Tucker Coal Company
• MG 83: Penn Run and Russell Coal Company Employment Records
• MG 86: Andrew Surma Collection
• MG 91: Joan Schrock Phillipi Papers
• MG 94: Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company Media
• MG 98: Florence Constantino Collection
• MG 99: William H. Sylvis Collection
• MG 100: Myron Joseph Collection
• MG 108: The Anthracite Board of Conciliation
• MG 109: United Mine Workers of America District 25
• MG 111: L. Blaine Grube Collection
• MG 112: Wilmore Real Estate
• MG 116: Irwin Marcus Collection
• MG 125: United Mine Workers of America District 4
• MG 126: Eli Rock Collection
• MG 127: Mildred Beik Collection
• MG 132: Pittsburgh & Shawmut Railroad Company Collection
• MG 139: Chris Reese & Denise Weber Miners Collection
• MG 141: Oscar W. Nestor Collection
• MG 148: W.H. Hughes Coal Company

• Special Collections and University Archives
• Stapleton Library, Room 302
  431 South Eleventh Street
  Indiana, PA 15705
• Phone: 724-357-3039
• Fax: 724-357-4891

• Office Hours
• Monday - Friday: 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
• Saturday: Closed
• Sunday: Closed