News & announcements
Saving your history
Early accounts
Maps
Nearby towns
People
Churches
Schools
Municipal
Organizations
Businesses
The mines
Transportation
Streets
Buildings
Entertainment
Celebrations
Sports
Ethnic groups
Businesses
What's on this page:
- Introduction
Welcome to the revised
Businesses section! I've reorganized the pages
in this section, and have broken up and expanded the list of (mostly)
20th-century businesses, as you'll see. More of the information and
photos that I've received from correspondents is included, and I'll get
even more of it onto the site in the coming months.
Over time I plan to
highlight specific businesses or types of
businesses with special pages. I'll start with my own grandfather's
garage, tire and auto supply businesses so that you can see what I have
in mind. Another example is Henry George's grocery business, linked
from the page on 19th- and Early 20th-Century Businesses. Other such
pages that will follow will highlight the Gabuzda family
businesses, the interrelated Krouse, Seitzinger and Fox family
businesses, Sharp's Bakery, and more. If you have information about a
business that you'd like to see highlighted in this manner, please let
me know. Ditto if you have any additions, corrections or suggestions. I
appreciate any information that you can send me.
It's the nature of
businesses to come and go: they come into being,
they struggle and/or thrive, and eventually they disappear (like
everything else in the universe). Looking at the history of Freeland
since its beginnings, there have been an amazing number of businesses
of various kinds, and we can find records of them in various places. In
some years, Freeland had its own city directory published, while in
other years its information was incorporated into directories for the
nearby city of Hazleton (as with the phone books today) or even, early
on, in the Wilkes-Barre directory. There were also occasional business
listings published in other sources, including phone books, maps and
atlases. Listings from a few such sources are reproduced on these
pages. The directory listings tend to be fairly complete, and the map
listings tend to be only partial listings.
If you're interested in
businesses and occupations, please also check
the "People" link, as those lists of individuals also include
information on occupations and on those instances where a home address
was also the location of the family business. Freelanders will find
many familiar names in these lists, in addition to some that have been
gone since before current memory.
If anybody reading
this has any pre-1970 phone books, city directories,
or other publications containing business listings from Freeland, would
you please let me know? I'd be interested in borrowing them in order to
take notes or to copy them so that I could add more information to
these files. Meanwhile, additions and corrections would be very
welcome; please send e-mail. Thanks. Enjoy the lists.