Manuscript Group 409
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
1970-2005
(1,133 audio cassettes of 772 interviews)
The Oral History Collection consists of taped interviews conducted throughout
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by staff members and Friends of the Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Commission. These interviews shed light on the common folk
and their backrounds as southern born African American migrants, European immigrants,
Hispanics, and Jews working in the coal, steel, and electrical industries.
For a more detailed description of each project's content and background information
about the individual's interviewed consult the finding aid to the collection in
the Pennsylvania State Archives and Matthew S. Magda's Summary Guide to the
Oral History Collections of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
(1981).
Documents lives of people who worked in the iron mines and ore processing
plant operated until 1972 by Bethlehem Steel. Includes interviews with
workers, managers, and wives.
Folklife project done by University of Pennsylvania to document retired
miners and miners' widows in Eckley, Pennsylvania, now a Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Commission historic site.
Edgar Thompson Steel Works Project. (1 box) {#409m.11}
Electrical Workers of Western Pennsylvania Project, 1976-1977. (56 tapes;
36 interviews; 42 hours) {#409m.12}
Interviews of workers with electrical manufacturing in two companies:
General Electric in the Erie area and Westinghouse Electric in the Pittsburgh
area. Focus on union-related activities.
Interview of nurses who served in World War I and World War II. Originals
at the Smithsonian Institution.
Monessen Community Oral History Project, 1981. (47 tapes; 26 interviews;
50 hours) {#409m.20}
Recorded experiences of residents in Monessen, Pennsylvania, a town
dependent on steel making and fabrication (nails, wire, fencing, tin,
plate for canning) during the first half of the century.
Documents lives of first and second generation of Croatian emigrants.
Nanticoke Women Oral History Project, 1977-1978. (57 tapes; 52 interviews;
34 hours) {#409m.22}
Interview of women from Nanticoke of Northeastern Pennsylvania whose
economy was based on anthracite coal mining and factory work. Many of
Polish background.
Panther Valley Oral History Project, 1987-2005. (95 tapes; 81 interviews;
4 cartons; 6 boxes; 6 cassette boxes) {#409m.23}
Interviews, interview transcripts, transcript corrections, related correspondence,
Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company employee data, as well as copies of
the newspaper The Valley Gazette are included in these materials,
which document the decline of anthracite coal mining in the Panther Valley
region of the southern anthracite field, as well as the out-migration
from the region.
Information on life in Lackawanna County coal mines. Emigrants from
eastern Europe who settled in northeastern Pennsylvania predominate in
the interviews.
