from"The Journal of James Kenny, 1759," reprinted in Crossroads: Descriptions of Western Pennsylvania, 1720-1829, ed. John W. Harpster

"[James Kenny was a Chester County Quaker {i.e., from the Philadelphia area} who in 1759 went to Pittsburgh in charge of some trade goods intended as a present for the Indians. To avoid hostile Indians who beset the Forbes Road, Kenny made the journey via the Braddock Road. {shown above, with a larger, easier-to-read link here. The mouth of Redstone Creek, mentioned in the following excerpt, is in Brownsville, so Kenny was probably somewhere between there and Mount Braddock, due south of Scottdale.}]"

[April] 25th.--Proceeded today to a Bottom upon Redstone Creek, about 9 miles from Guest's Place. . . . In this Bottom grows plenty of Clover, & I found some pieces of Stone Coal that burns well.

--Advance a century--

from The Kingdom of Coal by Dan Rottenberg

"Connellsville coal didn't need to be washed to remove impurities. 'There is no other sea that can compete with it in cheapness of production,' remarked an observer in the late 1870s. 'There is no other coal so regular in form; so uniform in quality; of so convenient a thickness; or so easily mined.' . . . By 1880 the seven thousand beehive ovens in and around Connellsville were producing two-thirds of the nation's coke. What Mauch Chunk [in the Lehigh Valley's anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania] had been in the 1830s--the energy capital of the nation--Connellsville had now become."

--Advance a century--

Scottdale Joint High School, class of 1957. My mother, the Gridiron Queen.