Coal Country Connections: How finding an 1880s autograph album led to a quest to find its signers in coal towns of northeastern Pennsylvania and beyond
This is a book about the lives of the signers of Mary Boyd’s autograph album. After finding the album in family records, the author set about learning about its over 70 signers.
Mary Boyd (1858-1920) lived in Buck Mountain, a small coal town 10 miles east of Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
Among the signers of Mary’s album were miners and laborers, mothers and schoolteachers, Civil War veterans and the daughters of a wealthy railroad magnate. Local places where the signers of Mary’s album lived are seen on the 1873 map below. It shows the northern part of Luzerne County, where Scranton (then in Luzerne), Pittston, Plains, Wilkes-Barre, Ashley, and Sugar Notch can be seen.
The southern part of the 1873 map shows White Haven, Upper Lehigh, Freehold (later Freeland), Drifton, Jeddo, Eckley, Lattimer, Stockton, Jeansville, and Hazleton.
Other signers were from places like Philadelphia:
Mary Boyd lived in Buck Mountain and later nearby Freeland until her death at the age of 62. She never married or had children, and her autograph album is her legacy. “Coal County Connections” gives us a look into the lives and losses of those around Mary, twenty years after the Civil War and during a time of sometimes violent unrest in the local coal mines.
“Coal Country Connections” is 8 1/2 x 11, 415 pages, with color images. Besides Amazon, it’s also available at the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton, the Luzerne County Historical Society in Wilkes-Barre, the gift shop at Eckley Miners’ Village, the Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center in Jim Thorpe, and Sellers Books + Art in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
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