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The Schuylkill County Historical Society

By Schuylkill Hub editorial · Published July 18, 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026

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The Schuylkill County Historical Society — chartered at Pottsville in 1903 as The Historical Society of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania — is the county’s official historical society, a member-supported nonprofit formed “to discover, procure and preserve the records of the history of Schuylkill County.” It was organized at a downtown Y.M.C.A. hall in May 1903, incorporated that September, and spent most of the century that followed in a succession of rented rooms before settling, in the early 2000s, into the former Centre Street Grammar School at 305 North Centre Street. The Pottsville Republican and the Miners’ Journal reported its founding almost meeting by meeting; more than a hundred and twenty years on, it is still at work.

Markers: verified · corroborated · single-source or open. The 1903–1953 facts here are drawn from the society’s own public-domain Publications (1907, 1910) and from dated Pottsville Republican and Miners’ Journal page images; present-day details rest on the society’s own website, read in July 2026, and are dated in the text.

At a glance

A quick map of the article; each point is sourced in the sections that follow.

  • Founded: organized Friday, May 29, 1903, at the Pottsville Y.M.C.A.; chartered September 14, 1903, as The Historical Society of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
  • The spur: a state law of 1901 offering county aid to the oldest qualifying historical society; the founders said the idea had been “discussed ever since the year 1836.”
  • Women from the start: at least seven women signed the founding call, and Elena Roads was elected corresponding secretary on the first night.
  • No home of its own: for years it met in borrowed rooms, more worried about a fireproof place to keep its collections than about a place to meet — by the end of 1903 it had “nowhere to lay its head.”
  • County money: the $200 annual county appropriation was won in 1906 and raised to $500 in 1921.
  • A county society: by 1922 it called itself “an organization not for Pottsville alone but for the whole county.”
  • Its homes, all in Pottsville: the G.A.R. Hall and the Y.M.C.A., then its own rooms at 311 West Market Street (1914), “Historical Hall” in the Public Library (1922), the old City Hall on North Third Street (1937–2001), and the Centre Street Grammar School since the early 2000s.
  • Today: a museum, research library, and gift shop at 305 North Centre Street — the county’s official historical society today.

”Discussed ever since the year 1836”

When the call for a county historical society went out in the spring of 1903, its authors claimed a long pedigree. “The propriety and feasibility of the formation of a Historical Society,” the published call declared, “has been discussed ever since the year 1836” (Miners’ Journal, May 23, 1903). The day after the founding meeting, the Republican put it more vividly — “the seed planted in 1836 for its establishment, was unearthed and the germ still found living” (May 30, 1903). What that 1836 discussion actually was, the record gathered here does not establish; the claim is the founders’ own.

The immediate spur was concrete. At the close of an earlier legislative session, Governor William A. Stone had signed a state law — the Act of May 31, 1901 — letting each county’s commissioners pay, at their discretion, up to two hundred dollars a year to the oldest qualifying historical society: one incorporated, at least three years organized, with a hundred dues-paying members and an established museum. The Pottsville Daily Republican laid the law out in full the day before the organization meeting, and was careful to add that the society would be formed “not with the view solely of availing itself of this financial assistance from the County; that will follow incidentally—” (May 28, 1903).

The first move had come a month earlier. On the evening of April 21, 1903, “a few gentlemen” met at the invitation of the Hon. D. C. Henning in his Pottsville office; a committee circularized the county, and upwards of fifty citizens replied favorably (Publications, Vol. I).

Organized at the Y.M.C.A., May 1903

The public meeting followed on Friday, May 29, 1903, in the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association at 311 West Market Street. A. W. Schalck called it to order and the Hon. D. C. Henning took the chair; “a representative and enthusiastic assemblage of ladies and gentlemen,” in the Republican’s words, voted unanimously to form the society and to incorporate it as “The Historical Society of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania” (May 30, 1903). A constitution “formulated on the same lines of other established societies throughout the State” was adopted the same night, and a permanent slate of officers elected — Henning president, D. G. Lubold recording secretary, and, from that first evening, women among them: Elena Roads was chosen corresponding secretary, and at least seven women had signed the founding call.

The charter followed that autumn. On September 14, 1903, the Court of Common Pleas approved the incorporation (No. 42, September Term 1903), and it was recorded the next day in the county’s deed books (Publications, Vol. I). Eight men subscribed the charter — Henning, Lubold, John R. Hoffman, Joseph F. Patterson, Joseph Stichter, Edward Heiser, J. Harry Filbert, and Edmund D. Smith — for a corporation declared, in the language of the certificate, one “to exist perpetually."

"Nowhere to lay its head”

The young society had no building of its own. It met in the G.A.R. Hall — the Grand Army of the Republic’s rooms — “until permanent quarters can be secured,” as its own first volume put it, and there it stayed for years. Through its first winter it read its earliest papers there — one on the coming sesquicentennial of the Red Church, another the late John Hoch’s “Reminiscences of Early Pinegrove” — which, the Republican reported, would be “filed among the archives of the Society,” the beginning of its collection (Dec. 31, 1903). Yet it still had, as the paper said of it and the Lancaster society alike, “nowhere to lay its head” (Dec. 29, 1903). The worry was less about meeting space than about safe, fireproof housing for the collections it was beginning to gather — a concern that would shape every move it made for the next century.

The county money the founders had been careful not to name as their main purpose came in due course. Having qualified under the 1901 act’s three-year rule, the society petitioned the county commissioners, and in June 1906 they granted the $200 annuity, on the recommendation of County Solicitor A. W. Schalck — himself a founder (June 28, 1906). In 1921 the appropriation was raised to $500 (Jan. 27, 1921).

A home of its own — and the next

For its first decade the society was a tenant. It met at the G.A.R. Hall, was then quartered by the Y.M.C.A., and only in December 1914 took rooms of its own — a three-year lease on the first floor of the old Y.M.C.A. building at 311 West Market Street, the very address where it had been organized eleven years before (December 1914).

In June 1922 it moved again, into “handsome new quarters” — a rented hall it called “Historical Hall” — on the upper floor of the new Pottsville Free Public Library at Third and West Market Streets, under an agreement with the Library Board. At its first meeting there the society restated its reach: it was, the account recorded, “an organization not for Pottsville alone but for the whole county,” with about a hundred and thirty members newly enrolled or renewed under its new regulations (June 1, 1922).

The library association lasted some fifteen years. In April 1937, as the city government prepared to leave its old quarters on North Third Street for a new City Hall, a society delegation led by President William G. Long petitioned Council for a long lease on the building it was vacating — the former City Hall on Goforth Avenue, a onetime fire hall later used as the borough’s seat of government — “referring to the need of just such a building in which to keep valuable historical matter” and to its nearness to the library (April 14, 1937). On May 11, 1937, Council unanimously voted the society “immediate possession” of the basement and first floor, with the Third Brigade Band above (May 12, 1937). The old City Hall at 14 North Third Street was the society’s headquarters by 1942 (Nov. 23, 1942) and remained its home until it left for North Centre Street around 2001 (Oct. 16, 2001).

A society for the whole county

Through these moves the society did the work its charter named. It published Publications of the Historical Society of Schuylkill County — four volumes between 1905 and 1914, printed at the Daily Republican’s shop (HathiTrust). It joined the State Federation of Historical Societies by 1908 (Jan. 30, 1908), and marked its fiftieth anniversary with a dinner at Pottsville’s Necho Allen Hotel on October 7, 1953 (Oct. 8, 1953).

Its leadership passed down a documented but incomplete line. The founder-president, the Hon. D. C. Henning, led it until his death on January 6, 1908 (Jan. 7, 1908; memorial resolutions in Publications, Vol. II); William H. Newell succeeded him that same month. William G. Long was president by 1937 and David B. Baird by 1953; Leo L. Ward led it through the move to Centre Street around the turn of the century, and J. Robert Zane presides today. The presidents who served in the long spans between — from the 1910s into the mid-1930s, and again from the 1950s to the 1990s — are not established in the sources gathered here.

The Centre Street school, and the present day

The society’s last move took it to the building it still occupies. Beginning in 1999, the long-vacant former Centre Street Grammar School — the borough’s 1860s “Female” grammar school, at 305 North Centre Street — was renovated as its new home (Feb. 27, 1999); the society was meeting there by October 2001 (Oct. 16, 2001), though the move was slow to finish. When its centennial arrived in 2003, it was, a reporter found, still “laboring to finish moving into” the school even as it planned the anniversary, and it launched its first-ever public appeal for donations to meet the larger building’s bills (Sept. 30, 2003). The building’s own long history — a schoolhouse from 1865, restored and reopened by the society — is told separately.

Its very name had by then quietly turned around. Chartered in 1903 as “The Historical Society of Schuylkill County,” it had been called “the Schuylkill County Historical Society” by the Pottsville papers from the first week of its existence — and still was that December (Dec. 31, 1903). That colloquial order is the official one today, though when the change was formally made the record gathered here does not say. The society’s own account puts it plainly: the name has changed, “but it is still the official historical society of the county” (schuylkillhistory.org).

Today the Schuylkill County Historical Society keeps a local-history museum, a genealogical research library, and a gift shop in the old grammar school at 305 North Centre Street, open Wednesday through Saturday, the library by appointment. At the time of the 1999 move its holdings were reported as a library of some 3,000 books, 1,600 reels of microfilm, and 3,000 photographs, along with manuscripts and artifacts (Feb. 27, 1999); by the 2003 centennial it kept a room given over to the county’s Civil War history (Sept. 30, 2003). As of mid-2026 its president is J. Robert Zane and its executive director Diana Prosymchak (What We Do); current hours and contact details are on its directory listing. More than a hundred and twenty years after eight men signed its charter “to exist perpetually,” it is still doing what that charter set out — to discover, procure, and preserve the records of Schuylkill County’s past.

Towns: Pottsville

Sources

Frequently asked

When was the Schuylkill County Historical Society founded?
It was organized at a Pottsville Y.M.C.A. hall on May 29, 1903, and chartered by the county court on September 14, 1903, under the name 'The Historical Society of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.' Its founders said the idea of a county historical society had been discussed since 1836, though what that earlier discussion was is not established in the surviving record.
Why was the Historical Society formed when it was?
A Pennsylvania law of 1901 let each county pay up to $200 a year to its oldest qualifying historical society — one incorporated, at least three years old, with a hundred dues-paying members and an established museum. The society organized in 1903 on those lines, qualified in 1906, and was granted the county annuity that June; it was raised to $500 in 1921. The founders said the money would 'follow incidentally,' not as their sole aim.
Where has the Schuylkill County Historical Society been located?
All of its homes have been in Pottsville. It met first in borrowed rooms — the G.A.R. Hall and the Y.M.C.A. — leased its own quarters at 311 West Market Street in 1914, moved to 'Historical Hall' in the new Public Library in 1922, and took the old City Hall at 14 North Third Street in 1937. Since the early 2000s it has occupied the former Centre Street Grammar School at 305 North Centre Street.
Is the Schuylkill County Historical Society still open?
Yes. It operates a museum, a genealogical research library, and a gift shop at 305 North Centre Street in Pottsville, open Wednesday through Saturday with the research library by appointment. As of mid-2026 its president is J. Robert Zane and its executive director Diana Prosymchak.
What can you research at the Schuylkill County Historical Society?
The society keeps a local-history museum and a genealogical research library, open by appointment, at 305 North Centre Street in Pottsville. At the time of its 1999 move its holdings were reported as some 3,000 books, 1,600 reels of microfilm, and 3,000 photographs, along with manuscripts and artifacts; current hours and access are on its directory listing.