07/05/2022
Tiny Jeddo Borough left its mark on world
By Kelly Monitz Staff Writer Standard Speaker Jul 5, 2022
https://www.standardspeaker.com/news/tiny-jeddo-borough-left-its-mark-on-world/article_897768e5-3c39-556c-9783-237bf50fdba7.html
It’s no coincidence that one of the smallest boroughs in Pennsylvania played a key role in shaping Coal Region life.
Where else could one go bowling, shopping, dancing and to church — all in the same building?
What other Coal Region government featured a mine owner who shaped what labor union members know as collective bargaining?
And what other local mining operation produced a low-carbon, low-ash form of anthracite coal that fueled an industrial revolution, heated homes all over the world and helped a world-renowned inventor link people across nations and the world?
In a word, Jeddo.
The tiny borough, about a mile south of Freeland and six miles east of Hazleton, is observing the 150th year of its incorporation, which was approved in Luzerne County Court on Oct. 23, 1871, according to an 1880 history of Luzerne County published by W.W. Munsell.
The beginnings
In 1858, George Bushar Markle, a clerk and superintendent for a coal company owned by coal baron Ario Pardee of Hazleton, formed G.B. Markle & Co., which produced coal at four collieries and set up headquarters in Jeddo, a small cluster of miners’ homes.
The place was named after Yedo, now Tokyo, Japan, and was reunited with trade in the western world by the voyages of noted Commander Matthew Perry. Those voyages spurred treaties between the United States and Japan for trade that began in 1856, much of it involving coal. A New York Times correspondent wrote in 1865 the place “was once believed to be as completely secluded from all outside barbarians as was the capital of Japan ante-Commodore Perry.”
An early history of Luzerne County opined that the name came from Jed Ireland, a clerk who worked for the Markle company.
At that time, nearly 200 houses occupied a stretch of more than a mile, probably encompassing what are commonly known as the “Jeddo Villages” of Oakdale, Middletown and Japan in Hazle Twp.
Markle was a coal mining pioneer and designed the basis for what would become known as “breakers.” He also improved mine pumps, crushers and other machinery used in early anthracite mining.
Markle improved Jeddo, too, and during a vote at what was then known as the Jeddo Hotel, a public house operated by a man named Henry Reichart, in 1871 took part in the incorporation of the community as a borough.
In 1879, his health failing, he gave up his business.
A son, John Markle, graduated from Lafayette College in 1880 and immediately took over the reins of his father’s enterprise.
Markle, like his father, oversaw improvements at all of his company properties, including the places where his employees worked and lived.
Markle gained national attention as the builder of the Jeddo Tunnel, an engineering marvel that began in 1891 after severe underground flooding and ended with completion of a system that drained mines in a 30-square mile area in 1894. The tunnel, cut through five miles of solid rock, is still in use today.
The anthracite business was booming and placing new demands on both coal operators and their employees.
In 1900, just a few years after an attack on striking miners at nearby Lattimer Mines, workers again demanded short workdays and better guarantees for production.
They went on strike, shutting down the mine operations through most of the hard coal fields.
In 1902, as 147,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America went on strike for shorter working days, higher wages, and the recognition of their union, a winter fuel crisis loomed.
Markle and a young John Mitchell, UMWA president, debated the issues during talks at a school in the nearby village of Japan.
After an unsuccessful intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt, banker J. P. Morgan, a close friend of Markle’s, finally facilitated a deal. The union achieved a 10% pay raise and a reduction in working hours from 10 to nine.
As part of the solution, a six-member panel — with three members appointed by each side — attempted to reach a compromise. Some labor historians cite the negotiations as the beginnings of collective bargaining in the United States.
Continued improvements
As Markle’s tenure with his father’s company continued, the borough that headquartered its offices grew by leaps and bounds.
He moved his family from Hazleton to Jeddo.
A hotel, schools, company store, repair shops, rail station and post office sprang up.
There were no modern conveniences. Entertainment came via contests, concerts, dances and other events. A recreation center was built about 1915.
The Jeddo Casino was a multipurpose facility. It hosted parties, dances, contests, concerts, dinners and other events. It even had bowling, a sport which was gaining in popularity at the time. A concrete pergola covered the alleys, between the casino and an adjacent boarding house.
Its dance floor was meticulously maintained, polished regularly and covered when not in use.
Card parties catered to those who didn’t bowl or play pool.
The town’s Sunday School held ice cream socials at the casino.
After the casino’s opening, congregants of the community’s Methodist church attended services there. The church edifice closed and the building dismantled.
It served as an emergency hospital during the post-World War I influenza epidemic.
Locals presented plays on its large stage, which also hosted programs presented by the borough’s school children.
In Scrub Oak, a section of the borough that ran due south of the current homes, a butcher shop and slaughter house existed. Droves of cattle were driven on foot from Hazleton to be slaughtered and dressed for sale. A company butcher wagon went from door to door almost daily.
A veterinarian tended to injured horses and mine mules.
A carpenter shop and lumber yard existed south of the coal company offices, offering an immediate source of material for repairmen who maintained the borough homes.
Picnics in fair weather were always popular. When not held locally, people traveled to nearby Hazle Park via trolley service established in the area in 1892 by a Markle relative.
A baseball field had teams from other towns and several leagues take on the borough’s best during the summer months.
Some took part in the “Sport of Kings” on the golf links in gardens on the Markle family home. Others tried their hand at tennis.
One of the first Boy Scout groups, Troop 1, was organized in the borough. A Camp Fire Girls troop took shape in the days following World War I and Troop 11, Girl Scouts of America, formed after World War II.
The war years meant rationing for many, and Jeddo was no exception. To ease the burden of feeding their families, residents grew vegetables. As fall approached and the harvest came in, the casino hosted a competition that rewarded the biggest and best with a blue ribbon. The fair — always in September — ended with a dance.
And a ticket for the masquerade ball at Halloween was a hot item in town.
Other amenities
A hotel and boarding house offered lodging for visitors and employees.
In 1897, construction began on a new facility. The Freeland Tribune reported in July of that year the building would be a three-story structure of large dimensions.
By August of that year, 11 applicants were ready to move in “notwithstanding no liquor will be sold on the premises,” the paper reported.
On Oct. 9, 1897, the hotel opened with a grand ball hosted by Mrs. John Markle, featuring the music of the Hazleton Liberty Band.
About five years later, the building was undergoing thorough renovations and on July 13, 1907, the glow of electric lights filled the hotel for the first time.
In 1909, the coal company, still known as G.B. Markle & Co., posted notices that all single men employed in its offices or the company store needed to take up residence at the hotel.
And in early 1914, notices posted indicating the hotel would close May 1. “Guests have been told to get other quarters,” the Hazleton Standard-Sentinel reported. The hotel, it said, was primarily filled with attaches of G.B. Markle Co.
A two-room schoolhouse at Scrub Oak educated the borough children. After elementary school, those who chose to go on had the opportunity to attend high schools in Hazleton or Freeland. Others could learn at religious-sponsored schools in Freeland or The Mining and Mechanical Institute, established to educate the children of miners.
The business at hand
Amid the social gatherings and day-to-day life, the bottom line was the product that paid for it all.
Residents labored in the darkness of slope-style mines, filling cars as mules pulled them to daylight, only for the process to reset again and again.
Their work put Jeddo on the map — literally — as the hardest and most pure burning anthracite that existed.
Trains carried coal to other depots where it shipped to cities far and wide. Jeddo Coal was marketed as “The Aristocrat of Anthracite” in northeast cities shivering from winter’s cold. It fueled industry and its heat helped feed countless people via stoves and ovens in their homes.
Ships took anthracite to foreign lands as the machine that miners fed with back-breaking work.
One of the more interesting uses for the black rock that burned came not as fuel but in telephones.
After Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876, other inventors were working to make it better, much like Jeddo’s founding family was streamlining the mining industry.
Thomas Alva Edison had a design for a voice transmitter that featured a cavity filled with granules of anthracite coal — which had a high carbon content and few impurities.
Edison’s design linked the granules to electrodes that carried an electric current. One of the electrodes was attached to a diaphragm that vibrated, pushing against and releasing pressure that altered the current transmitted to a receiver.
Already familiar with the benefits of anthracite to fuel steam boilers that turned turbines to create electricity, Edison’s creation of the carbon transmitter was simple, effective, inexpensive and durable enough to become the baseline for telephone designs into the 1970s.
Despite the demand, coal production dwindled. Two world wars and a mid-20th century flood were too much from King Coal to recover from. Deep mining suffered.
Automobiles and highways minimized the use of rails and the demand for coal decreased as gasoline and electricity moved forward.
But as the mid-20th century approached, Jeddo declined.
A changing community
Strip mines replaced slope mining and patch towns faded away as operators turned to dragline shovels and trucks to haul their products.
Draglines needed room to work and access to the coal beneath homes where miners once raised families.
Homes to the east at Swamptown had already been moved or razed, as were those in parts of Ebervale.
Jeddo felt the change in 1956, when Jeddo-Highland Coal Co. decided to begin stripping operations, a move that would nearly cut the borough that bore its name in half.
In August of that year, according to newspaper reports, 28 families were forced to relocate when the company announced it would be razing 16 structures to uncover the Mammoth Vein of anthracite beneath them.
The boarding house, 16 dwellings, a 16-stall garage and storage building would have to go.
Scrub Oak, its homes and schools and fields, were lost in the move.
The casino, used in its final days as retail space for the company store, went the way of the Methodist church it replaced.
Pink Ash, where families bought their homes from the coal company a few years earlier, was not affected. That section resembles closely the makeup of today’s borough.
Wilmot C. Jones, a vice president of the coal company, said the move would keep the mining project alive for several years. He said the razing would offer access to a large quantity of anthracite and at the same time keep employees working for several years.
As those years moved on, the coal industry continued its slide. The economy changed from coal based to a manufacturing and service base and workers were lost to them.
The changes shrank the population, which has declined to just over 100 residents according to the 2020 census.
Major events, some good …
Fifty years ago, in 1971, borough residents gathered to celebrate its centennial, but rain didn’t stop their observance.
On a Saturday in late July, organizers planned a two-day observance of the borough’s existence.
Joe Falatko, longtime North Side correspondent for the Hazleton Standard-Speaker, observed that “small town celebrations somehow provide an air of friendliness, neighborliness and informality that add to a festivity, and this was true in the case of Jeddo’s centennial event.”
A performance by St. Ann’s Band of Freeland was dampened by rain the next day. Despite the weather, a crowd of residents and friends turned out.
George Klingerman, 89, at the time the oldest living native of the borough, unfurled a flag that flew over the White House and was provided by then Congressman Daniel J. Flood.
Residents applauded a short-lived parade led by Leroy Warner and sons William, Bernard and James dressed as coal miners and carrying a centennial banner.
Fire trucks, dignitaries and clergymen — including the Rev. Kenneth Klingerman, a son of the borough’s oldest resident who held a pastorate in St. Louis, Missouri, were part of the program.
Women and young girls of the borough in old-time long length dresses added to the atmosphere.
Awards honored the oldest female resident, Mrs. Fred Broskoskie, the former Katic Sipple, who was 81 at the time.
Others went to Mr. and Mrs. George Gabura, newest residents who moved into the borough July 1 of that year. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Cabey were honored as the borough’s Golden Anniversary couple and Wayne Warner, 5 months old, was its youngest resident.
In 2022, residents gathered a year late to celebrate the borough’s history with a picnic and music on Saturday, June 25.
Postponed by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, borough residents gathered on its playground to share memories and stories in much the same way as the observance of 50 years ago, with the same air of friendliness, neighborliness and informality.
… And some bad
During its 150 years, Jeddo and its residents have seen a share of misfortune, from the grief of families dealing with the death of their miner fathers and sons to the ravages of fire.
In 1915, fire damaged the breaker at Jeddo No.5, just east of the current village. According to an annual report of the state Department of Mines:
“At about 10 o’clock P. M. on January 15, fire was discovered in the Highland No. 5 breaker of the G. B. Markle Company. The officials of the company were having a social session in the Casino at Jeddo when the alarm of fire was given, and they immediately went to the scene of the fire and put forth every effort to extinguish it.
“As the fire started near the top of the breaker it was very difficult to reach the flames with the streams of water from the hose, and in a short time it was found that the breaker could not be saved, and the efforts oi the- fire fighters were turned toward saving the boiler house and other buildings in close proximity to the burning structure, and preventing the fire from communicating with the underground workings through the slope. This was done by cutting away the breaker plane a safe distance from the mouth of the slope.”
Coal mined there was taken to breakers at No. 4, Oakdale, and No. 7, Harleigh, which ran round the clock until a new breaker was built at No. 5.
A new, steel facility began processing coal in August of that year at a capacity of 2,000 tons a day.
Later in the century, after 16 properties fell victim to strip mining, that process claimed part of the Jeddo Coal Co. office complex.
The back of the building, fell into a stripping that undermined it. Steel beams sunk into the ground that offered support were left bare when the ground gave way
The offices closed in 1969, but the remainder of the landmark structure and adjoining Jeddo Store were leveled by fire in August of 1972.
Firemen battled the blaze for three hours. Water fed pumpers via 1,000 feet of hose connected to a hydrant in the borough. Two other hydrants, closer to the structures, were dry. Four brick vaults — and invaluable company maps and records — were lost in the blaze. Its cause was never determined.
Another spectacular blaze leveled the remains of the former Jeddo Shops, once used to repair equipment used in the mining industry.
Former mayor George Fatula, who lived nearby, reported the blaze after his wife saw flames shortly before midnight Monday, May 29, 1980.
The building, which dated to the turn of the 20th century, was a total loss.
Then-Freeland Fire Chief John “Jeff” Teliho, suspected arson.
“For this building to be as involved as it was when he got here,” he said at the time. “It’s not kosher.”
Looking ahead
With a long and rich past, Jeddo looks to continue its contribution to the area and the world.
Though just a sliver of conditions in its heyday when more than 3,000 people lived there, the latest versions of the company that gave the borough its name continue to use coal mined there to search for rare earth minerals, substances found near deposits of carbon.
These minerals contain elements used in today’s video screens, both for computers and televisions. Other such minerals are used in today’s smartphones, rechargeable batteries and hard drives, as well as in the motors that will power future electric automobiles.
Contributing to this article were Ed Socha, a retired Standard-Speaker editor, and Charlotte Tancin, a former Freeland resident who for more than 20 years has maintained “The History of Freeland, Pa.” a website dedicated to preserving the past of her hometown and surrounding communities.
Contact the writer: [email protected]; 570-501-3589
