News items in the year John and Anna Mudry marry include:
Immigrants still must register at Ellis Island in New York.  A Russian Jew, who momentarily forgets his name replies, "Shoyn Fegessen" which means "I Forgot."  His name is erroneously registered as Sean Ferguson.  Alex Kudrick's 15-year-old sister, Julia, emigrates to America at age 15 and apparently does not have any such identification problems.

Alex left the Austria-Hungary Empire before his sister Julia was born so they have never met.  Julia stops in Cranberry on her way to McKeesport to meet Alex and this visit is the first and only time Alex and Julia will meet.  After her visit, Julia continues onto McKeesport to live with her sister Anna Lazar who is a recent mother having given birth to her first child, another Anna, in 1908.

Alex Kudrick's brother Michael Kudrik marries a woman named Helen in McKeesport.  There are now three Alex Kudrick's siblings living in McKeesport, i.e., Michael Kudrik, Anna Kudrik Lazar and Julia Kudrik.

The Hazleton Land Co. acquires a tract of land from the Tench Coxe estate (a local coal baron) and develops the land which will be known as the Hazleton Heights section of the city.  Several members of the Kudrick family will eventually live in the Heights, i.e., the Elizabeth Kudrick Koneyak family and the Anna Kudrick Kranyak family.

The lavish new Palace Theater, one of 9,000 movie theaters in the United States, opens on the east side of North Wyoming Street, just south of Green Street in Hazleton.  The theater will have a short run as it will be destroyed by fire in 1912.  Gertie the Dinosaur, utilizing 10,000 drawings, is the first notable animated motion picture shown in the Hazleton area.  On the music side of the entertainment  sphere, hit songs of the day include "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now" and "By the Light of the Silvery Moon."

Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and Shibe Park in Philadelphia are constructed for their respective teams while locally the Wilkes-Barre baseball team of Luzerne County wins the New York State League baseball championship.

The speed limit in the state of Pennsylvania is 25 MPH.  Auto production in the United States hits 127,731, twice that of last year, with nearly 20,000 Model T's produced, surpassing any other car.

A mine explosion in Cherry, Illinois kills 259 miners.  Clarence Darrow is quoted as saying, "The worker, who risks his life, has as much right to regulate the business as the employer, who risks his money."  Unfortunately, this is not true in the coal fields of Illinois nor is it any truer in the coal fields of Pennsylvania.

My mother, Anna Mary Zokuskie, is born in Minersville, Pennsylvania.  See Zokuskie Ancestry for more.

John Mudry of Oneida, Pennsylvania and Anna Scšur II of Cranberry, Pennsylvania are united in marriage during the month of May, 1909.  John is 26 years-of-age and Anna is a 19 year old teenager at the time.  During their 34-year-marriage, John and Anna raise six children, five of whom are born in the village of Oneida and one (Joseph) who is born in the borough of West Hazleton.  John works most of his life as a coal miner in Oneida and other mines in the Cranberry/Hazleton area.  He passes away in 1943 at the age of 60 while his wife, Anna Scšur II, dies four years later on March 19, 1947 at the age of 57.

As a sidelight, the Mudry and McDeshen families are related, not only by marrying step-sisters, but they are cousins through earlier marriages in Europe.  John Mudry's father is a brother of Paraska Mudry who marries John Mikitisin.  Later, Andrew McDeshen (name changed from Mikitisin), son of John Mikitisin marries Helen Kudrick, half-sister to Anna Scšur II so they are double related, if such a thing makes sense.  Both the Mudrys and the McDeshens live in Oneida after they emigrate from the Austria-Hungary Empire.  Click here for more on the McDeshen family.

Oneida, see map above, is southwest of Cranberry, but unlike Cranberry is located in Schuylkill County rather than Luzerne County.  According to history, the town of Oneida is surveyed and given its present name in the early 1880s, but its name dates back to the Oneida Indians who traveled the area many years earlier.  Eckley B. Coxe (a local coal baron) opens the Oneida mines in 1885 by building the Oneida coal breaker and hauling  mining supplies there from Humboldt, a local patch town which lies between Cranberry and Oneida.  Coxe accelerates the development of Oneida by building a railroad connecting Hazleton to Oneida and all points in-between.  The train makes three trips a day hauling both freight and passengers along its route.

A shortage of manpower develops as the Oneida mining operation continues to grow.  Hence, a request is made to Europe for additional cheap labor.  Our relatives John Mikitisin (McDeshen) and John Mudry respond and emigrate from the Austria-Hungary Empire to Oneida.  John Mudry emigrates in 1900 while John Mikitisin emigrates five years later in 1905.  Both the Mikitisin (McDeshen) and Mudry families make Oneida their first home in America.   

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