Plenty of programs remain in the 2025 Anthracite Mining Heritage Month schedule of events, running through the end of the month. For the complete listing visit www.anthracitemuseum.org.
Among those in the final week of this month are showings of the film of the 1959 Knox Mine disaster, which ended deep mining in the area, and a guided tour of the Brooks Mine, both in the Scranton area on the 24th and 25th, respectively. There is a charge to see the film.
Also in our own area, there will also be programs at Eckley Miners Village on the 25th. Full explanations and a complete list are on the website.
On the 30th, Mark Ricetti, director of operations and programs for the Luzerne County Historical Society, will offer a program about “Jacob Cist, Pennsylvania Anthracite Pioneer.” You can catch that free talk at the historical society museum, 69 South Franklin St. in Wilkes-Barre at 7 p.m.
Other programs are scheduled for venues in Bethlehem and Pottsville.
Genealogical Society: If you’re not a member of the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, you’re missing a really informative quarterly newsletter.
The current newsletter offers tips on often-overlooked information on the U.S. Census, long a basic resource for genealogists. Learning to spot that data will make your use of old census records more profitable.
For instance, a census might include easy-to-miss information on deceased children or code references to Civil War military service or an indicator of who provided the census taker with the information. If you know what all the marks on the lines for a family mean, you can direct your research more profitably.
Church closure: St. Mary’s of the Immaculate Conception, the oldest Roman Catholic church in our area, celebrated its final Mass and closed recently. Since the 1800s, many thousands of local Catholics worshiped there and generated records for birth, baptism, marriage, confirmation and death.
The parish records are far from gone, however. The Northeastern Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, see above, maintains many years of records of the churches of the Diocese of Scranton at its offices, 57 N. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre. Contact the society at nepgsmail@gmail.com. For the website, which includes data on membership, visit www.nepgs.com.
RootsTech: Are you all set for this year’s RootsTech, scheduled for March 6-8? Nearly all the sessions for this annual genealogical event are online and free. To get the schedule, go to www.rootstech.org.
Remember, though, that times for the live events are listed in Mountain Standard Time. If you are signing in from Pennsylvania, you must add two hours to the listed time. Most presentations are archived and may be viewed later.
“Lost” Nazi-era records found: Records of thousands of Jewish children saved from the Nazis, records long believed lost, have been found, a BBC news story says.
“Used by border officials in the Netherlands, the records contain the names of almost all the children who were sent to the UK and Holland on the Kindertransport – up to 9,000 children – on more than 90 trains between December 1938 and August 1939.
“They include details of the children’s names, home addresses, dates of birth, parents’ names, chaperones’ names, transport numbers and departure dates. The documents were discovered in the archives at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, by Dr. Amy Williams, a freelance research fellow who studied at Nottingham Trent University.”
Said Williams “These lists will allow thousands of people to reconstruct their family units and understand more about their grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives before the horror ensued.”