Look Back: Plumbtown was home to historian
May 22—Startled by a train whistle, two horses pulling a wagon of logs began to gallop down a hill in Plumbtown endangering the coachman on April 28, 1879.
Plumbtown?
"At Plumbtown, a team crossed the Lehigh Valley Railroad track yesterday morning. There is a steep hill at this place and at the station below a locomotive was standing. At this time, the team took fright and dashed down the hill. The driver held on as long as he could but finally let go and fell off," the Record of the Times newspaper reported about the runaway horses.
Still asking where was Plumbtown? The answer is Warrior Run.
Plumbtown was originally a farm established by Elisha Blackman, a survivor of the Wyoming Massacre. His daughter, Julia Blackman married Charles Plumb, whose son, Henry Blackman Plumb is perhaps the greatest historian to ever come out the Wyoming Valley.
H.B. Plumb, as he signed his name, wrote the History of Hanover Township, 498 pages that details early families, Indian settlements, the Wyoming Massacre, the growth and settlement of Hanover Township, Ashley and Sugar Notch, Plumb's own family genealogy tracing his roots to the Mayflower, and many other areas of the Wyoming Valley. The book was published in 1885.
The book goes into detail how Indians hunted wild game in what would become Warrior Run.
Born Nov. 13, 1829, H.B. Plumb was educated in Wilkes-Barre schools and at the Wilkes-Barre Academy. He studied law under a Wilkes-Barre lawyer as he became one until the start of the Civil War.
H.B. Plumb served as a corporal in the 13th PA Volunteer Infantry, Co. K, and when his unit was mustered out, he never returned to his legal career but instead became a writer and a historian.
After years of study where he traveled to New England to conduct research in libraries, H.P. Plumb's book was published to much fanfare.
"We have received an advance copy of the History of Hanover Township and Wyoming Valley by Henry Blackman Plumb, Esq. It is a work of 500 pages and has involved a search of previous local and general histories and official and family records that must have eaten heavily into his time and taxed his patience not a little," the Sunday Leader reported Dec. 6, 1885.
"The best histories are those which seek only to reveal new faces and whose pagens are not disfigured by pedantry," the story reported.
H.P. Plumb's book contains 100 pages of the early families that settled throughout the Wyoming Valley.
His first wife, Emma, died in 1859. He married his second wife, Edith, in 1872 and they had a daughter, Edith Agnes, born in 1905 when H.B. Plumb was 74 years old.
H.P. Plumb's passion for genealogy can be found at his gravesite in Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre.
In the early 1900s, H.B. Plumb designed a massive monument that was erected in the cemetery where his descendants are buried. The massive monument can be seen from North River Street.
"The monument was designed by Henry Blackman Plumb of Warrior Run, the well known historian and bears the genealogical record of the Plumb and Blackman families from the sailing of the Mayflower to the present time," the Wilkes-Barre Times newspaper reported May 29, 1905, when the monument was dedicated on Memorial Day that year.
As the population expanded from European immigrants employed by coal mine operators, the need to find suitable housing increased. The farm at Plumbtown was turned into plots for houses and H.P. Plumb leased most of the farm to the Warrior Run Mining Company in 1907.
Soon after he relinquished his lands at Plumbtown, H.B. Plumb relocated to Bethlehem to be closer to one of his children, R.G. Plumb, he had with his first wife.
"At the age of 91, the Hon. Henry Blackman Plumb, a member of one of the pioneer families of this valley and a direct descendant of Elisha Blackman, of Revolutionary War fame, died at his home at Bethlehem," the Evening News reported May 28, 1921, a day after his death.
He is buried at the monument that bears his name at Hollenback Cemetery.
