15 profiles in the archive
Scranton was built by hands and shaped by decisions. The ironmasters who gambled on anthracite fuel. The miners who descended into darkness six days a week. The mayors and merchants, union organizers and newspaper editors. Some names appear on street signs and building facades; others are remembered only in census records and cemetery plots.
This archive gathers their stories, not to rank them by importance but to understand the city through the people who lived it.
Historical Figure
12/1/1957
Bill Courtright was the twice-elected Democratic mayor of Scranton who resigned in 2019 after pleading guilty to federal …
Historical Figure
7/7/1917 – 1/8/2010
The Scranton-born mother of President Joe Biden, Jean Finnegan raised her four children with an Irish-Catholic ethic of …
Historical Figure
8/1/1856 – 1/7/1947
Charles Sumner Woolworth opened his first five-and-ten-cent store on Penn Avenue in 1880 and built Scranton into the …
Historical Figure
4/18/1857 – 3/13/1938
Clarence Darrow was the Chicago labor attorney who represented 147,000 striking anthracite miners before the Anthracite …
Historical Figure
1945 – 11/5/2025
David J. Wenzel was Scranton’s 27th mayor, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran who lost both legs and his left arm to …
Historical Figure
12/6/1820 – 9/29/1871
Elliot S.M. Hill was a lawyer, newspaper editor, and the first mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Elected in 1866 after …
Historical Figure
2/14/1842 – 11/19/1909
Ezra Hoyt Ripple was a Civil War survivor of Andersonville and Florence prisons who became mayor of Scranton from 1886 …
Historical Figure
4/15/1830 – 2/15/1878
Frances ‘Fanny’ McBrier Woolworth was the mother of Frank and Charles Sumner Woolworth, whose …
Historical Figure
4/13/1852 – 4/8/1919
Frank Winfield Woolworth built the first American retail empire from a simple idea: sell everything for a nickel or a …
Historical Figure
5/11/1811 – 3/24/1861
George Whitfield Scranton co-founded the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company and transformed a five-house hamlet into the …
Historical Figure
1/10/1873 – 6/29/1935
Born in County Galway and raised in Scranton’s Minooka patch, Jack O’Neill caught five seasons in the major …
Historical Figure
8/5/1927 – 4/9/2023
James Clifford Timlin was the eighth Bishop of Scranton and the first man born within the diocese to lead it, serving …
Historical Figure
5/4/1916 – 4/25/2006
Jane Jacobs was born in Scranton on May 4, 1916, and grew up in Green Ridge and Dunmore before taking an unpaid …
Historical Figure
4/22/1939 – 5/13/2001
Born John Anthony Miller Jr. in Queens, Miller grew up in Scranton and drew on his parochial school years to write That …
Historical Figure
4/13/1960
Robert P. Casey Jr. represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate for 18 years, making him the longest-serving Democratic …