Editing Tuscarora, Pennsylvania (section)

==History==
Tuscarora derives its name from the movement of the [[Tuscarora people]] from their homelands in the Carolinas to [[Province of New York|New York]] during the aftermath of the [[Tuscarora War]] in the early 18th century. A part of the transitory Tuscarora settled at a point approximately two miles west of [[Tamaqua, Pennsylvania]], where they planted apple trees and lived for a number of years.<ref>See Johnson, Elias, Legends, Traditions and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians, (1881)</ref> It is probable that it was these Tuscarora who were later moved to [[Oquaga]].<ref>Johnson, Legends 1881)</ref>

Tuscarora lies within Schuylkill Township, which was one of the original townships of the county, organized in 1811. On May 20, 1830, a US post-office was established in Tuscarora.<ref>HISTORY OF SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, PA. with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, New York: W. W. Munsell & Co., Press of George Macnamara,  NY (1881), p. 349</ref> By 1846 Tuscarora was the terminus of the Schuylkill Valley Railroad.<ref>The Schuylkill Valley Railroad and Navigation Company was one of the oldest railroads in the US, chartered on April 14, 1828. It was 9.23 miles (14.85 km) from Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, to Tuscarora and was completed in 1830. It was built to carry coal from mines to Port Carbon for shipment by canal to Reading and Philadelphia. See Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), p. 501</ref> Tuscarora now had seventeen houses, two taverns, one store, and a population of 139.<ref>Munsell, Schuylkill County 1881</ref> By 1852 the place flourished because of the coal collieries (including those in nearby [[Mary D, Pennsylvania|Mary D]] such as Silver Creek), local operators, were working the mines on the so-called "Kentucky banks". These mines were worked up to 1875, when they passed to the proprietorship of the [[Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company]] and were eventually abandoned in the late 19th century. There were, subsequently, small operations, such as Slattery's Tuscarora Colliery, in the area into the early 20th century.<ref>Reports, Inspectors of Coal Mines of Pennsylvania, 1895, Dept. of Internal Affairs, Pennsylvania (1896)</ref>

Several residents of Tuscarora were involved in the [[Molly Maguires]], trials of the late 1870s,<ref>[https://www.aoh61.com/history/molly_maguires_list.htm List of Molly Maguires from Pinkerton & Reading Railroad Files]</ref> including Martin Bergen, hanged at [[Pottsville, Pennsylvania|Pottsville]] on January 16, 1879,  for the murder of Patrick Burns in Silver Creek; John Campbell, convicted of the second-degree murder of F.W. Langdon and sentenced to five years in prison; John "Yellow Jack" Donahue, convicted in several conspiracy cases, hanged at [[Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania|Mauch Chunk]] for his role in the murder of Morgan Powell on June 21, 1877; Neil Dougherty, convicted of the second-degree murder of F.W. Langdon and sentenced to nine years in prison; James "Powder Keg" Kerrigan, self-confessed participant in the assassinations of Benjamin Yost and John P. Jones, who appeared as a witness for the prosecution in the trials of James Carroll et al., Alexander Campbell, John Kehoe et al., John "Yellow Jack" Donahue, James McDonnell, and Charles Sharp, but was never tried for his own part in the killings of Yost and Jones; James "Hairy Man" McDonnell, hanged at Mauch Chunk on January 14, 1879, for the murder of George K. Smith in 1863, testified for the prosecution in the 1878 trial of Martin Bergen for the murder of Patrick Burns, and missed a temporary reprieve of his sentence when it arrived too late on the day of his hanging;<ref>Kenny, Kevin, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires, Oxford University Press (1998) p. 275</ref> and John J. Slattery, informant, convicted in the  conspiracy cases but turned informant during the trial, so his sentence was postponed, testified for the prosecution in the trial of "Yellow Jack" Donahue for the killing of Morgan Powell, implicated John Kehoe in extensive political corruption, and also testified against Martin Bergen in 1878, when Bergen stood trial for the murder of Patrick Burns.

In the 1971 film ''[[Klute]]'', Tuscarora is the hometown of the title character, John Klute.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nichols |first=Bill |author-link=Bill Nichols (film critic) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OnnZICLGGzYC |title=Movies and Methods |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=1976 |pages=201 |access-date=June 21, 2024}}</ref>