Polish America · Pennsylvania coal region
Northeastern Pennsylvania’s hard coal fields drew more Polish immigrants than almost any other region outside the big cities. In towns like Shenandoah, Nanticoke and Mount Carmel, Poles were for a time the largest group underground.
The anthracite region
The anthracite fields cover parts of Lackawanna, Luzerne, Schuylkill, Northumberland and Carbon counties, with Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, Pottsville and Shamokin as the main towns. Polish miners arrived from the 1870s, and Polish parishes were founded in town after town. The miners’ lives were dangerous and their politics turbulent: at Lattimer, near Hazleton, in September 1897, deputies fired on unarmed striking miners, most of them Polish, Slovak and Lithuanian, killing nineteen.
The Polish National Catholic Church
The region is also the birthplace of the Polish National Catholic Church, organized in Scranton in 1897 by Father Franciszek Hodur after disputes between Polish parishioners and the Catholic hierarchy over control of parish property and the appointment of priests. Many coal-town families have ancestors in both churches. See our guide to Polish National Catholic Church records.
Records to search
- Parish registers of Roman Catholic and Polish National Catholic parishes, and the Dioceses of Scranton and Allentown for closed Catholic parishes
- Pennsylvania state birth and death certificates from 1906, available from the Pennsylvania State Archives once they are old enough
- County courthouse records: marriages, estates and naturalizations in each county seat
- Mine accident reports: the state mine inspectors’ annual reports list fatal and many non-fatal accidents with the miner’s name, age and nationality
- Company and union records, and the local English and Polish newspapers
Coal-region families often moved between patch towns and between Pennsylvania and the steel cities. Check the neighboring county before deciding a family left no records.
How we can help
Immigration & Passenger Records works through Pennsylvania state and county records and the parish registers of both churches, then follows the family back to its Polish parish.