YES, WE ARE GETTING THERE!!!

We are pleased to announce that the Duryea PA Hometown Webpage is still growing. Thanks to the writers at the Pittston Sunday Dispatch for their excellent articles about our new site we are getting lots of visitors and we are still in the early stages of developing the page layout and collecting items from various sources. We are always happy to receive new items so please feel free to Email Me if you have anything you want to share with our visitors.

Some of the items we will continue posting here include old postcard images of Duryea, Duryea High School Yearbooks, scrapbooks, old school, church and misc. group photos, some great old sports photos, old newspaper articles concerning Duryea, old political items, military items, railroad related items, and much more. We will GLADLY include your items.

Everyone has to understand that this is the Internet and at times the site will go down for any number of reasons. There can be a natural disaster where the servers are, a fire or flood of any kind can shut a site down, the power can fail in any given area, any number of reasons can cause a website to go down. The hosting companies do their very best to get the site back online as soon as possible and usually all we can do is wait.

If you try to send us email during this down time, please resend your email as chances are we will not receive it because the down time also affects the email servers.

PLEASE, don't panic if this happens and understand that we would not put hundreds or thousands of hours of work into the website only to abandon it after a few weeks. We are here to stay. We own the Domain Name, the hosting company is paid for the year, so bear with us if something like this happens.

Because this is the internet and downtime does occur, we are THRILLED to announce that we have now purchased another domain name and hosting contract for the Duryea Website. This new website will server as a backup to the main site and during those times when the main site is down or running slowly, the visitors will still be able to view the site by going to the backup site. PLEASE Bookmark the new site or add it to your favorites so you can easily find it. The new site is at www.paduryea.com so please WRITE IT DOWN NOW so you will have the address if you need it!

The April 2007 article from the Scranton Times explaining how the site came about.

A big "Thank You" to Jackie Borthwick and Jack Smiles for their excellent articles in the Pittston Sunday Dispatch about the website.

If you have items you want to share with our visitors, please feel free to Email Me or you can mail your photos
(originals or copies )to:
Bernard Stiroh
59 Lakeside Tr
Kinnelon, NJ 07405
PLEASE MARK ALL ENVELOPES "DO NOT BEND! PHOTOS ENCLOSED!"
All photos will be returned promptly. You can also scan your photos and documents and Email Me to send them to us as attachments (.jpg or .jpeg) in an email. This is a great opportunity to get those pre-1960 photos and documents out of the attic and on to the Duryea homepage where they will become a part of Duryea's proud and great history. If it is necessary, we will even come to your place to scan your items.

FYI

Duryea was incorporated as a Boro in 1901, prior to that it was called Marcy Township, after Zebulon Marcy. Zebulon is also credited with being the first European Settler. Duryea's roots go all the way back to the first human inhabitants of the area. Native American tribes lived near the junction of the Lackawanna and Susquehanna Rivers beginning several thousand years ago. An Archealogical dig in the Coxton area recently unearthed artifacts of these early Native American inhabitants.
The town was named after Hiram Duryea, an official of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company and Civil War General. The railroad owned many of the mines in town. The Lehigh Valley Railroad operated extensive yards in the Coxton section. Prior to being incorporated as a borough in 1901, it had also been known as Babylon after a coal operation. (Some say it was called Babylon because of the various languages spoken by the many European inhabitants by that is not true.)
Although mostly farm land in the 19th century, coal mining changed the face of Duryea in the late 1890s and early 1900s attracting many eastern European immigrants.

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