Molly Maguire Executions, Carbon and Schuylkill Counties

This is a new one for the blog - the first cross-county post. Throughout Pennsylvania there are a number of markers which are related - either they contain the same information in two different locations (which is the case today), or they're a series of markers which, when put together, more or less tell a story. It's not going to be easy for me to do some of these; for example, there are several markers related to the various canals that will take me a long time to collect. But this one, which has just two, I can do.

Odd as it probably sounds, given the subject matter, I've been looking forward to writing this post. It contains one of the most interesting and obscure pieces of local apocrypha that we have in the Lehigh Valley region. I only waited as long as I did to do this one because I needed a couple of photos from the other location in the story. Now that I have those, here's how we'll finish out the summer - with the deaths of ten men.

Burd Patterson, Pottsville, Schuylkill County

Today we make the blog's first foray into Schuylkill County (that's "SKOO-kill," for those of you who aren't from around here). My youngest sister Liza took me on a drive around the city of Pottsville, which is not far from where she works; we collected a handful of the markers. There's nothing quite like driving around Pennsylvania in an open-air Jeep, so thank you, baby sis!

Among the findings of that afternoon was a beautiful Federal-style mansion on Mahantongo Street, which more than one sign identified as being the former home of Burd Patterson. He turned out to be a trickier subject than I expected.