Searching For History ~ Pottsville, PA

all right well greetings from pennsylvania once again and i'm on another adventure with my friend john because we watched the previous video we filmed here at the charles baber cemetery here in pottsville pennsylvania schuylkill county turn around with the cool chapel in the back we're gonna head to some other locations here in town one thing is the henry clay statue maybe the old yingling brewery and some other cool stuff we'll see i'm not sure where all we're gonna go but uh we're gonna stop the sites i might do some filming in the vehicle with the dash cam as we drive around town a little bit give you a taste of uh an old coal mining town up here in schuylkill county pennsylvania so we're going to hop into jeep and get going just have a little fun driving around and stopping at some historical sites as well all right so we're going to head to the henry clay statue first neither me or john have been there yet if we can find it nope there's nothing good there's the family dollar all right so we're making our way into the middle of nowhere in pottsville here this is this is the backwoods of pottsville i'll let this car go through i'm not sure what they want to do so we are getting there's something up there so we're getting close to where it is okay i can see it over here yeah yeah there's parking right here so i guess your destination is on the left that's pretty cool let's gotta find a place to park i think we'll turn around first maybe all right you guys can't see it but we can alright we'll get back to you [Applause] yeah so just off this back road here [Applause] is the henry clay statue and if you know anything about history that name should sound familiar now we're overlooking the town of pottsville and up there's the man himself oh i gotta adjust the lighting on that [Applause] right there you can kind of see them through tree branches and telephone wires we'll zoom in on a little bit [Applause] there's henry clay overlooking the town of pottsville and even this statue hasn't survived the uh what's going on these days a little bit of graffiti down there so henry clay was a politician from the state of kentucky from the south and that makes him controversial for certain other reasons there has been a movement actually to remove this statue here in potsville but it's still up yeah he he ran for president three times actually 18 oh 28 32 in 1844 obviously he lost all three times he never did make it to be president but you know what is a southern politician doing here in pottsville as due to the fact that he was important in putting tariffs on iron coming from places like britain and stuff and you know tariffs just raise the prices of imported goods from other countries and because of that you know americans are forced to get iron from american manufacturers and then back then they used coal to make iron and we're in the middle of coal country here in pottsville schuylkill county pennsylvania so anthracite coal in particular so those tariffs made the coal mine owners here in pottsville uh pretty wealthy i guess you could say and so they built up a memorial here at the henry clay i think at the time it was the largest uh monument in the country so that's why henry clay is here in pottsville just one last look at him up there through the telephone the electric wires here [Applause] and when you're coming into pottsville from the south i think right down there's route 61 you can look up the hill and you can see the statue i know i've often in the past wondered what it was didn't realize you could actually come up to it here let me try and get away from the electrical wires there all right so right down there was our statue and john noticed that up in the woods up here is a cool structure i wasn't planning on visiting that didn't even know that was up here so maybe we'll try and find see if there's a way up there or maybe john maybe john has plans for me can you drive up there all right change of plans we're gonna drive up there if it's something we can check out i don't know not sure if we're private or not up there well that place was a bust it ended up being some kind of a it looked like a school or something i don't know some kind of private place so we're not gonna film up there so i think we're gonna try and get to the schuylkill county prison and we're gonna drop drop john off there no it's it's a really neat uh structure it almost looks like a castle it's got some uh history there as well not the brightest history but it's interesting nonetheless so we're gonna get find our way through these crazy streets here try and find that place yeah check out that building up on the hill there don't know what that is offhand but schuylkill county prison i think it's near the prison yeah laura boulevard this is where the prisons around here somewhere go this way [Music] it's definitely up take a left up here then maybe yeah so the prison is just right up here i think we'll drive by at first and maybe find a place to park it's an active prison today it just looks really awesome yeah you can see it right up in front of the camera up there it looks like a castle another big building we drove by what do you say was city hall or something it's the county courthouse all right in pottsville city hall is down down your destination is on the right i don't know if we can park my mcguire yeah that's what that's what i'm talking about was the molly mcguire's we could park on there maybe huh uh jury parking so here is a view of the schuylkill county prison does indeed look like a castle it's just a facade though there's some cool stone work on the side and this i believe this was the site of the largest mass hanging here in pennsylvania i think six of the molly maguires were dispatched at this location if you're familiar with the coal mining history here in pennsylvania molly mcguire's will sound familiar because a lot of the coal miners that came to pennsylvania were from ireland and the molly mcguires was an irish group wikipedia calls them a irish uh activist group but they were you know working in coal mines was difficult and there was not many laws safety laws back then a lot of accidents happened and they worked long hours things were difficult so uh they were kind of like a secret society that was dedicated to helping helping the irish immigrants of course a lot of bad things happened with that with them and there's a lot of controversy about that depending on which side you're on because i know there was a group of detectives called the was it the pinkerton detectives that were sent into the coal mine areas to try and root these molly maguires out of course some of them were captured um some of the men were probably innocent that were hanged at this location but anyway sometimes like i said depends on which side of the argument you're on but it's an interesting interesting location and it's an interesting history the whole history of the mcguires is quite embedded in this area um the actor sean connery was they made a movie about the molly mcguire's i think it might even be called that all right so i'm gonna hop back in the jeep john is already there waiting he stayed in the jeep because we're kind of in a kind of feels like a sketchy area around here but we're gonna drive around a little bit more i'm not sure what else we're gonna see we actually might get something to eat a little bit later tonight all right so the new title this video is lost in pottsville well thank god it's not in winter because otherwise we're just sliding away down the mountain these hills i'm not sure what i think we're in the north end of town there's a cat up there cat licking certain things but these streets are nuts you got some views up here though if you live up here i think we're going to try and get to some there's another monument here in town we're going to try and get to to get back to the main street you can see like the angle the streets out here not exactly sure where we are right well we are back in the main part of town so there's a historical society oh yeah actually i think that one of the monuments are up here that we yeah cause i think we came up this way we'll find out this part town looks a lot nicer than where we were earlier no offense to pottsville residents all right so we are now in the middle of pottsville and john found this on the maps in fact i think we drove past this on the way in they got some civil war monuments here so we're gonna stop and check this out for a little bit before we head out and get something to eat [Applause] right in the middle town is a cool church back there too architecture is this the one you're talking about this is one of them [Applause] oh spanish american war 1898 1902 philippine islands look how they spell puerto rico yes some dude just gave us directions for maybe another place we'll stop but we'll see [Music] cannons yeah sorry it's a loud spot here in the middle of town some plaques here this was kind of interesting oh let's try to zoom in on in memory the first defenders and nicholas biddle of pottsville first man to shed blood in the civil war april 18 1861 not sure if you could read that on the camera but over here the sculptor try to zoom in on it zeller because if you know anything about me that should be familiar [Applause] all right pretty cool [Applause] got some other things on here gettysburg emancipation fort sumter i think the other one over here is appomattox all right pretty interesting actually it's a pretty cool location actually right in the middle of pottsville to thank you know all the people that drive here by here all the time and probably holly anybody ever stops to check it out read what's on these monuments anymore there's kind of here [Applause] all right i think we're gonna head out again i'm not sure we might check out that place that one guy told us there's something cool to see at a certain location some old tombstones all right or we might get lost again we'll see they're taking advice that one guy that stopped said there's some i think we said some tombstones or something the headstone headstones nice turn signal pal so we'll check it out looks like we're actually heading up out of town a little bit 300 oh it's right here oh right here oh god it's like an old church here okay yeah there's no one so there's an old graveyard back here all right we'll check it out yeah so we just pulled in here and right here is there's an old church here it looks like so guys said there was something back here some old headstones i think he said civil war i'm not sure oh there's a little okay i'm not sure what's going on here there's some graves right here one has a flag on it okay so this right here is actually pretty sad i'm not sure what's going on here i mean this whole area looks like it's see where john's walking all the areas like sunk down in looks like there's some more up there let's see what this is first i believe this is a civil war veteran yeah grand army of the republic that's kind of a shame the whole thing's collapsing looks like charles is his name wow i'm thinking this whole hillside here is just sinking down looks like almost tripped in a because you can see a few more little just tombstones here they're just rocks there's more over here you can see john said there's something pretty cool up here i'll check this what's this one oh this looks like spanish american war here united states navy cuba puerto rico samuel thompson oh yeah interesting james fisher u.s colored infantry yeah don't see it too often american civil war quite a few of them here actually jon jones it does say he was a musician we got a world war world war one here hermann nt another civil war actually quite it's loaded with civil war veterans here but look even this ground look how it's all kind of lumpy and stuff [Applause] yeah one two another one back there it's getting dark a couple of sp several other spanish american ones [Applause] too yeah it's a spanish-american war i think it's the most spanish-american wars i've seen in one that's another one yeah there's a there's a circular one up there too i don't know what that one is here's another one it's just a field stone is that spanish american oh colored infantry william tarr colored infantry no u.s colored troops it says world war 1. 88 years old 1919 that one yeah world war i looks old though yes it's definitely worth a visit stop and check this place out yeah guy when we were at the other monument that guy started talking to us and at first we're a little bit like he's like oh you guys want to see something interesting i forgot what he said is like oh my god yeah we're kind of like uh okay with the definition of interesting yeah what would you say yeah yeah he's like what'd you say i said it depends on what your definition of infant yeah it was like i was like oh i just like i'll let john talk to him but then he started talking about you know uh some old head starts and stuff i was like oh well maybe maybe he's not so creepy he's probably pretty cool which most of them in here are civil war yeah it's rust is grant or the rest is uh spanish american american and then there's like one or two world war one vets it's some really unique yeah the two uh colored troops which is that's not something you see it's not all the time extraordinary uh sacrifices when you think about the history and the civil war that african americans made just to find two of those headstones in one cemetery cemetery is pretty awesome yeah this might be the as far as concentration goes this is the most civil war bets i've seen like just in one spot here i think say with the spanish american war i think i've seen like several at one cemetery but this one has like three of them don't see those too often those types of memorials right yeah it's a little bit quieter section of town as well compared to where we were i'll try to walk around the front to get the name of this church i think too so this is the name of the church the bethel which is the african methodist episcopal church so that might explain why you have some of the colored troops in the back this is the front view here and this is on ninth and laurel street here in pottsville almost at pottstown right it's starting to rain a little bit and uh we're getting kind of hungry so i think we're gonna say goodbye to pottsville for today all right so that's gonna be it for this video you can say bye to john back there and it's fun having him come along and he's did i just say that that it's fun having you along it's okay to tell if you want yeah he's he said i could lie sometimes but yeah it was a fun day it's okay to listen to strangers sometimes like we did listen that one guy found this cool place he would never have known this was here if he hadn't said something to us but anyway if you like this kind of video where me and john drive around to some of these towns and just check out some of the stuff you can let me know down below i i enjoy doing this so if you guys enjoy it i'll we'll keep doing some of these because like i said before he his work schedule has changed so he we can do more stuff like this um it's just pretty fun all right we're gonna go get something to eat buddy's log cabin down your pine grass that's one of the best places to eat so smoke sausage all right thanks for coming along and uh we'll see you around

Channel: The Wandering Woodsman

Views: 18,007

Rating: 4.9670029 out of 5

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Id: 1Rpo9td8_ck

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020