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Benjamin Bannan (1807–1875)

The dominant editorial voice of the anthracite region for four decades. Markers: ★ verified · ✔ confirmed · ✎ corrects a common error · ⚑ open/caution.

Benjamin Bannan bought the Pottsville Miners’ Journal in 1829 and ran it for some forty years as the most influential newspaper of the anthracite coal region. ★ Whig, then nativist, then Republican, his paper shaped coal-region opinion through the antebellum boom, the Civil War, and into the labor conflicts of the 1870s; he sold off his interest in two stages, in 1866 and 1873. ★ He belongs to the Anglo-Celtic commercial-professional class that built early Pottsville’s institutions — the editors, ironmasters, and engineers who clustered in the county seat atop a German-founded town.

He also helped produce a landmark technical book. ✎ He is often called co-author of Coal, Iron, and Oil; or, the Practical American Miner (Pottsville, 1866); more precisely he published it and supplied statistics and outlines, while the volume was prepared principally by the mining engineer Samuel Harries Daddow — the title pages commonly credit “Daddow and Bannan.” ★

He was born April 22, 1807, in Union Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania — per the 1874 Biographical Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania — and is not to be confused with the Union Township in Schuylkill County. ✔ ✎ He apprenticed in the printing trade at Reading before coming to Pottsville, where he lived until his death in 1875. ★ ⚑ (The exact death day, given in later sources as July 29, 1875, is not carried by the 1874 primary biography; this page records the year.)

His place in the county’s founding commercial class is set out in the Scots-Irish & New England settlers profile.

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Frequently asked

Who was Benjamin Bannan?
The owner and editor of the Pottsville Miners' Journal, which he bought in 1829 and ran for some forty years as the most influential editorial voice of the anthracite coal region. He was a Whig, then nativist, then Republican power-broker, and he published — with the mining engineer Samuel Harries Daddow — the 1866 treatise 'Coal, Iron, and Oil; or, the Practical American Miner.'
Where was Benjamin Bannan born?
In Union Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, on April 22, 1807 — not the similarly named Union Township in Schuylkill County. He apprenticed in the printing trade at Reading before moving to Pottsville in 1829.