Chocolate Workers' Sit-Down Strike, Hershey, Dauphin County

Spring? Never heard of her. In my part of Pennsylvania, we seem to have leaped from winter's last grasp straight to the front door of summer, but in the next couple days we're dropping from temperatures in the 90s down to the 50s. But on the bright side, it's not snowing.

I recently saw a trailer for a new movie from Angel Studios, coming out later this year, simply titled Hershey. I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to make a movie about the guy, since Milton Hershey is arguably one of the best-known figures in Pennsylvania history. In fact, out of all the native Pennsylvanians I can recall, it might be a toss-up between him and Mister Rogers for the top spot, though I'm inclined to give the prize to my childhood hero. (I'm only counting natives in that. The commonwealth has many famous figures who came from elsewhere, like William Penn himself and Ben Franklin.)

However, while Hershey the man is remembered with great affection, Hershey the company has a few dark spots in its story. This week's quest is about one of them.

1902 Anthracite Coal Strike, Lackawanna and Schuylkill Counties

I hope that whatever holiday (if any) that my readers observed in the past couple of weeks, it was enjoyable and peaceful for you. Someone needs to keep the chocolate bunnies away from me, personally. This was supposed to have gone up last week, but I was dealing with a stomach bug (unrelated to the chocolate, as far as I can tell) and just didn't have the spoons.

This week's quest took a lot of reading, because it was a big deal and covered in two markers at a pretty fair distance from each other. Frequent contributor Kaylee Lindenmuth, of the Shenandoah Sentinel, was the one to send me both of the marker photos used here - she sent the first one last year, when I asked my readers to tell me about your favorite historical markers, and happened to come across the second fairly recently.

John Siney, St. Clair, Schuylkill County

As you're reading this, I've just returned from my first-ever visit to Lititz, in Lancaster County. Spent some time collecting markers and learning about pretzels, so you'll see some of the pictures from the trip in coming months.

For this week's quest, though, we're heading into the coal country. Mining coal in Pennsylvania remains a big part of our history, as we've already had occasion to note in this blog, and this gentleman's story is a significant thread in the tapestry.

John Nelson, Lawrence Park, Erie County

This week is Veterans' Day, so I just want to briefly express my appreciation for all the members of our Armed Forces, past and present! Thank you for your service and courage.

This week's quest is brought to us thanks to another contribution from my distant cousin, Ron Bauerle, who kindly sent me the marker we're examining. Thanks once again, Ron! We're going to take a look at a union struggle in the McCarthy era and the way it impacted one man in particular.

Min L. Matheson, Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County

Excited to announce that I've been added to another online collective of history bloggers! You can now find MarkerQuest at the History Creatives Hub. There's a wide variety of historical subjects being offered by the members of this group, so be sure to take a good look around and see what catches your eye. If you have or are interested in starting a historical blog of your own, the site owner has some very useful information and suggestions to help you get started.

Moving on to today's quest, we're going to have a look at a significant figure in the fight for workers' rights in the early 20th century. This one took me a while to write, because there was a lot of information for me to absorb and distill about this dedicated woman.