Munley was hanged in the Pottsville jail August 16, 1876, and McAllister was hanged later.
First Anthracite Coal Burned in Grate by
Judge Jesse Fell, February 11, 1808
The first knowledge of anthracite in America dates back to about 1750 or 1755, when an Indian brought a supply of it to a gunsmith at Nazareth for repairing his rifle, the smith’s supply of charcoal having become exhausted.
Stone coal was used by the garrison at Fort Augusta, mention of which fact is made by Colonel William Plunket, who was one of the original soldiers sent to build this important provincial fortress. The records in the British War Office also contain references to its use there.
A certain Ensign Holler, of the fort’s garrison, wrote that in the winter of 1758 the house was heated by stone coal brought down the river from near Nanticoke and that a wagon load had been brought from a place six leagues from Fort Augusta, which point must have been at or near either the present Shamokin or Mount Carmel.
Anthracite had been used in the Wyoming Valley before 1755, and during the Revolutionary War it was shipped down the Susquehanna for the use of the arsenal at Carlisle.
On November 25, 1780, the Congress “Resolved, That all the artificers in the department of military stores in Pennsylvania be removed to Carlisle and that in the future only an issuing store and an elaboratory fixing ammunition be kept in Philadelphia.”