Eckley Miners' Village facts for kids
Miner housing in May 1970
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| Established | 1970 |
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| Location | Foster Township, U.S. (near Hazleton) |
Eckley Miners' Village is a special place in eastern Pennsylvania. It's an old town where people used to mine anthracite coal. This type of town, built by a mining company, is called a "patch town."
Since 1970, Eckley has been a museum. It's run by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The museum shows what life was like for miners and their families long ago.
Contents
The Story of Eckley Village
How Eckley Began
Before the 1850s, Eckley wasn't a mining town at all. It was a quiet, wooded community called Shingletown. The people living there made wooden shingles from the nearby forests. They sold these shingles in towns like White Haven and Hazleton. This helped them get the things they needed for daily life.
Finding Coal and Building a Town
In 1853, four men explored the land around Shingletown. They found many veins of coal hidden underground. These men – Richard Sharpe, Asa Lansford Foster, Francis Weiss, and John Leisenring – quickly formed a company. It was first called Sharpe, Leisenring and Company, then later Sharpe, Weiss, and Company.
A judge named Charles Coxe allowed the company to use about 1,500 acres of land for 20 years. In 1854, the company started building a colliery, which is a coal mine and all its buildings.
By the fall of 1854, they had a saw mill to cut wood for the mine buildings. They also started building a village for the miners. The old forest homes were replaced by rows of red wooden houses. This new village was first named Fillmore, possibly after President Millard Fillmore.
A few years later, in 1857, the town needed a post office. They found out another town already had the name Fillmore. So, the village was renamed Eckley. This new name honored Judge Coxe's 17-year-old son, Eckley B. Coxe. Later, Eckley Coxe, who became an engineer, helped run the mining operations in the town named after him.
New People Come to Eckley
The first people to live and work in Eckley were mostly immigrants from England and Wales. They had experience working in mines in Great Britain. There were also some Germans who came to work as engineers at the mine.
In the late 1850s and early 1860s, many Irish farmers arrived. They had left Ireland because of a terrible hunger crisis called the Great Famine. The Irish usually didn't know much about mining. So, they started with the lowest-skilled and lowest-paying jobs. Over time, they learned mining skills and moved into better jobs.
By the 1880s and 1890s, new groups of immigrants came from Eastern and Southern Europe. These included people from Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Italy. They took on the low-skill jobs, just like the Irish had before them. It took many years for these new immigrants to learn enough to get higher-skilled jobs in the mine.
Many immigrants hoped to work in the mines just long enough to save money. Their dream was to buy land and go back to farming, like they did in Europe. But once they became part of the company-owned system, it was very hard for them to escape the poverty and hardship.
Eckley as a Museum Today
Today, Eckley Miners' Village is a museum. You can explore both indoor exhibits and the outdoor village. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission manages the site.
Some of the buildings you can see include:
- The Immaculate Conception Church (built in 1861)
- Three "slate pickers houses" (built in 1854)
- Larger homes for laborers (built in 1854)
- St. James Episcopal Church (built in 1859)
- Houses where mine bosses lived (built in 1860)
- The doctor's office (built in 1874)
- The Sharpe House (built in 1861)
The Molly Maguires and the Movies
Eckley on Film
A movie called The Molly Maguires was filmed in Eckley in 1969. This film, released in 1970, was about a secret society of Irish coal miners.
For the movie, a large wooden "coal breaker" was built as a prop. A coal breaker was a building where coal was crushed and sorted. This movie prop still stands today, even though it's very old. The company store building was also built for the movie and is still there.
Filming The Molly Maguires actually helped save the town. Eckley was going to be torn down. But because of the movie, it was saved and later turned into the mining museum we see today.
How the Town Was Laid Out
If you walk from east to west down Main Street in Eckley, you'll notice the houses get bigger. The company that owned the mine, Sharpe, Weiss and Company, planned the village carefully. They thought about what job people had and how much rent they could pay.
The mine owners lived at the western end of town. The original company store, the mule barn, a hotel, and the doctor's office were also in this part of the village.
Mine foremen (supervisors) and their families rented single homes. These were located just east of the main downtown area. The most experienced miners, called "first class miners," lived in 2 1/2-story double houses in the middle of the village. These homes were larger than the 1 1/2-story double houses. The smaller homes were rented to their assistants or other laborers.
