News & announcements
Saving your history
Early accounts
Maps
Nearby towns
People
Churches
Schools
Municipal
Organizations
Businesses
The mines
Transportation
Streets
Buildings
Entertainment
Celebrations
Sports
Ethnic groups
St. Anns - Groundbreaking for the school, 1929
This wonderful photo of the groundbreaking ceremony for the new St. Ann's School came from Colleen Tatar, who had it from her father. St. Ann's Band was in attendance, along with a large group of parishioners. Perhaps someone from your family was there! The enlarged crop shows the priest holding a shovel.
These clippings come from Shawn Carr, who wrote: Picture looks like groundbreaking for the rectory. Found these clips in Wilkes-Barre paper from 1929.
And in another
example of how clues to additional pieces of Freeland
area history show up in photographs of other things, Cal Herring
noticed that the photo includes the only view I've seen of the Freeland
Shirt Company Annex, which suffered a major fire two years later in
1931. According to news coverage at that time, "The building is an old
Freeland landmark and was built 42 years ago [circa 1889 - CT] by
Emmanuel Berger, Freeland contractor, for a religious sect known as the
"Burger Church." ... It was the first factory to be operated by the
Freeland Shirt Co., but was abandoned a number of years ago, when the
new Dewey street mill was completed. Almost two years ago
[approximately when this photo was taken - CT] it was remodeled and
converted into a cutting department and storage house by the company
and has been used for this purpose ever since." The building apparently
continued to stand for some years, as Bob Zimmerman remembers it from
his childhood in the 1940s; I don't know whether it was repaired and
used again after the 1931 fire or not. More about the Berger Church on a page about it here. A newspaper article quoted there seems to indicate that the building was still standing as recently as 1974.
Thank you, Colleen for sharing this great photo, and thanks to Shawn Carr for the clippings. Thanks also to Cal Herring for his sharp eye.