Necho Allen and the Discovery of Anthracite

The hunter Schuylkill County credits with finding coal — and the tavern-keeper the records actually show. Markers: ★ verified against a contemporaneous or official record — a newspaper of the day, a census return, a state land register · ✔ confirmed by a retrospective or secondary account · ✎ corrects a common error · ⚑ open/caution.

Necho Allen is the man Schuylkill County credits with the discovery of anthracite: a hunter who camped on the Broad Mountain about 1790, built a fire against the rocks, and woke to find the mountain itself alight. ✔ The first book to print that story said outright that “no written account of his discovery has ever come to our notice,” and told it under the words “tradition says.” ✔ What the records carry is a different and better-attested figure. A man of that rare name appears as an axeman riding with a Berks County militia officer in 1799, as a householder at Hamburg in Berks County in 1800 and in Norwegian Township in 1810, as the warrantee of four hundred acres of Schuylkill County land in 1814, and as a head of household still being counted in the county in 1830. ★ Through Ward’s reading of the deeds he is also the keeper of a turnpike tavern at the Big Spring on the summit of the Broad Mountain, a litigant who beat the founder of Pottsville in court, and a debtor who lost his land to the sheriff. ✔ His birth and his death went unrecorded; everything between them — the axe, the tavern, the land, the lawsuit — the records carry in uncommon detail. ⚑

What follows sets out the documentary record first, running forward from 1799, and then the legend in the order it reached print.

The axeman, 1799

The earliest record naming a Necho Allen belongs to a different kind of story than the one the county remembers.

In January 1799, amid the Pennsylvania German resistance to the new federal direct tax that became known as Fries’s Rebellion, a party of Berks County men rode out under Major Philip Strubing to cut down the liberty poles — “Sedition Poles” — that had been raised across the county. Strubing wrote an account of the expedition to a Reading printer; it was reprinted from Porcupine’s Gazette in the Gazette of the United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser of February 4, 1799. ★

“With the above named gentlemen I set off on the day appointed from Hamburgh, to the house of Isaac Wetzstein’s about fifteen miles off, where a pole had been erected, being accompanied by Mr. Joseph Old… and Necho Allen, my axeman.”

At the first pole the work was quick — “as soon as the seventeenth stroke of the axe was applied to this emblem of sedition, down it fell.” ★ At the second, at John Weaver’s, about forty armed men were waiting:

“I ordered my axeman to the pole — he was loosening the iron from it (it being surrounded with iron and driven full of spikes, in order to prevent cutting it) when I saw with my own eyes about twenty rifles levelled at him.”

Nobody fired. Strubing put his questions to the crowd instead — “Will you submit to the new direct tax, and suffer your assessors to measure your houses?” — took the answers he wanted, let the pole stand, and got three cheers for the government. ★ His letter ends with a word for the men who had ridden with him: “I had three men with me, who never saw danger, viz. Messrs Old, Palmer and my Axeman, Necho Allen.” ★

⚑ The name is vanishingly rare — this letter is its only appearance in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive before 1900 — and the expedition set out from Hamburg, where the census of the following year finds a Nicho Allen keeping house. ★ Whether the axeman and the coal-country settler were one man, the record does not say.

Four censuses, 1800–1830

The name carries through thirty years of federal enumeration, in four spellings and three places, across two counties. ★

★ The 1810 entry was taken on August 6, 1810, in Norwegian Township while it was still Berks County — the same ground the 1814 warrants would describe four years later. The 1820 entry was taken on August 7, 1820, and its column for foreigners not naturalized records one person in the household; which member, the schedule does not say. ⚑

⚑ Strictly read, the censuses give four households under one rare name in adjoining jurisdictions. The land warrants tie the Norwegian entry of 1810 to the record directly; for the Manheim years it is Ward, reading the deeds against the historical society’s census records, who runs the name through all four as one man. ✔

✎ The 1830 sheet is catalogued by Ancestry under Lancaster County. The microfilm roll its own citation gives — National Archives publication M19, roll 160 — is the roll the National Archives lists as Pike, Schuylkill and Somerset Counties; Lancaster County is roll 153. ★ The page itself is headed “Manheim Township” in the margin, and a John Potts and a Daniel Berger are enumerated on it. ★ Ward, reading the county historical society’s own census records, placed Allen in Manheim Township in both 1820 and 1830. ✔

The tavern on the Broad Mountain

The house on the mountain is documented from 1812, two years before the earliest land warrant in the name. ✔

That year the superintendent of the Centre Turnpike, the Sunbury road over the mountain, advertised the repair contracts for sale and listed the taverns where the sales would be held: one section ran “from the gate kept by Hughes to Necho Allen’s tavern,” the next “from Necho Allen’s tavern to Lamason’s Tavern.” ✔ Ward, working from the deeds in the John Wharton collection, names the house the “Black Tavern,” on the Centre Turnpike in New Castle Township: it stood near the Big Spring, and it was “the first tavern a traveler would find when going over the mountain from the south.” ✔

The county histories describe the same place from the other side, as neighbours remembered it. Munsell: ✔

“The first tavern of this kind on the top of Broad mountain was kept by Nicho Allen. He came here from Lake Champlain to work as a lumberman, and built his shanty at this point. When the turnpike was commenced he built a log house and boarded the hands that worked on it, and afterward, when travel began on the road, he kept such a hotel as the customs of the people required. He and his wife were almost invariably known as Uncle and Aunt.”

The same page preserves the one anecdote anybody thought to write down about him — and it is not a hunter’s: ✔

“He used to relate that the only time he ever fired a gun Aunt almost compelled him to do so at a flock of wild turkeys that were scratching for what the teamsters’ horses had left. The recoil of the gun and his fright sent him sprawling on the floor, while the turkeys cried Quit! Quit! and took flight.”

He was succeeded in the tavern by a Mr. Eckbrod, and Eckbrod by a Mr. Lumison. ✔

⚑ The county histories carry two dates for his arrival on the mountain, unreconciled. The same volume of Munsell that puts Allen’s campfire in 1790 says, in its chapter on New Castle Township (1875 atlas plate), that “the first settlers were Jacob Yoh, John Boyer and Nicho Allen… Allen settled at the Big spring, the summit of Broad mountain. His residence was known as ‘Black cabin.’… These settlers came about the year 1800.” ✔ Schalck and Henning repeat the later date in 1907, adding that the three families “took up a residence in what is now New Castle township about the year 1800.” ✔ And the federal census of 1800 finds a Nicho Allen not on the mountain but at Hamburg, in Berks County. ★

Four hundred acres

From 1814 the record becomes official and continuous. Schuylkill County had been erected out of Berks and Northampton in 1811, and the Pennsylvania land warrant register carries him on the new county’s first page, at the head of the A’s. ★

★ The first two — warranted at four hundred acres each, returned at 348.36 and 400.68 — were patented in his own name; the rest were returned to other men. The Berks County register carries no warrant to a Necho Allen at all, so the warrant of February 23, 1814 is the earliest Pennsylvania land warrant in his name. ★

Bought at the courthouse door, and sold up

The deeds behind the warrants were worked through in 1992 by Leo L. Ward, then president of the Schuylkill County Historical Society, from the deeds in the John Wharton collection. ✔ They show a man buying at the courthouse door and, within five years, being sold up at it.

On January 25, 1817, at the Orwigsburg courthouse, the high sheriff Frederick Heister conveyed sixty acres in Norwegian Township — seized for another man’s debt — “to Necho Allen of the Borough of Orwigsburg for the sum of $200, he being the highest bidder and the highest and best price bidden for the same.” ✔

A year later he beat the founder of Pottsville in court. John Pott brought an action of ejectment against Allen as landlord and John Berger as his tenant; the court found that Pott “had unjustly prosecuted Allen and Berger” and ordered him to pay them $250.70, and on January 1, 1818 directed the sheriff to seize John Pott’s land to satisfy the costs. ✔

Then it went the other way, repeatedly. The first tract to go was the Butler Township land on which Fountain Springs was later laid out, sold by Sheriff Benjamin Christ on September 10, 1819. ✔ The Court of Common Pleas ordered Allen’s land seized on November 2, 1820, and on October 31, 1822 Sheriff George Rahn sold the Norwegian Township tract to John Bannan and Benjamin Pott to settle a debt of $3,000 owed to Lewis Wernwag. ✔ One clause of that deed calls him “Necho Allen, late of Schuylkill County.” ✔ A hundred acres in Norwegian Township followed on September 25, 1826, sold for unpaid taxes by Sheriff Samuel Huntzinger. ✔ He had held land besides in Cass Township (1875 atlas plate) — the tract Ward identified as the one “called Black Heath today” — in Branch Township at the foot of Sharp Mountain, and on top of the Broad Mountain itself. ✔

The creditor’s name is worth a second look. Lewis Wernwag, the bridge builder, took charge of the nail works at French Creek — the Phoenix works — in 1813, and sold out in 1821. ✔ The 1826 Miners’ Journal account records that “Mr Wernwag, the manager at the Phoenix works at French creek” tried Schuylkill coal and “found them eminently useful.” ★ ⚑ The surname, the works and the years all line up — on that reading, the man whose judgment took Allen’s land in 1822 was one of the ironworkers whose trials had helped make that coal worth owning — though no record joins the two names outright.

Catharine

The one member of the family whose dates are fixed is his wife. The Miners’ Journal of February 2, 1833 carried the notice: “Died, at Mount Carbon, on Thursday morning last, Mrs. Catherine Allen, consort of Mr. Necho Allen, in her 72nd year of her age. On Friday, her remains were conveyed to the tomb, attended by a numerous concourse of relatives and friends.” ✔

Her stone stands in the Presbyterian Cemetery at Pottsville, and it says more than the notice did: ★

“Sacred to the memory of Catharine daughter of Thomas Runion and consort of Necho Allen. Formerly of Massachusetts. She departed this life January 31st, 1833. Aged 72 years.”

Ward noted that the bodies in that section of the cemetery were exhumed from two other cemeteries and reinterred there — the graves around her stone are reinterments, not an original ground. ✔ ⚑ The “formerly of Massachusetts” is Catharine’s — or the couple’s; the inscription does not say which, and it is not by itself evidence of where her husband was born. An age of 72 in January 1833 puts her own birth about 1760.

A Find a Grave memorial in the same cemetery records Joseph Allen, born in Connecticut on October 15, 1806 and buried at Pottsville in 1848, as Catharine’s son. ⚑ It is user-contributed and stands alone — and Elliott’s account of 1906 says flatly that the couple “had no children.” ✔

Where he came from, and where the record stops

Three nineteenth-century accounts give three different origins, and none of them cites anything.

• Munsell: “He came here from Lake Champlain to work as a lumberman.” ✔
• Daddow and Bannan: he removed back to “his native State in New England.” ✔
• Elliott: “He was an Englishman, and afterward migrated to the Eastern States, where he died.” ✔

Modern reference works have followed the New England line: SAH Archipedia calls him “a New England–born hunter,” and he stands in this archive as the emblematic figure of the county’s Yankee element. ✔

⚑ A Massachusetts vital record does give a Necho Allen baptized at Ashfield, Franklin County, on September 17, 1775, son of Lamberton and Sarah Allen. The name is rare enough to make the record worth recording. It is not, on the evidence here, an identification: the Schuylkill Necho Allen was returned as 26 through 44 in 1800 and as 45 and over in 1810 — a decade or more older than a birth in 1775 allows — and his wife was born about 1760.

The record’s last firm trace of him is the census of 1830. No death notice, burial record or grave of his own has surfaced after it. ⚑

✎ Where the record stops, the legend supplied three endings, and none of them survives it. The drowning and the departure in disgust both appear in the 1866 passage that first tells the campfire — Daddow and Bannan have him “removed back to his native State in New England, in disgust with his success at coal-mining,” then drowned in “an attempt to cross the Mahanoy on a slender foot-bridge or log, during a heavy flood.” ✔ Munsell keeps the departure in 1881. ✔ The third — that he was killed by Native people — appears in none of the nineteenth-century accounts; it enters the record only as the legend Ward knocked down in 1992. ✔ Against all three: a Necho Allen was warranting land in the county in 1825, being counted in it in 1830, and burying his wife in 1833. Ward’s verdict, after the deeds: “The legends about him leaving the region in disgust or being killed by Indians must be merely legends.” ✔

The legend, and how it grew

The story the county tells has a print history of its own, and in it the legend is the late part, not the early. The campfire arrives forty years after Allen’s first appearance in print.

1826 — the first naming. In the spring of that year the Pottsville Miners’ Journal — the county’s newspaper, founded the year before — ran a history of the Schuylkill coal trade. It travelled beyond the region: the copy consulted here is the reprint in Boston’s New England Farmer of May 5, 1826, page 323, over the credit line ”— Miner’s Jour.” ★ It is Allen’s earliest known appearance in print, and it has no campfire, no 1790, and no discovery on a mountain:

“…until about the year 1812, when Mr George Shoemaker a resident of this town, and Nicho Allen, discovered coal, on a piece of land they had purchased, now called Centreville. Allen soon became disheartened and gave up the concern to Shoemaker, who, receiving encouragement from some gentlemen in Philadelphia, got out a quantity of coal and took nine wagon loads to Philadelphia.”

What follows is Col. George Shoemaker’s reception in Philadelphia: on two loads he got the carriage paid, gave the rest away, and those who tried the stuff “pronounced them stone and not coal, good for nothing, and Shoemaker an impostor.” ★

Two things in that column deserve to be read alongside the legend. The first is its dating. The article says the coal “was known to exist in this neighborhood more than forty years ago” — that is, before about 1786 — and that it is “supposed to be forty years, since a blacksmith by the name of Whetstone, found coals and used them in his smithshop.” ★ Nothing in it treats 1790 as a beginning.

The second is its conclusion. ★ Having named its cast — Whetstone; William Morris, who took coal to Philadelphia about 1800 and sold his lands to Mr Pott; Peter Basteus, a blue dyer who struck coal in the tail race while building the valley forge; David Berlin, a blacksmith who put stone coal to work in the smith’s forge — the writer sums up who is owed the credit, and Allen is not on the list:

“We have abundant testimony also for the facts and dates we have given; from which it appears, that to Mr David Berlin, George Shoemaker, and Messrs. Mellon & Bishop, are we indebted for the discovery of the use and introduction of our Anthracite or stone coal.”

1843 and 1845 — the county’s history without him. Sherman Day prints the coal chapter from “a report made, in 1833, to the Coal Mining Association; and from a report to the state senate, in 1834, by Samuel J. Packer, Esq.” It opens: “So early as 1790, coal was known to abound in this county; but, it being of a different quality… and being hard of ignition, it was deemed useless, until about the year 1795, when a blacksmith, named Whetstone, brought it into notice.” Allen is not in it, and the year 1790 stands there attached to nobody. ★ Two years later I. Daniel Rupp’s History of Northampton, Lehigh, Monroe, Carbon, and Schuylkill Counties runs through the founding of Pottsville, Dr. McFarland’s York Farm vein, Jacob Reed’s Minersville opening and Shoemaker’s vein of 1813 with no Allen anywhere in its coal story — Rupp knows him only as a settler, “the well known Nicho Allen, at the Big Spring on the summit of the Broad mountain,” among the pioneer families of the region. ✔

1848 — still only Shoemaker’s partner. Eli Bowen names “the late Colonel George Shoemaker and Nicholas Allen,” who “discovered Coal on a piece of land which they had but recently purchased,—in times past, called Centreville,” and adds that “Mr. Allen soon became disheartened, and disposed of his interest in the lands to his partner.” ✔ Still no campfire — though the wagons have grown from nine to ten. The paragraph reads as a close descendant of the 1826 newspaper: the same partnership, the same purchased land at Centreville, the same disheartened partner, twenty-two years on.

1866 — the campfire. The story descends from none of that. It reaches print in Coal, Iron, and Oil; or, the Practical American Miner, prepared by the mining engineer Samuel Harries Daddow and published at Pottsville by Benjamin Bannan. ✔ The book is careful about what it is doing:

“The first traditional account we have of the discovery of coal in the Schuylkill region is about 1790, when Nicho Allen, a noted hunter and somewhat notorious character, who lived on the Broad Mountain at the ‘Black Cabin’ or Big Spring, discovered stone-coal at the foot of the Broad Mountain about the period of which we write. No written account of his discovery has ever come to our notice, though we have often heard the traditional account.”

Then the story itself, introduced with the two words that have governed it ever since:

“Tradition says that Nicho Allen, alias the ‘Black Yankee,’ discovered stone-coal during one of his hunting expeditions… having built a fire on some fallen rocks, he stretched himself to sleep as near it as was safe. Some time during the night, when the wood should have been burned to embers, leaving the fire low, Nicho was surprised to be awakened by more heat about his legs than was comfortable; but he was astonished, on rubbing his eyes and his shins, to find the rocks a glowing mass of fire, and the mountain, as he supposed, in danger of being consumed.”

⚑ The alias arrives with the story — this 1866 telling is its only nineteenth-century appearance, and Rupp’s volume of 1845 does not carry it. ✔ Daddow and Bannan set it down without explanation; who gave him the name, and what it was taken to mean, went unrecorded.

1881 to 1907 — settled county memory. Munsell retold it as “the first observation of anthracite coal in Schuylkill county, of which we have particular record,” made by “Nicho Allen, a lumberman who lived on the Broad mountain” who “led a vagrant kind of life.” ✔ Ella Zerbey Elliott put it in Old Schuylkill Tales in 1906. ✔ By 1907 Schalck and Henning were writing around it with visible impatience — the tests that actually proved the mineral’s worth, they observed, “did not occur for many years after the discovery, even if Necho Allen is entitled to the honor of starting a fire with it in 1790.” ✔ Modern public history keeps the same hedge — the Pennsylvania marker essay for the county says “local tradition usually credits a hunter named Necho Allen,” and gives the tradition no date at all. ✔

Ginter, and the argument about who was first

The Schuylkill claim never stood alone. A year after Allen’s traditional campfire, Elliott records, “in 1791 Phillip Ginther, while hunting, accidentally discovered that anthracite coal would ignite,” in what became Carbon County. ✔ What happened after the two finds is what separated them.

Elliott set the pair side by side in 1906 with unusual candour: “The buying of coal lands in Carbon and Luzerne Counties, immediately after the discovery of coal, gave Phillip Ginther precedence over Nicho Allen as the finder of the black diamonds, and history usually credits Ginther with that discovery.” ✔ She also preserved what the argument sounded like locally. Old John Weiss, who drove the stage on the turnpike from Sunbury to Reading, told the Ginter story all his life and “waxed wroth if anyone dared contradict him or assert that Allen had found coal in Schuylkill County prior to that discovered by Ginther.” ✔

A quarrel of that shape is what the Miners’ Journal had been picking as early as 1826, in the paragraph just before it awarded the credit elsewhere: “the credit of pointing out the use, and perhaps of discovering the Anthracite, has been claimed by, and awarded to, individuals in another part of our state: but it is within the knowledge of many, that those individuals joined in pronouncing the coal good for nothing.” ★ ⚑ Which individuals, and which part of the state, the column leaves unnamed. What it does show is that Pottsville was already arguing about who found anthracite first — and that its own answer did not include Necho Allen.

It is the quarrel Schalck and Henning waved off in 1907. It “is not a question of serious importance as to the name of the individual who first discovered anthracite coal,” they wrote — what mattered was that “its practical value” was demonstrated, which took decades, and the rest of the anthracite story belongs to the men who did that work. ✔

The name on the hotel

The legend outlived every argument about it, and in the 1920s it was carved into the city.

Pottsville’s new hotel went up in 1926 to designs by the firm of Thomas, Martin and Kirkpatrick, at 101 Mahantongo Street — Art Deco simplifications over English Regency, in SAH Archipedia’s description, “the hallmark of the up-to-date small city of eastern Pennsylvania.” ✔ It stood on the site of Pottsville’s first hotel, the White Horse Inn, which the 1971 account dates to 1818 and which Rupp in 1845 recorded as kept in 1822 by John Pott himself, “as a sort of watering place for the stages on the Sunbury road.” ✔ It opened on November 4, 1927, and a newspaper account of the opening called it the million-dollar hotel. ✔

The naming was deliberate and, by the Pottsville Republican’s account, competitive: “The name, Necho Allen, was selected from a list of 700 possibilities.” ✔ The discovery story became the building’s decorative theme. A vein of coal struck while excavating the foundations gave the hotel its Coal Mine Tap Room, fitted out like a deep mine; sketches of miners and mining by the Minersville artist Nicholas Bervinchak hung in the foyer; a mural of Allen’s discovery hung in a lounge off the lobby; and the ballroom kept the Pottsville Assembly’s New Year’s Eve gala. ✔

The hotel closed in 1985. ✔ The building survives as senior apartments, still called the Necho Allen. ✔ The name the county keeps on that downtown block — and still teaches visitors to say, in its pronunciation guide — belongs to a man the records document in his own right: keeper of the first tavern on the Broad Mountain, holder of the new county’s warrant no. 1, ‘Uncle’ to the teamsters on the turnpike road. The campfire may be tradition; the man, and the county’s long memory of him, are not.

---

Sources

• "Discovery and introduction of Schuylkill Coal — Anthracite — Stone Coal of Schuylkill County," New England Farmer (Boston), Vol. IV No. 41, May 5, 1826, p. 323 — reprinted from the Pottsville Miners' Journal (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  The earliest naming of Allen located in this research, read from the page image. "[Prejudice and old habits] appear to have held undisputed sway until about the year 1812, when Mr George Shoemaker a resident of this town, and Nicho Allen, discovered coal, on a piece of land they had purchased, now called Centreville. Allen soon became disheartened and gave up the concern to Shoemaker, who, receiving encouragement from some gentlemen in Philadelphia, got out a quantity of coal and took nine wagon loads to Philadelphia… On two wagon loads, Mr S. got the carriage paid, the others he gave away to persons who would attempt to use them. The result was against the coal, those who tried them, pronounced them stone and not coal, good for nothing, and Shoemaker an impostor." The same column reports that the coal "was known to exist in this neighborhood more than forty years ago"; that it is "supposed to be forty years, since a blacksmith by the name of Whetstone, found coals and used them in his smithshop"; that "a Mr William Morris" took coal to Philadelphia "about the year 1800" and sold his lands to "Mr Pott"; that "a person by the name of Peter Basteus, a blue dyer, in building the valley forge, found coal in the tail race" and "a Mr David Berlin, a blacksmith" put stone coal to work in the smith's forge; and that "Mr Wernwag, the manager at the Phoenix works at French creek" tried the coal and "found them eminently useful." It closes: "the credit of pointing out the use, and perhaps of discovering the Anthracite, has been claimed by, and awarded to, individuals in another part of our state: but it is within the knowledge of many, that those individuals joined in pronouncing the coal good for nothing. We have abundant testimony also for the facts and dates we have given; from which it appears, that to Mr David Berlin, George Shoemaker, and Messrs. Mellon & Bishop, are we indebted for the discovery of the use and introduction of our Anthracite or stone coal. — Miner's Jour." No campfire; no 1790; and Allen is not in the article's own list of who deserved the credit.

• "Sedition Poles" — letter of Major Philip Strubing, dated Reading, January 26, in the Gazette of the United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, February 4, 1799, pp. 2–3 (Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive, Penn State)
  License: public-domain

  Reprinted "From Porcupine's Gazette" and addressed to "MR. JUNGMANN." Strubing describes riding out from Hamburg, Berks County, in January 1799 to cut down Fries's Rebellion liberty poles: "With the above named gentlemen I set off on the day appointed from Hamburgh, to the house of Isaac Wetzstein's about fifteen miles off, where a pole had been erected, being accompanied by Mr. Joseph Old… and Necho Allen, my axeman." At Wetzstein's: "I then ordered my axeman to begin, and as soon as the seventeenth stroke of the axe was applied to this emblem of sedition, down it fell." At John Weaver's, where about forty armed men were waiting: "I ordered my axeman to the pole — he was loosening the iron from it (it being surrounded with iron and driven full of spikes, in order to prevent cutting it) when I saw with my own eyes about twenty rifles levelled at him." Nobody fired; Strubing put his questions to the crowd instead, among them "Will you submit to the new direct tax, and suffer your assessors to measure your houses?" — which the long-s typography of 1799 leaves in this scan's OCR as "Will you submit to the new dire[ct] tax, and fuffer your afSeflors to measure your houses?", modernised here as throughout this note. Satisfied with the answers, he let the second pole stand: "Well then your pole may stand, and you give three cheers for government" — which they did. The letter closes on page 3, "I had three men with me, who never saw danger, viz. Messrs Old, Palmer and my Axeman, Necho Allen, and I declare upon my honor, they [behaved] with firmness and courage," and is signed "PHILIP STRUBING." This is the only appearance of the phrase "Necho Allen" before 1900 in the whole Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive.

• Pennsylvania State Archives, RG-17 Records of the Land Office — Warrant Register, Schuylkill County, p. 141 (scanned register, warrants nos. 1–41)
  License: public-domain

  Read from the register image. The county's warrant register opens with him: no. 1, "Allen, Necho," survey, 400 acres, location "Norwegian," warrant dated 23 Feby. 1814, returned 30 Jany. 1816 at 348.36 acres, patentee "Necho Allen"; no. 3, "Allen, Necho," 400 acres, Norwegian, warrant 27 Feby. 1815, returned 28 March [1816] at 400.68 acres, patentee "Allen, Necho." Later Allen warrants in Norwegian Township were returned to other patentees: no. 7 (165 acres, warrant 26 April 1822) to "Daniel B. Keim et al."; no. 8 (150 acres, 17 June) to "Thomas Sillyman et al."; no. 11 (100 acres, 8 Decr. 1824) to "Jacob Huntzinger et al."; no. 12 (300 acres, 11 Feby. 1825) to "David F. Gordon et al."; no. 13 (150 acres, 7 March) to a book of releases. No. 24 records 300 acres in Schuylkill Township. The Berks County register's A pages carry no Necho Allen, so this 1814 warrant is the earliest Pennsylvania land warrant in his name.

• Pennsylvania State Archives, RG-17 — Warrant Register, Berks County, pp. 1–2 (surnames beginning with A)
  License: public-domain

  Consulted for the negative. The two Berks County register pages covering surnames beginning with A run from 1752 to 1899 and contain no warrant to a Necho or Nicho Allen — the relevant check because Norwegian Township lay in Berks County until Schuylkill County was erected in 1811.

• Sherman Day, Historical Collections of the State of Pennsylvania (1843), Schuylkill County, p. 604 — quoting an 1833 report to the Coal Mining Association and Samuel J. Packer's 1834 report to the state senate (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  "The following history of the discovery and introduction of the coal of this region into notice, is from a report made, in 1833, to the Coal Mining Association; and from a report to the state senate, in 1834, by Samuel J. Packer, Esq.: — So early as 1790, coal was known to abound in this county; but, it being of a different quality from that known to our smiths as bituminous coal, and being hard of ignition, it was deemed useless, until about the year 1795, when a blacksmith, named Whetstone, brought it into notice, by using it in his smithery." The account then runs Morris (about 1800) — the Valley Forge tail-race and David Berlin (about 1806) — Shoemaker's nine wagons and the "impostor" cry (1812) — Mellon and Bishop. Allen is named nowhere in it, and the 1790 date attaches to nobody. Day tells the Philip Ginter discovery story separately, for the Lehigh.

• I. Daniel Rupp, History of Northampton, Lehigh, Monroe, Carbon, and Schuylkill Counties (Harrisburg, 1845) — the Schuylkill County chapters (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  Rupp's coal narrative has no Allen in it — Dr. McFarland's York Farm vein of 1814, John Pott laying out the town in 1816, Jacob Reed's Minersville vein in 1818, and Col. George Shoemaker, who by Rupp's account had opened his vein of coal as early as 1813 — and a full-text search of this scan for "Necho," "Nicho" and "Black Yankee" returns nothing, an artifact of its OCR. But Rupp does name Allen once, among the pioneer settlers of the region on p. 273 (legible in the Archive's other scan of the book, historyofnortham00inrupp): "some four miles north of this lived the well known Nicho Allen, at the Big Spring on the summit of the Broad mountain. His residence was known as the 'Black Cabin.'" A settler at a spring, with no discovery story attached. Rupp also tells the Philip Ginter discovery story for the Lehigh, and records that "in 1822, the house since known as the White Horse tavern, was kept by Mr. John Pott, the proprietor… as a sort of watering place for the stages on the Sunbury road" — the site the Necho Allen Hotel would occupy a century later.

• Eli Bowen, The Coal Regions of Pennsylvania (1848), p. 21, "Introduction of Coal" (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  Read from the page image. "Two years after this, the late Colonel George Shoemaker and Nicholas Allen discovered Coal on a piece of land which they had but recently purchased,—in times past, called Centreville—situate about one mile from this Borough (Pottsville.) They raised several wagon-loads of Coal, but no purchaser could be found. Mr. Allen soon became disheartened, and disposed of his interest in the lands to his partner; who, having received some faint encouragement from some citizens of Philadelphia, persevered in his operations. He got out a considerable quantity, and forwarded ten waggon-loads to Philadelphia, in quest of purchasers." The account follows the 1826 newspaper closely — no campfire — but renders the first name "Nicholas," the blue dyer "Peter Bastons," and the wagon-loads ten where the 1826 piece and the official reports both say nine. On the same page: "The purchasers denounced Colonel Shoemaker as a vile impostor and an arrant cheat!"

• Samuel Harries Daddow and Benjamin Bannan, Coal, Iron, and Oil; or, the Practical American Miner (Pottsville, 1866), pp. 120–122 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  The earliest campfire telling located, read from the page image and flagged by its own authors as tradition. "The first traditional account we have of the discovery of coal in the Schuylkill region is about 1790, when Nicho Allen, a noted hunter and somewhat notorious character, who lived on the Broad Mountain at the 'Black Cabin' or Big Spring, discovered stone-coal at the foot of the Broad Mountain about the period of which we write. No written account of his discovery has ever come to our notice, though we have often heard the traditional account." And: "Tradition says that Nicho Allen, alias the 'Black Yankee,' discovered stone-coal during one of his hunting expeditions… having built a fire on some fallen rocks, he stretched himself to sleep as near it as was safe. Some time during the night, when the wood should have been burned to embers, leaving the fire low, Nicho was surprised to be awakened by more heat about his legs than was comfortable; but he was astonished, on rubbing his eyes and his shins, to find the rocks a glowing mass of fire, and the mountain, as he supposed, in danger of being consumed." The same passage carries both endings later repeated as separate legends: "The last we heard of him was on the occasion of his death; which, if we mistake not, was in an attempt to cross the Mahanoy on a slender foot-bridge or log, during a heavy flood, when he fell off and was drowned before assistance could reach him," he having "removed back to his native State in New England, in disgust with his success at coal-mining." The authors add: "Such, we believe, were the facts, as correctly as they are generally given by tradition. Several versions of the same story were told by the associates of Allen."

• History of Schuylkill County, Pa. (W. W. Munsell & Co., 1881) — the coal chapter, "First successful attempts to use coal" (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  "The first observation of anthracite coal in Schuylkill county, of which we have particular record, was awarded to Nicho Allen, a lumberman who lived on the Broad mountain. Allen led a vagrant kind of life, and in one of his expeditions, in the year 1790, he camped out over night and built a fire among some rocks, under shelter of the trees. During the night he felt an unusual degree of heat upon his extremities, and waking up he observed amid the rocks a mass of glowing fire, he having accidentally ignited the outcrop of a bed of coal. This was his first experience of stone coal. He never profited by his discovery, and after having for a considerable time advocated the value of anthracite, and of his important service to the region in discovering it, without receiving substantial reward, he left the region in disgust, for his native State in New England." The same chapter dates Whetstone's smithing use to 1795, names the blacksmith of the Valley Forge tail-race "Daniel Berlin," prints Judge Jesse Fell's 1808 grate memorandum in full, and records Shoemaker denounced "as a swindler and impostor."

• History of Schuylkill County, Pa. (W. W. Munsell & Co., 1881) — New Castle Township, and the Centre Turnpike taverns (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  The township chapter: "The first settlers were Jacob Yoh, John Boyer and Nicho Allen… Allen settled at the Big spring, the summit of Broad mountain. His residence was known as 'Black cabin.' Later there was a tavern erected here. These settlers came about the year 1800." The turnpike chapter: "The first tavern of this kind on the top of Broad mountain was kept by Nicho Allen. He came here from Lake Champlain to work as a lumberman, and built his shanty at this point. When the turnpike was commenced he built a log house and boarded the hands that worked on it, and afterward, when travel began on the road, he kept such a hotel as the customs of the people required. He and his wife were almost invariably known as Uncle and Aunt. He used to relate that the only time he ever fired a gun Aunt almost compelled him to do so at a flock of wild turkeys that were scratching for what the teamsters' horses had left. The recoil of the gun and his fright sent him sprawling on the floor, while the turkeys cried Quit! Quit! and took flight. After a time he was succeeded in the tavern by Mr. Eckbrod and he by a Mr. Lumison."

• Ella Zerbey Elliott, Old Schuylkill Tales (1906), pp. 110–111 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  On the Lehigh find: "In 1791 Phillip Ginther, while hunting, accidentally discovered that anthracite coal would ignite. He made the discovery at what is now Mauch Chunk." And on Allen: "It was a year prior to this, in 1790, that Nicho Allen, a hunter, camped out for the night under a ledge of rocks in Schuylkill County. He had built a fire and laid down to sleep, awaking to find the rocks all aflame. Allen lived at the Big Spring on the summit of Broad Mountain. His home was known as the Black Cabin. He afterward removed with his wife to Mt. Carbon. They had no children. He was an Englishman, and afterward migrated to the Eastern States, where he died." On the rivalry: "The buying of coal lands in Carbon and Luzerne Counties, immediately after the discovery of coal, gave Phillip Ginther precedence over Nicho Allen as the finder of the black diamonds, and history usually credits Ginther with that discovery. Some authorities, however, state that the discovery of the two hunters was a coincidence or simultaneous almost in date." And on old John Weiss, the stage driver, who "often told this story and waxed wroth if anyone dared contradict him or assert that Allen had found coal in Schuylkill County prior to that discovered by Ginther." (OCR of this scan renders "Nicho" as "Xicho.")

• Adolf W. Schalck and D. C. Henning, History of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania (1907), Vol. I, p. 97 (the coal chapter) and p. 86 (the Broad Mountain tavern), with the New Castle Township chapter (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  The skeptical framing: "It is not a question of serious importance as to the name of the individual who first discovered anthracite coal; but it is one of vital importance to the world, and Schuylkill county in particular, that it was discovered, and its practical value fully demonstrated… But the practical tests which proved the worth of this mineral did not occur for many years after the discovery, even if Necho Allen is entitled to the honor of starting a fire with it in 1790." The same chapter asserts that the colonists knew of anthracite "as early as 1766, and sent a sample to England," citing a paper by W. J. Buck read before the Pennsylvania Historical Society on January 4, 1875. On the taverns (p. 86): "The first tavern of this character in the county was located on the top of Broad mountain, and was kept by Nicho Allen and his wife. They were succeeded in the proprietorship by Mr. Eckbrod, and he by a Mr. Lumison." The New Castle Township chapter: "The first settlers of this territory were Jacob Yoh, John Boyer and Nicho Allen. The last named became somewhat famous in earlier days in connection with the discovery of the inflammable nature of 'black rocks.'… These three families took up a residence in what is now New Castle township about the year 1800. Allen settled at the Big Spring, on the summit of Broad mountain, the site of a later roadside tavern." Allen is also listed among the pioneers contemporaneous with the first settlers of Pottsville.

• Leo L. Ward, "Deeds reveal much about Necho Allen: Documents trace anthracite king's land holdings," Pottsville Republican, August 15, 1992, p. 29 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Ward, then president of the Schuylkill County Historical Society, reconstructing Allen from deeds in the John Wharton collection. The 1817 purchase: Frederick Heister, high sheriff, conveyed 60 acres in Norwegian Township at the Orwigsburg courthouse on Jan. 25, 1817 — the deed "sold the land to Necho Allen of the Borough of Orwigsburg for the sum of $200, he being the highest bidder and the highest and best price bidden for the same." The 1822 loss: the same land was seized by Sheriff George Rahn "to settle a debt of $3,000 Necho Allen owed to Lewis Wernwag," and sold to John Bannan and Benjamin Pott on Oct. 31, 1822; one section of that deed calls him "Necho Allen, late of Schuylkill County." The Pott suit: "Pott brought a suit of ejectment against Allen, landlord, and John Berger, tenant. The court found Pott had unjustly prosecuted Allen and Berger and ordered him to pay them $250.70. On Jan. 1, 1818, the court ordered the sheriff to seize land of John Pott and sell it to satisfy the costs of Allen and Berger." The tavern: "At one time, Allen lived on Broad Mountain, where he had a tavern called the 'Black Tavern.' It was on the Centre Turnpike in New Castle Township… Allen's tavern was near the Big Spring and was the first tavern a traveler would find when going over the mountain from the south." The 1812 notice: "In 1812, the superintendent of the Centre Turnpike advertised for repairs, and he gave a list of taverns where he would conduct the sale. One section was from the gate kept by Hughes to Necho Allen's tavern, then on March 5, from Necho Allen's tavern to Lamason's Tavern." Other tracts: on top of Broad Mountain in New Castle Township; near the vanished village of New Castle; "in the middle of Cass Township, which is called Black Heath today"; two in Branch Township south of Llewellyn at the foot of Sharp Mountain and another south of Branchdale; and a large tract in Butler Township "on which the town of Fountain Springs was laid out," seized and sold by Sheriff Benjamin Christ on Sept. 10, 1819. On Sept. 25, 1826 Sheriff Samuel Huntzinger sold 100 acres of Allen's Norwegian Township land seized for unpaid taxes. Ward quotes the Miners' Journal of Feb. 2, 1833: "Died, at Mount Carbon, on Thursday morning last, Mrs. Catherine Allen, consort of Mr. Necho Allen, in her 72nd year of her age. On Friday, her remains were conveyed to the tomb, attended by a numerous concourse of relatives and friends." He notes that historical society records show the bodies in that section of the Presbyterian Cemetery "were exhumed from two other cemeteries and reinterred there," that the census showed Allen "living in Norwegian Township in 1810 and in Manheim Township in 1820 and 1830," and concludes: "The legends about him leaving the region in disgust or being killed by Indians must be merely legends… The records indicate he was more than a hunter and lumberman."

• "History Is Felt at Necho Allen," Pottsville Republican, February 1, 1971, p. 20 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  A feature on the hotel at its mid-century height. "The discovery of Anthracite which affected Schuylkill County more than any other event in its history, is the subject used as an artistic theme in the Necho Allen Hotel. The Necho Allen stands on the site of Pottsville's first hotel, the White Horse Inn, built in 1818. During the 1920's, while workers were excavating for the Necho Allen's construction, a rich vein of coal was discovered, and the original Coal Mine Tap Room was born." In the foyer, "sketches of miners and mining by Nicholas Bervinchak, Minersville artist." And: "The name, Necho Allen, was selected from a list of 700 possibilities. Necho Allen conducted a tavern on Broad Mountain, and is said to have been camping along an area [of the] mountain when he awakened to find the campfire that he had built the night before, was still burning. He investigated, and found that the fire had ignited an outcrop of a coal vein." The hotel then offered 150 sleeping rooms and hosted "the 133 year old Pottsville Assembly on New Year's Eve."

• 1800 United States Federal Census — Nicho Allen, Hamburg, Berks County, Pennsylvania (NARA M32, roll 35, p. 689; via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  A two-person household: one free white male aged 26 through 44 and one free white female aged 26 through 44. The earliest census entry for the name, one year after the Strubing letter and in the same Berks County town.

• 1810 United States Federal Census — Necho Allen, Norwegian Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania (NARA M252, roll 45, p. 175; via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Enumerated August 6, 1810. A household of four: one male 45 and over, one female 45 and over, one female 16 through 25, one female under 10. Norwegian Township passed from Berks County into the new Schuylkill County in 1811, so this is the same ground his land warrants would describe four years later.

• 1820 United States Federal Census — Neche Allen, Manheim Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania (NARA M33, roll 111, p. 49; via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Enumerated August 7, 1820. A household of five: one male 45 and over, two males 16 through 25 (one of them 16 through 18), one female 10 through 15, one female 45 and over. The schedule's column for foreigners not naturalized records one person in the household.

• 1830 United States Federal Census — "Nichs Allen," indexed also as Ncho and Necho Allen, Manheim Township (NARA M19, roll 160, p. 51; FHL film 0020634; via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  A household of nine: one male 50 through 59, two males 20 through 29, two females 15 through 19, two females 20 through 29, two females 60 through 69. The sheet's own margin reads "Manheim Township"; a John Potts and a Daniel Berger are enumerated on the same page. Ancestry's catalogue places the sheet in Lancaster County; the microfilm roll its citation gives — M19, roll 160 — is the roll the National Archives lists as Pike, Schuylkill and Somerset Counties.

• National Archives — 1790–1890 Federal Population Censuses, microfilm catalog, Part 2 (the M19 roll list for the 1830 census)
  License: public-domain

  For the 1830 census (M19), Pennsylvania roll 160 is listed as "Pike, Schuylkill, and Somerset Counties"; Lancaster County is roll 153.

• Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700–1850 — Necho Allen, baptized September 17, 1775 at Ashfield, Franklin County (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Massachusetts Vitals to 1850; via Ancestry) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  Father Lamberton Allen, mother Sarah Allen. Cited here as a lead, not an identification: the Schuylkill Necho Allen was returned as 26 through 44 in 1800 and as 45 and over in 1810, which a birth in 1775 does not fit, and his wife was born about 1760.

• Catharine Runion Allen — Find a Grave memorial no. 106720547, Presbyterian Cemetery, Pottsville
  License: reference

  The transcribed inscription, with three photographs of the stone: "Sacred to the memory of Catharine daughter of Thomas Runion and consort of Necho Allen. Formerly of Massachusetts. She departed this life January 31st, 1833. Aged 72 years." The memorial's own birth-year field reads 1783, which does not agree with the age of 72 on the stone it transcribes.

• Joseph Allen — Find a Grave memorial no. 107368852, Presbyterian Cemetery, Pottsville
  License: reference

  Born October 15, 1806 in Connecticut; died October 21, 1848 at Pottsville; wife Mary Ann Myers Allen; five children. The memorial links him to Catharine Runion Allen as his parent. User-contributed and uncorroborated by any record consulted here.

• George E. Thomas, "Schuylkill County," SAH Archipedia (Society of Architectural Historians / University of Virginia Press)
  License: reference

  "The principal narrative of the county's development centers around the discovery of anthracite and the resulting boom that lasted more than a century. In Schuylkill County lore, a New England–born hunter named Necho Allen (the namesake of a later hotel; SC5) is credited with the discovery of coal in this area."

• George E. Thomas, "Necho Allen Housing (Necho Allen Hotel)," SAH Archipedia (Society of Architectural Historians / University of Virginia Press)
  License: reference

  "1926, Thomas, Martin and Kirkpatrick. 101 Mahantongo St." — "Art Deco simplifications merged with English Regency connect Pottsville to modern urbanity in this midsized hotel that was the hallmark of the up-to-date small city of eastern Pennsylvania… this building fell victim to new patterns of travel and is now senior citizen housing."

• "Schuylkill County" historical marker, ExplorePAHistory (Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission / WITF), marker 1-A-B9
  License: reference

  The marker essay for the county: "Local tradition usually credits a hunter named Necho Allen with 'discovering' anthracite in Schuylkill County. He apparently figured out that the 'black stones' existed in abundance when his campfire accidentally ignited some exposed anthracite." It gives the tradition no date, and adds that "During the War of 1812, Necho Allen and Col. George Shoemaker launched a more ambitious partnership." There is no state historical marker to Allen himself.

• Daniel P. Hennelly, "What's In a Name?", Postcard History, May 2025
  License: publisher

  On the hotel: opened November 4, 1927 and called a "million-dollar hotel" in a newspaper account of the opening; 165 rooms; an ornate lobby with red leather high-back Chippendale chairs; a main dining room seating three hundred; a mural in a lounge off the lobby "depicting Necho Allen's discovery of coal"; an 1,800-square-foot ballroom that hosted the Pottsville Assembly; closed 1985; the building now a low-income senior citizens apartment complex still carrying the name. On the legend: Allen discovered coal when "his campfire ignited a coal-outcropping on Broad Mountain where he had camped for an evening."

• Wikipedia, "Lewis Wernwag"
  License: CC-BY-SA-4.0

  The bridge builder (1769–1843) took charge of the nail works at French Creek — the Phoenix works at what became Phoenixville — in 1813, and he and his partners sold the works in 1821. This is the period in which the 1826 Miners' Journal account has "Mr Wernwag, the manager at the Phoenix works at French creek" trying Schuylkill coal, and it brackets the judgment that cost Allen his land in 1822.

Frequently asked

Who was Necho Allen?

The man Schuylkill County has long credited with the discovery of anthracite coal — by a campfire on the Broad Mountain about 1790, in a story the book that first printed it labelled tradition. Away from the legend he is a documented figure: a Necho Allen appears as a militia officer's axeman in Berks County in 1799, in the census at Hamburg in 1800 and in Norwegian Township in 1810, as the warrantee of 400 acres in Norwegian Township in 1814, as the keeper of a turnpike tavern at the Big Spring on the summit of the Broad Mountain, and in the census in Manheim Township, Schuylkill County, in 1820 and 1830. His own birth, death and grave went unrecorded.

Did Necho Allen really discover anthracite coal?

The county has always told it as tradition, never as record. The campfire story was labelled exactly that when it was first printed, in Daddow and Bannan's Coal, Iron, and Oil in 1866: "No written account of his discovery has ever come to our notice, though we have often heard the traditional account." Anthracite was known in the county before 1790 in any case — the 1826 newspaper account says the coal "was known to exist in this neighborhood more than forty years ago," and the reports quoted by Sherman Day in 1843 say only that "so early as 1790, coal was known to abound in this county," naming nobody.

When was Necho Allen first named in print?

In 1826, in a history of the Schuylkill coal trade published in the Pottsville Miners' Journal and reprinted in the New England Farmer of Boston on May 5, 1826 — his earliest known appearance in print. It has no campfire and no 1790 date. It says that "about the year 1812, when Mr George Shoemaker a resident of this town, and Nicho Allen, discovered coal, on a piece of land they had purchased, now called Centreville", and that "Allen soon became disheartened and gave up the concern to Shoemaker." The same article's closing paragraph awards the credit for the discovery and introduction of anthracite to David Berlin, George Shoemaker, and Mellon & Bishop — and not to Allen.

When was the campfire story first printed?

In 1866, in Coal, Iron, and Oil; or, the Practical American Miner, prepared by the mining engineer Samuel Harries Daddow and published at Pottsville by Benjamin Bannan — forty years after Allen's first appearance in print, and thirty-six years after the last record that traces him. The book gives the story twice, both times as tradition, and names Allen "alias the 'Black Yankee,'" without explanation. Sherman Day's account of 1843 does not mention Allen at all; I. Daniel Rupp's of 1845 names him only as a settler at the Big Spring, with no discovery story; and Eli Bowen's of 1848 names him only as Shoemaker's partner at Centreville.

Did Necho Allen leave the region in disgust, drown, or die violently?

The records outlive all three stories. The drowning and the departure "in disgust" both appear in the same 1866 passage that first prints the campfire; Munsell's county history of 1881 repeats the departure; the killing appears in none of the nineteenth-century accounts, and enters the record only as the legend Leo L. Ward knocked down in 1992. But a Necho Allen was still being enumerated in Manheim Township, Schuylkill County, in 1830, his wife died at Mount Carbon in 1833 and is buried at Pottsville, and Schuylkill County land warrants stand in his name from 1814 to 1825. Leo L. Ward, then president of the county historical society, put it plainly in 1992 after working through the deeds: "The legends about him leaving the region in disgust or being killed by Indians must be merely legends."

Where was Necho Allen's tavern?

At the Big Spring, on the summit of the Broad Mountain, on the Centre Turnpike in what became New Castle Township. Munsell's county history calls it the first tavern of its kind on top of the mountain and says Allen "came here from Lake Champlain to work as a lumberman," built a shanty, then a log house to board the men building the turnpike, and finally kept a tavern; he and his wife "were almost invariably known as Uncle and Aunt." His house is the "Black Cabin" of the campfire tradition, and the tavern is the "Black Tavern" of the deeds. In 1812 the superintendent of the Centre Turnpike advertised repair sections running to and from "Necho Allen's tavern."

Where did Necho Allen come from, and where is he buried?

Unresolved, and the three nineteenth-century accounts disagree: Munsell says he came from Lake Champlain, Daddow and Bannan send him back to "his native State in New England," and Ella Zerbey Elliott calls him an Englishman. The hardest evidence is his wife's gravestone in the Presbyterian Cemetery at Pottsville, which records Catharine, daughter of Thomas Runion and "consort of Necho Allen. Formerly of Massachusetts." A Massachusetts vital record does show a Necho Allen baptized at Ashfield in 1775, but the census returns make the Schuylkill man a decade or more older than that. Catharine's stone at Pottsville is the family's one fixed monument; no grave of Necho Allen's own is known.

Why is there a Necho Allen Hotel in Pottsville?

Because the city named its new hotel after the discovery story. Built in 1926 to designs by Thomas, Martin and Kirkpatrick at 101 Mahantongo Street, on the site of Pottsville's first hotel, the White Horse Inn, it opened on November 4, 1927. The Pottsville Republican reported in 1971 that "the name, Necho Allen, was selected from a list of 700 possibilities," that a vein of coal struck while excavating for the foundations gave the hotel its Coal Mine Tap Room, and that sketches of miners by the Minersville artist Nicholas Bervinchak hung in the foyer; a mural of Allen's discovery hung in a lounge off the lobby. The hotel closed in 1985 and the building is now senior apartments, still called the Necho Allen.