Eckley Miners’ Village Week 4 (06/09/25 – 06/12/25)

This week at Eckley, I spent most of my time preparing various interpreted spaces for this past weekend’s public event, Patchtown Days, which is the largest of the year at the site.

On Monday, I cleaned the eastern side of the Exhibit House, a two-family sized home on the upper end of town that is on display for public view with a “lived-in” set-up with artifacts throughout. On Tuesday, I cleaned the western half. This particular house is interpreted in a fashion representing an immigrant family’s rise in social status after some time living in a patch town. The western side is furnished with more simple, cheaper articles—the stove is a basic cast-iron coal-burning model, the dining room table is simple with a long bench, the kitchen utensils are simple pewter, there is little decoration aside from a small print nailed to the wall, and the walls themselves are painted flat white. Meanwhile, the eastern side depicts the same family much later—the walls are painted in color, the furnishings are more ornate, the utensils are nicer and there are more modern kitchen aids, there are numerous framed pictures, and the sheer volume of items (including foodstuffs) is much greater.

The Exhibit House.

Exhibit House, western side kitchen.

Exhibit House, western side kitchen, dining area.

Exhibit House, western side bedroom.

Exhibit House, eastern side kitchen.

Exhibit House, eastern side kitchen, dining area.

Exhibit House, eastern side bedroom.

On Wednesday, I briefly cleaned the site’s Episcopal church. This particular building is not technically original to Eckley (it was donated from nearby White Haven in the ’70s), it is practically identical to the original church that was demolished several decades ago because it was built with the same designs and at the same time.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, interior.

I spent Thursday cleaning the Slate Picker’s House, a small shack off a back street that would have historically homed a slate picker (a worker responsible for separating slate and other refuse from coal) and his family. This home is one of the smallest on-site, and the interpreted furnishings within reflect the lower status of its inhabitants.

The Slate Picker’s House.

Slate Picker’s House, kitchen.

Slate Picker’s House, kitchen, dining area.

Slate Picker’s House, bedroom.

A photo from Saturday at Patchtown Days in Eckley.

Over the weekend, I actually had the opportunity to attend the Patchtown Days event with some friends. We met numerous living history reenactors, vendors, and other interpreters set up in buildings with valuable stories to tell.

The work of preparing interpreted exhibition spaces is, while undeniably tedious and time-consuming, very rewarding and valuable. The process involves carefully assessing each and every artifact in every room, regardless of size and complexity, and, while handling it properly, cleaning it with the appropriate methodology. Although seemingly straightforward, it has taken some time to become undeniably comfortable while handling artifacts, especially more fragile ones. However, performing these tasks routinely the last several weeks has allowed me to reach a point where I know just how to handle different kinds of objects with confidence and care. Ultimately, I have attained a solid mix of respect for the condition of historical artifacts and an understanding of their presentation to the public.

Eckley Miners’ Village Week 3 (06/02/25 – 06/05/25)

This week, John and I tackled a large inventory project at Eckley. Some folks from Collections Management at the State Museum in Harrisburg, PA came up to inventory a significant number of artifacts being stored in a house on-site. From Monday to part of Wednesday, we meticulously went through each and every shelf (of which there are dozens, loaded to the brim with objects) ensuring everything was accurately accounted for. On Thursday, I spent my time familiarizing myself with online-published oral histories of Eckley, as well as taking proper photographs of the same two artifacts I catalogued last week.

The house used for artifact storage that we spent the week in.

The inventorying process was not necessarily difficult, but it was time consuming. We broke up into two teams, and each covered one half of the house. One person would be on a spreadsheet with internal artifact info to check records of everything we saw, while the other(s) would read off accession (internal identification, essentially) numbers of each and every artifact. Often, we had to provide better descriptions than what already existed or simply provide entirely new descriptions and pictures for artifacts that were either not catalogued, or improperly so. Many artifacts had not been inventoried since 2004, so the general pattern for the process was speed by half of a shelf full of things that were fully accounted for, then get stuck for a short while on a small group of things that either had incomplete or no records.

Some of the most notable objects I had the chance to see in storage were a bottle of poison antidote, an original copy of The American Weekly periodical from 1951, and several early twentieth century men’s dress shirts and detachable starched collars. I also had the opportunity to identify an object that had a poor description (was described internally as “round metal object,” or similar) with a quick online search; the artifact was a cutter made for shaping donuts out of dough.

A copy of ‘The American Weekly’ from 1951.

The donut cutter that I identified.

A bottle of poison antidote.

An empty bottle of hydrochloric acid.

Eckley Miner’s Village Week 2 (05/27/25 – 05/29/25)

Antonio Ferraro

This week at Eckley, I was assigned a few projects involving artifact cleaning in select buildings on-site. I also continued last week’s project of documenting artifacts that were not approved for web publication and filling gaps in online descriptions.

On Tuesday, I cleaned artifacts in the house that was occupied by the Nicholas family at Eckley, dubbed by some as the “1940s House” because of its interpretive setting as a 1940s-era home. The lower level of the house is often used for public events, and needed to be prepared for public view for the Patchtown Days event in June. The majority of cleaning had to be done in the kitchen and living room area, where many artifacts were dusty. I carefully removed dust (and soot from kitchen areas) from appliances, hard furniture, and shelved objects using a paint brush and vacuum—I was explicitly instructed to avoid textiles, such as couches or tablecloths, because cleaning such surfaces require a screen to be placed between the vacuum and surface.

The Nicholas / “1940s” House

The kitchen of the 1940s House.

The living room of the house.

Another view of the kitchen.

On Wednesday, I cleaned a doctor’s office that was used by company doctor George S. Wentz during the late nineteenth century. The lower level that I had to clean is made up of three rooms: a waiting / consultation area with seating and a writing desk, an operating room with an examination table and shelves housing various medicines and tonics, and finally an addition that houses cases of some other artifacts and informational placards. The objects in this building required especially careful handling—there were numerous artifacts, such as century-old medicine, unidentified pills, and likely unsterilized medical equipment that had to be freed of dust. Each individual bottle, can, and box needed to be removed from the shelves and dusted individually. In reading the packaging some of these dated ailments, the sorts of things claimed by pharmaceutical producers are quite interesting. For example, one self-titled “Kidney Cure” claimed it, in heavy doses, could prevent conditions as severe as diabetes.

The doctor’s office.

The waiting / consultation room.

The operating room.

Some of the medicines on display.

The disclaimer on a bottle of “Foley’s Kidney Cure”.

Some prosthetic limbs (an arm and a leg).

At the end of the week, John brought down two newly-accessioned artifacts from the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton, and gave me the opportunity to officially catalogue them. These items were a can of calcium carbide, a type of fuel used for early miners’ head lamps, as well as a vehicle-mounted carbide lamp that used such fuel.

A vehicle-mounted carbide lamp made by Prest-O-Lite Co., Inc.

Eckley Miner’s Village Week 1 (05/19/25 – 05/22/25)

My first week at Eckley Miner’s Village was largely orientational, with much of my time with my supervisors present being spent touring around the complex and being told of its history, introduced to Argus (the PHMC’s collections management software) and its functions, and some basic instruction on handling and cleaning artifacts.

While being shown around the village, I had the lucky opportunity to see the coal breaker, a monolithic structure that has towered over the village’s south side since the 1960s during the filming of The Molly Maguires (1970). However, the very weekend before I started my internship, a significant portion of the structure collapsed due to rot. On Thursday morning, emergency state action prompted the tearing down of the wreckage, unfortunately doing away with a crucial historical component of the site.

A distant view of the coal breaker, towering over the trees around it.

A closer view of the coal breaker’s wreckage.

After much of the clerical requirements were out of the way, John Fielding (the curator and the person I will be working with for most of the internship) assigned to me a few simple projects for Tuesday and Wednesday, the two days he would be away for since he is typically only at Eckley on Thursdays.

First, I had to transfer a series of archival materials from older acidic folders to non-acidic ones to ensure their longevity in storage. These particular materials were a set of several hundred grievances filed against a mining company in the area by workers. I moved each file (which varied from one to several pages of delicate typed paper) from the original folder to a new, non-acidic one, then mark the new folder in pencil with the corresponding grievance number.

My second project was more ambitious. I was assigned to scroll through our collection in Argus filtered to only show items catalogued that were not approved for public web-page view (like many other museums, the collection is, with limits, able to be viewed by the public with simple descriptions and images posted). I was then to manually check each item and copy and paste the internal artifact description (if there was one) to the public web description, as well as its title and date, thus hopefully allowing at least some of these artifacts to be approved for public online view. From Monday afternoon to Thursday morning, I managed to sift through over 1,200 artifacts in Argus, with maybe one tenth of them having descriptions to be copied over. Unfortunately, a significant amount of the artifacts not approved for web view simply do not have enough information to be viewable by the public, be it a lack of any sufficient internal description or images of the item itself.

Next week, I will be tackling more hands-on projects. I have been assigned to spend one day of next week cleaning a house occupied by the Nicholas family on-site (dubbed by John the ‘1940s house’), using a specialized vacuum and brush method to carefully lift dust and debris off of artifacts in the house so it will be suitable for public view during the Patchtown Days event in June. Next, I will spend another day similarly cleaning the inside of the Doctor’s Office, another home that has been converted into an exhibit interpreting an early on-site doctor’s office in the village. The rest of my time next week will be spent converting my notes from the Argus perusal into an Excel sheet for easier submission to Collections Management for review.

Public History Practicum Reflection

Last semester, I had the opportunity as a senior Public History major to research a topic of my choice and to create a small digital exhibit based off of it for HIS 440, Public History Practicum.

This project was something I was excited to do, as I had recently come off of working at a summer internship at the Anthracite Heritage Museum, which gave me many different ideas for a topic to focus on. Inspired by my visits at Eckley Miner’s village during my internship, and learning about women who practiced herbal medicine, I decided to focus my project on women healers and herbalists.

The topic of women in medicine is very broad, so I decided that I wanted to do a brief overview of the impact of women in medicine and their role as caretakers and healers over time.

I started my project by meeting with Dr. Black and discussing the types of resources, both primary and secondary, that I might want to use. We also discussed potential objects to be used in the exhibit, as well as how they would be situated in the context of the topic itself. She also provided me with handouts that were helpful for planning, writing for, and laying out an exhibit so that it would be easily accessible, understandable, and not confusing to readers.

I finished out my project by finalizing my objects for the digital exhibit, writing object analyses for three of my items, and finishing all the texts (such as introductions to each topic and labels).

I do wish that I could have gone more in depth in my digital exhibit, though, the topic was so broad and my timeline covered so many years that I did not think it would be possible to do so without making the exhibit seem more like a research paper. However, I enjoyed being able to focus on a topic of my choice and having total control of what I did with the exhibit. While I have some previous experience in creating small exhibits from my Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship two years ago, this built off of what I already learned and gave me some more idependence to choose my own topic of interest.

I enjoyed the experience and though it was a different way of expanding my knowledge on the topic. I feel that it definitely gave me a valuable experience and knowledge that I will be able to use for future projects.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 8/8/2022-8/11/2022

Kendall Williams

This week was my final week of my Keystone Summer Internship.

We started the week with a few new projects. Our first project was to organize and check the inventory of a collection that was transferred from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania of records and other documents from the United Mine Workers of America.

There were dozens of boxes, so Ethan and I started by organizing them into their proper series and subseries. Then we began to go through the inventory to check to make sure we had all of the items, and to make corrections if needed.

We also had the opportunity to inventory the collection the museum took from the Dunmore Historical Society about the Pennsylvania Gravity Railroad. This is the collection that I had the opportunity to go see a few weeks prior. I took photos so that John could see the artifacts and decide whether he would be interested in putting them into the collection.

Ethan and I went through the collection together and inventoried the artifacts and other documents that came with the collection.

On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to meet the Bureau Director for the PHMC, Melissa Mann. She told us about the organization, it’s mission, and how the sites work together, as well as about her career path and what she does as director. It was insightful to hear from someone who is in a director position as opposed to working at a site, and to hear about the differences and challenges of her position as opposed to some of the others in the PHMC.

On Thursday, we visited the Museum of Anthracite Mining in Ashland to check the inventory of their collection. Because they do not own the artifacts, the exhibit hall has to be checked yearly to make sure all artifacts and objects are accounted for. We split up the list and went through the hall and made sure the artifacts were there with the proper display.

After we finished at Ashland, we returned to Eckley to finish the rest of the day. There, we continued to pack artifacts and wrote an inventory for each box.

I had a fulfilling final week at my internship, and I enjoyed working at the Anthracite Heritage Museum again this summer. I am glad I had the opportunity to build off of my previous internship, and I think I had a well rounded experience here. We did many different projects over the summer, and I got to do more public outreach, which was very helpful to me as I have had very little experience with it in the past. This internship was a wonderful way for me to experience working in a museum with a curator, and gave me some insight as to what my future career could look like. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work here, and it allowed me to build my skills and to give me some experience in museum work.

Anhracite Heritage Museum 8/1/2022-8/4/2022

Kendall Williams

This week Ethan and I continued to work independently on projects as John was away for a conference.

I continued to inventory the collection of photographs I had been working on in the prior week. It was predominately breaker photographs with some pictures of miners and mine disasters.

I also continued to digitize the collection of photographs of different geological and architectural features of the coal regions of Pennsylvania.

I finished both of these projects that week, so that we could start new projects for our final week.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 7/25/2022-7/28/2022

Kendall Williams

This week I had the opportunity to visit the Dunmore Historical Society to see what they had in their collection. The society, unfortunately, is no longer running, so they invited people from other historical sites and museums to view their collections to see if they were interested in taking any items into their own.

I went alone to the meeting as John had to go pick up a collection at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The Historical Society had some artifacts relating to coal mining history. There were a few maps, a folder of documents, and a collection that related to the Pennsylvania Gravity Railroad.

The most interesting object was the rail, which was actually from the gravity railroad itself. I took photos and notes about the collection and brought back what I had to show John later in the week.

We also went to Eckley again, where I continued to pack more artifacts and created inventories for each of the boxes.

Anthracite Heritage Museum 7/18/2022-7/21/2022

Kendall Williams

This week I had some new projects to work on. There were some requests for photographs for different projects, so I worked on scanning them so that they could be sent to the people requesting them. One request was for photographs of Susquehanna Coal Company Breakers, and another was for photographs from the 1902 Coal Strike.

I also got the opportunity to inventory more photographs. This time, it was photographs of different breakers from the Anthracite area, as well as some photographs of mine workers and mine disasters. I continued to scan more photographs from my project from the previous week as well.

Because John was back from vacation, we were able to go to Eckley Miner’s Village again on Thursday. That day we began packing artifacts into boxes. Because Eckley does not have much storage space, some homes are used as storage units. However, the homes do become somewhat dirty, meaning that dust can build up on artifacts, which could attract water and cause rot or rust. In order to better protect them, we began to clean the artifacts and move them into boxes that were padded with foam. This ensures the objects are kept away from dust and dirt and are secure so that they will not break.

I enjoyed being able to work in both settings this week. I think that it represents the many different roles a curator may fill at a smaller museum or historical site.