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HomeShop at BookSurgeFictionScience FictionColver: Mr. Coleman's Town |
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3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Colver, Mr. Coleman's Town Dec 16, 2008
By Jon Kennedy
"Author, The Everything Guide to C.S. Lewis & Narnia and Everything Jesus"
Colver, Pennsylvania, native Telford (Jack) Hill tells the fascinating story of one of Pennsylvania's major movers and shakers, B. Dawson Coleman, and his erstwhile partner, John Heisley Weaver. Between them, they controlled some of the richest and largest bituminous (soft) coal fields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia during the boom years of the American coal industry. They built the town of Colver on an Allegheny mountainside shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, and created its name from the first three letters of Coleman and the last three letters from Weaver. Then they moved their attention a few miles south and started another coalmining town, Revloc, which is Colver spelled backwards. Weaver also lent his middle name to the major mine in nearby Nanty Glo, Heisley Mine, and the mining town of Heilwood, which was originally called Heisleywood. The two entrepreneurs also founded and ran one of the most successful railroads in Pennsylvania history, the C&I or Cambria and Indiana Railroad, which is also covered in Hill's history.
Colver reached a population estimated at 4,000 at its peak, and it supplied, through the provision of its founder and owner Coleman (who eventually went independent of Weaver) everything needed for life in the town: housing, stores, an entertainment center, schools, and churches. But the conveniences came at the price of personal liberty, as the company-employed police force also kept the town's residents in check.
This very attractive book contains dozens of historical photographs and reproductions of artifacts from coalmining history and includes details on the 1922 strike in the coalfields that eventually led to the acceptance of labor unions for the industry, labelled by the U.S. Department of Labor the country's most dangerous. Hill's own father died in a mine accident in Colver Mine in 1952. During the 1922 strike, Colver and many other Pennsylvania coal towns were occupied by the Pennsylvania Militia, which was sent in by the governor to protect the mine properties from its striking employees.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 COLVER Apr 01, 2009
By Merrill D. Smith
I PURCHASED THIS BOOK FOR MY MOTHER AND SISTERS WHO WERE BORN AND RAISED IN COLVER. THIS WAS THE GREATEST GIFT I COULD HAVE EVER GIVEN THEM. IF YOU HAVE ANY CONECTION WITH COLVER,COAL MINING OR THAT GENERAL AREA OF PA. I THINK THAT YOU TOO WILL ENJOY THE WRITTINGS AND PICTURES IN MR. HILL'S BOOK OF COLVER.
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