Some brief excerpts edited from an 1843 history of Pennsylvania give a fascinating perspective to southwestern Pennsylvania communities.

• Westmoreland County: Greensburg is in the midst of a fertile and well-cultivated county. Greensburg has been one of those tranquil places that furnish little of historical incident. It will probably not increase with great rapidity. The society of the place is said to be highly intelligent and moral. Mt. Pleasant is a smart and flourishing borough. The central street has a lively, business-like air. New Alexandria is a large borough.

• Indiana County: Indiana, the county seat, is a pleasant, neatly built town containing the usual county buildings. Blairsville was full of bustle and prosperity, but in 1834, communication was opened over the mountains, the use of the turnpike was to a great extent abandoned, and the merchants and innkeepers were compelled to sit and see the trade and travel pass by on the other side. The citizens are remarkably intelligent and hospitable.

• Fayette County: Union, mostly called Uniontown, is a large, flourishing and rather compactly built town. The place abounds in excellent hotels. Scarcely an hour passes when a stagecoach may not be seen passing through the town. Brownsville business is much augmented during high water by the shipment of goods by steamboat for the lower rivers. Connellsville and New Haven are flourishing villages. Perryopolis is pleasantly situated.

George Washington's travels into southwestern Pennsylvania, beginning in the 1750s, furnish the earliest specific evidence of coal discoveries in this area.

When Washington's expedition came across the Allegheny Mountains in 1754, his second-in-command was Capt. Adam Stephen. In a letter from Great Meadow (Fort Necessity), May 26 of that year, following an expedition along the Monongahela River, Stephen wrote: "Nature seems to have furnished this country in the most lavish manner with all the conveniences and comforts of life. I have seen a deal of limestone, coal and such, iron ore, all convenient for water carriage."

An early-day Jennerstown-area character, at least in Somerset County lore, was a wagoner and bully named John "Devil" Carr. Once, on a wagon trip over Laurel Ridge, Carr met a peddler. After a pleasant greeting, Carr induced the peddler to leave his wagon, thereupon producing a whip and threatening him, telling him to dance and keeping him at it.

Finally, he tired of the "sport" and told the peddler to board the wagon and proceed. Carr also instructed him to tell every person he met how "Devil" Carr made him dance.

But the peddler then produced a revolver from his wagon, pointed it at Carr, and told him to dance. Finally, the peddler told him to get back on the wagon and said, "If you meet anybody, tell them you saw a peddler who was a match for you and made you dance!"

The revolving book and merchandise racks that are so common in stores and shops today may have been the result of an invention by the Indiana postmaster 115 years ago.

In 1876, A.J. Moorhead, editor of the Indiana Progress and postmaster for that community, invented a revolving letter rack for mail.

That innovation is said to have evolved into book and merchandise racks a few years later.

An active mining entity in the early years of the 20th century was United Coal Company, headquartered in Pittsburgh with coal acreage in Allegheny, Fayette, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties as well as Preston County, W.Va.

In 1913, the company operated the Ella, Patterson and Naomi mines along or near the Monongahela River in the Youghiogheny basin; Edna No. 1 and 2 near the Sewickley-Hempfield Township border; Rich Hill north of Meadowlands in Washington County; and Orenda Nos. 1-5 and Jerome Nos. 1 and 2 near Boswell and Jerome in northwestern Somerset County.

Orenda Nos. 3, 4 and 5 were new mines in 1913, and their completion raised United Coal daily production to 20,000 tons. United was one of the five largest producers for the open market, as contrasted with the captive mines that furnished bituminous coal for steel companies.

United Coal was organized in 1901, and operated only two mines at that early date. In 1913, its controlling company, American Water Works & Guarantee Company of Pittsburgh, was placed in receivership. Controlling interest in United, as a result, was sold.

Robert B. Van Atta retired as history editor of the Tribune-Review in January 2004.