Laborer’s Double Dwelling

Laborer’s Double Dwelling. Eckley Miners’ Village. Homes of the unskilled, like all workers’ homes in Eckley, are simple plank and frame with clapboard on the exterior walls and plaster on the inside. The front room served as a bedroom for parents and small children. The rear kitchen had the dining table. Other family members and borders (single men who worked for the colliery) lived in the two second floor bedrooms. Shallow stone cellars provided storage space for food grown in the garden.

Miners extended their lives into back and side yards, first building out-houses and a summer kitchen (the stove was moved seasonally) to remove cooking heat from the home in the summer. Back rooms were added and breezeway rooms connected the house to the summer kitchen. Garden sheds, chicken coops, and other small buildings also reflect survival strategies that emerged as families became stable.

Family members canned fruit and produce, raised and slaughtered small farm animals, made their own cheese, butter or other animal products and otherwise found the chores of survival to be constant. Selling or bartering extra food, produce, baked goods, animal products, and services was essential. . This historical marker was erected by Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor. It is Near Weatherly in Luzerne County Pennsylvania