A Brief History of the Northern Liberties
The Northern Liberties was a small "suburb" of Mauch Chunk, active as a community from approximately 1824 to 1920. Close by the main Jersey Central rail yards and Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co. coal enterprises, it served as the first homeplace for many Irish families moving to old Mauch Chunk during its boom years.
The Northern Liberties started small enough. At the end of the 1824, the official town census listed James O'Brian, Cornelius Conner and Thomas O'Riley as living in this area. In the next year of 1825, four families (Barcht, Conner, O'Brien and Shipman) were listed as living in the Northern Liberties. As the years passed, the community grew to consist of 20 to 25 one and one half story white-washed clapboard houses, some of which were occupied for many years by the same families. The Northern Liberties, or "Liberties" as it was also known, was supposedly given its name by Josiah White, who named the settlement after a section of Philadelphia. At one point, someone tried pinning the area with the name "Spencerville", but the name didn't stick.
In this 1873 drawing of Mauch Chunk, the Northern Liberties can be seen just across the Mt. Pisgah plane from Upper Mauch Chunk. A close-up of this print reveals the actual houses in the Liberties as they line the Liberties road.
The Liberties were located at the base of the Mt. Pisgah just north and northeast of the Switchback tracks leading to the Mt. Pisgah plane. A road from Upper Mauch Chunk down to the Liberties ran under the Switchback tracks at the barney car pits at the base of the Pisgah plane and continued to the Central Railroad roundhouse complex down along the Lehigh river. It was this road that many of the Liberties and Upper Mauch Chunk residents used to go to and from their jobs at the Central yards and the coal docks/schutes. In the early 1870's, a new road was constructed connecting Susquehanna St. and Mauch Chunk with the Liberties road from Upper Mauch Chunk after the old road was used as a new railroad track bed by the Central. This road, dubbed Lehigh Street and stopping at the Liberties, was the forerunner of today's HW 209 route towards Nesquehoning.
Here's a drawing of the Pisgah plane area - one Liberties house to the right of the Switchback maintenance sheds.
This photograph enlargement below is from a circa 1872 stereoview by Kleckner (for a while a resident Mauch Chunk photographer). It is the only photograph found to date of an actual Liberties dwelling (probably that of Robert Dunlap). Other dwellings are obscured by "greenery" in the foreground. Notice, though, the two levels of the Jersey Central railroad with long lines of coal cars.
This postcard of Mt. Pisgah plane shows, on the left, the Northern Liberties road. The road connected with Spruce street in Upper Mauch Chunk and continued down under the Switchback tracks at the barney pit (man is standing above the barney pit), through the Liberties, to the road just above the Central railroad yards. Another view of the Liberties road - this from a stereoview - you can see the Liberties road as it starts under the barney pit from Upper Mauch Chunk just behind the tree along the tracks.
This postcard view from the 1910's shows the side of Mt. Pisgah from the East Mauch Chunk side of the Lehigh river. The Northern Liberties homes, by this time gone, would have dotted the hillside directly above the water tower in the center, above the road running from left to right. Central yards in the foreground.
Yet another view from the East Mauch Chunk side, the Mt. Pisgah plane in clear view. There are 3 roads appearing to converge on the right hand side of the card. The uppermost is probably the Liberties road as it passes through the Liberties. In the foreground are the Central yards.
Here's a photograph from the 1880's of the Liberties from a distance - the buildings for the Central New Jersey RR shops can be seen.
A number of families lived in the Liberties over the years. Since the land and the houses where owned by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, most of the male residents were in that company's employ as railroaders, coal dock and schute workers and related occupations. Others were employed by the New Jersey Central Railroad at its extensive shops at the Liberties. Lehigh Valley Railroad also employed Liberties residents as brakemen, conductors and engineers.
And a circa 1910 postcard view of the Central RR yards, showing the large operation that this was. Central yards to the left - East Mauch Chunk to the right - Packer dam in the middle. The yards employed some 800 men at one point.
Some families were "staples" of the community, others merely passing through. Families such as the Crilleys, Burns, Trees, McGeadys, Doughertys, Conroys, McLaughlins, Connertys, and McElvains represent the longest residents. Some houses were single family, but often multiple families or extended families can be found living together. There were at least a couple of boarding houses during the 1850s and 1860s and a school house in the village that the children attended. This school, built in the 1850s, was renamed the Fort Sumpter school in approximately 1869. The following list of students on the "honor roll" is from the Gazette, February 5, 1869:
"Roll of Honor - The following pupils of Sumpter School have been in regular attendance during the month of January: John Dugan, John Crilly, John Daugherty, William Daugherty, Samuel Billingsley, Geo. Manalis, Tillie Barrett, Martha Ferrier, Maggie Billingsley and Mary Wagner."
Families gardened the hillside, drew water from the Liberties spring and baked bread in outdoor ovens. These ovens and the bread they baked were described by Lafayette Wildoner, a long time resident of Upper Mauch Chunk, who wrote a fond remembrance of the Liberties published in the Mauch Chunk Daily Times for January 11, 1917:
"Between every other dwelling stood an old fashioned oven, made of stone and clay, around which we boys often lingered and watched the good old Irish lady, 'fire up', and then fill up the oven with huge pans of dough, and how we enjoyed the odor of the baking bread, and when it was done and came from the oven in loaves about the size of a half bushel measure, a rich golden brown, say it just made your mouth water and we often asked the old lady for the crust - a slice off the end, and she never refused it."
One long time resident and gardener for John Leisenring was Michael Crilley who was famous for his gardening skills. Michael took first place prizes for his vegetables at the annual county fair held in Lehighton as shown in this Mauch Chunk newpaper quote from 10/24/1891:
"Mr. Michael Crilley, of the Second Ward, is the champion celery grower, having received the first premium at the Lehighton fair. Some of his plants measure over three feet, and he is proud of it."
In addition to their gardens, families kept geese, pigs and cows. In this enlargement of a stereoview photograph, one can see a cow grazing on the hillside just above the Liberties.
In addition to the Jersey Central shops, other industries periodically cropped up in and around the Liberties. There was, at one time, a soap factory at the Liberties, as chronicled in this article from the January 23, 1862 issue of the Gazette:
"Fire - On Friday evening about seven o'clock, the alarm of fire was given in town, which proved to be Ritter & Co's Soap Manufactury at the Northern Liberties - a short distance above town. The building, with all its contents, was totally consumed. We learn that a large quantity of tallow and soap were at the time in the building. We are unable to state the entire loss by this fire. There is insurance on the property but whether sufficient to cover the loss or not, we did not learn. The fire was accidental. As no other building were near, no other property was destroyed."
Soon afterwards, Ritter moved his operation to East Mauch Chunk, but another soap factory was built at the Liberties within weeks by Michael Leisenring.
What was life like in the Liberties? Certainly noisy - the Central RR yards at the base of the Liberties guaranteed that. The sound of trains, whistles, steel on steel would have been constant - around the clock. There were numerous complaints from the citizens of Mauch Chunk about trains blowing their whistles at all hours as they passed through town. One can only imagine the din surrounding the Central yards. The air quality was probably poor, at least by today's standards - filled with coal dust and smoke, especially in the period prior to 1872 when the coal schutes were still up near the East Mauch Chunk bridge. Death was a continual visitor - diseases such as whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever and infantile cholera exacted their toll. Railroad deaths around the Liberties were not at all uncommon - and were described in gruesome detail in the local papers. There were drownings in the river, particularly at Packer Dam that spanned the Lehigh River between the Liberties and the East Mauch Chunk side. And there were the occasional problems between the residents as shown in the following Mauch Chunk Democrat article from 1855:
"Stabbing Affair - On the 4th of July last, two Irishmen, named James Dougherty and John McCloskey, becoming a little too patriotic from the use of the ardent, got into a rangle, at the Northern Liberties, when Dougherty drew a knife and stabbed McCloskey in the arm producing a serious but not dangerous wound. Dougherty was brought before Squire Stroh, and held to bail to answer at the next Term of our Court."
But for all the apparent negatives, at least by today's standards, the Liberties appears to have been a good place to live, providing a safe haven for its families. The spring water was, by all reports, of excellent quality - the hillsides verdant green and the air scented with the evergreens. Parades even travelled down through the Liberties celebrating Remembrance Day (Memorial Day), St. Patrick's Day and the 4th of July. It is clear that all was not toil and hardship for the Liberties families.
After almost 70 years of existence, the homes in the Liberties, for the most part, were demolished in 1893. Many of the Liberties families had by this time already moved to the Upper Mauch Chunk and other parts of Mauch Chunk, East Mauch Chunk and Coalport. The remaining families, though, were very reluctant to leave their homes, even though in very poor condition. After the demolition, several families continued to live in 2 or 3 remaining houses that somehow escaped - notably the McLaughlins and the Connertys. Other, non-Irish families, briefly appear in the newspapers as being from the Liberties during the 1895 - 1905 timeframe. Some of the very last remaining "long time" occupants were the Connertys - John Connerty dying at his home in the Liberties in 1910. The 1920 census actually lists three families as living in the "Northern Liberties" - they include the Conways, Romanchiks (?) and another family whose surname is not clear.
Perhaps the community's greatest claim to fame is the large number of enlistees it provided during the Civil War. A monument at the old Liberties site, dedicated on Memorial Day, 1922 to the Liberties veterans, reads "This monument marks the site of the Northern Liberties. From this village of fifty families, fifty-six men enlisted for the defense of the Union in the War of 1861-65. " This was an extraordinary enlistment rate - perhaps a record for enlistees per capita.
Interestingly, the monument inscription is probably not "technically" correct in the numbers reported. From all evidence, there was not a time that 50 families lived in the Liberties. What was probably meant was that 56 men served whose families lived in the Liberties at some point, either during or prior to the Civil War. In researching the names of the veterans listed, all appear to have lived in the Liberties at some point, but not during the Civil War. Even more curious is that the number of veterans listed on the monument do not agree with numbers provided in earlier years (1893 & 1898) in various newspaper articles about the Liberties and its Civil War veterans. The numbers from previous years range from 42 to 44 veterans, with at least two articles providing names of the veterans. In fact, there are several whose names probably should be on the monument, but aren't. For example, Neal McConomy is mentioned in an article from 1898. His name doesn't, though, appear on the monument. And, there apparently was one Confederate enlistee, William Kane, who is mentioned as being listed on the monument in a 1922 article reporting the monument ceremony. One can understand how his name didn't make the final inscription!
At the monument ceremony in 1922, there were very few surviving veterans - Thomas Connerty being the only survivor from the Liberties enlistees. Along with two extensive newspaper articles on the large event, there exists an excellent photograph of Connerty receiving a commemorative gold medal from Dr. Erwin, Mauch Chunk dentist and E.M. Mulhearn, famous local lawyer. A copy of this photo from the Ray Holland collection can be seen in the recent book Jim Thorpe (Mauch Chunk) by John Drury and Joan Gilbert.
In this photograph, Dr. Erwin and E.M. Mulhearn (center of picture) are about to present a special gold medal to Thomas Connerty (2nd from Erwin's right - with long white beard). The medal read " ". You can see the medal box in Dr. Erwin's right hand. At the time, Thomas lived in Packerton. Mulhearn stands between Dr. Erwin and Thomas. Mulhearn, in addition to be a favorite local orator, was one of the defense team for the Molly Maguires tried in Mauch Chunk during the 1870s.
Today the Liberties area is still there, with remnants of the old Liberties road still evident if one looks hard enough. A well-maintained area commemorating the Liberties veterans includes the aforementioned monument and a fine artillery piece. The site commands a nice view of the Lehigh and East Mauch Chunk.
Some articles about the Northern Liberties:
Good Bye to the Northern Liberties 1893
Second Ward Patriotism (articles about a flag raising at the home of Edward Conroy on the Hill, celebrating the Liberties Veterans) 1898
Mr. Wildoner on By-Gone Days Lafayette Wildoner 1917
Memorial Tablet Unveiled Yesterday
(articles about the monument dedication) 1922Northern Liberties, Mauch Chunk, Sixty Years Ago William Freundt, Sr. 1947
