WOMEN AND ETHNICITY; WOMEN AND CLASS: GENDER ISSUES IN TURN-oF-THE-CENTURY SHENANDOAH

particular emphasis on the lives of the women in the community. Ymdings from research sources such as the manuscript census, the borough assessment records, the local Shenandoah lkIJld. newspaper, and period documents describing anthracite coal towns are incorporated to provide a brief view of women's economic and social lives in Shenandoah. Special attention is dedicated to women and ethnicity in the coal town. INTRODUcnON Shenandoah. Pennsylvania is a coal town situated in the Western Middle Field of the anthracite basin of Pennsylvania (figure 1). From the date of its inception Shenandoah was a coal town. Construction of the borough began in 1862 when a Pottsville-eentered mining partnership started construction of the Shenandoah City Colliery near the site of the present town. Yet Shenandoah was never a company town, but was rather a small city and a local commercial center. At its height around 1915, the borough contained 29,000 inhabitants. Women are not typically the object of study in histories of coal towns, in part because they were forbade by law to work in the mines. In 1885 the Pennsylvania state legislature passed Act Number 165 which ·prohibited the employment of women in or about any coal mine or any manufacturies of coal, except in an office or in the performance of clerical work: 1 Thus women were effectively barred from the occupation which employed 70 % of Shenandoah male heads of household in the years between 1880 and 1900. Yet, although they were barred from the primary job market of Shenandoah. women still made important and necessary contributions to family income and family maintenance through both productive and reproductive labor. And women also played a vital role in the creation of a community from a disparate coUection of settlers drawn from across Europe and Asia to Shenandoah, Pennsylvania by the lure of a mining economy