EBENSBURG — Between 1910 and 1988, rural Cambria Township saw the rise and fall of two coal mines and their towns – Colver and Revloc – both developed by B. Dawson Coleman and his partner, John Weaver.
In creating Colver from scratch, Coleman accommodated every social need including housing, stores, an entertainment center, schools and churches.
He also used a heavy hand through the local police force – and even once through the Pennsylvania militia called in during a strike.
Now a new book, written by Colver native Telford “Jack” Hill, documents the history of the village of Colver, which at one time had the largest mine in the region.
With about 80 photographs of the town, the book looks at how it was created from scratch, and how each aspect of it related to the other.
Hill uses original research from newspaper archives, plus personal papers of the mine superintendent from 1913 to 1915 and personal papers of the local union organization.
He also relied on state archives, historical societies and interviews with former residents.
A review by Amazon.com, which offers the book for sale at $16.99, describes the formation of Colver:
“History of a proprietary bituminous coal mining town in Pennsylvania with absentee ownership. Deals with the development of the town; the infrastructure and the control structures used to maintain control of the workforce. Every need of the miners was provided for, but at the cost of individual freedom. Includes details of an occupation by the Pennsylvania Militia in 1922.”
The 1922 strike eventually led to the acceptance of labor unions for the industry, labeled by the U.S. Department of Labor as the country’s most dangerous.
Hill’s own father died in a mine accident in Colver in 1952.
Also on Amazon.com is this review by Jon Kenedy of San Jose, Calif.:
“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 20th 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 coal-mining town, Revloc, which is Colver spelled backwards.
“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, but now is largely residential.
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