The notable exception to this was when land claims by the Connecticut-based owners of the Susquehanna Company, who had been granted titles to land claimed by Connecticut in the Wyoming Valley, in an area that is now Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Wilkes-Barre was founded in 1769 and formally incorporated in 1806.

The settlement was named Wilkes-Barre after John Wilkes and Isaac Barré, two British members of Parliament who supported colonial America.

Wilkes-Barre is the birthplace of the Planters Peanuts Company, which was founded in 1906 by Italian immigrant Amedeo Obici and partner Mario Peruzzi.

On June 9, 2005, Mayor Thomas M. Leighton unveiled his I believe ... campaign for Wilkes-Barre, which was intended to boost the city's spirits.

The judges were implicated by another county judge who was being investigated as part of an FBI probe of events at the courthouse in Wilkes-Barre and corruption generally in the county.

In August 2010, former Luzerne County Commissioner Greg Skrepenak, a former professional football player and Wilkes-Barre native, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for accepting a bribe unrelated to his involvement with the for-profit juvenile detention center.

Old pictures of the Stegmaier Building ( which is the oldest highrise in Wilkes-Barre and the last one on Downtown's eastern border ) show that everything east of Downtown was forests and coal mines.

The city was at one time served by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad ( later Erie Lackawanna Railway ), Delaware and Hudson Railway, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad, and the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad ( known as the Laurel Line ).

* June 1972: Hurricane Agnes was responsible for massive flooding in and around Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Scranton, as depicted on an 1890 panoramic map Though anthracite coal was being mined in Carbondale to the north and Wilkes-Barre to the south, the industries that precipitated the city's growth were iron and steel.

In 1903, an electric interurban railroad known as the Laurel Line was started, and two years later connected to nearby Wilkes-Barre, to the southwest.

The township was the site of a plane crash on May 21, 2000, when an airplane, in its attempt to land at the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton International Airport in nearby Avoca, crashed in what was described by the BBC as a " wooded area " of the township near the intersection of Bear Creek Boulevard ( PA-Route 115 ) and the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, killing the pilot as well as all 19 passengers.

She was a 21-year-old political science student at King's College in Wilkes-Barre.

The bank was formed at a time of transition for the coal industry, when the town's independent mine operators ( most of whom were directors of the bank ) were handing over the operation of their mines, either by lease or by sale, to a few large corporations — by 1880, the Kingston Coal Co., the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co., the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, and the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Co. would control most of Plymouth's coal mines.

After the incident at the cemetery, Martin Wilkes was arrested and jailed in Wilkes-Barre and released on bail.

That same year, the line was extended along the north side of Ross Hill to Edwardsville where transfers could be made to a similar railway that ran across the Market Street Bridge to Wilkes-Barre.

When the Plymouth Street Railway was complete, the Wilkes-Barre & Wyoming Valley Traction Co. leased it and operated it along with several other trolley lines.

After the Carey Avenue Bridge was completed in the spring of 1895, the Wilkes-Barre & Wyoming Valley Traction Co. built a second railway line across the bridge, providing a second, more direct route to Wilkes-Barre's public square.

The war ended on August 12 while the Ninth Regiment was still camped in Georgia, and on September 19 the regiment returned to Wilkes-Barre.

But meanwhile, at Wilkes-Barre the river height was only above the low water level.

The breaker, designed by Frank Davenport, an engineer from Wilkes-Barre, was destroyed by fire on January 28, 1923, the loss estimated to be $ 250, 000.

In 1874, the Wilkes-Barre Coal & Iron Co. became part of the Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co., which acquired the property, but by some arrangement the mine was operated by the Parrish Coal Co., organized in 1884.

He said to the Secretary, `` I understand you came from a little Pennsylvania town near Wilkes-Barre.

In 1797, several decades after the city's founding, Louis Philippe, later the King of France from 1830 to 1840, stayed in Wilkes-Barre while traveling to the French Asylum settlement.

This statement is quoted from the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre Yankees News page: " On October 12, 1926, Babe Ruth visited Wilkes-Barre's Artillery Park to play in an exhibition game between Hughestown and Larksville.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Wilkes-Barre attempted to repair the damage from Agnes by building a levee system that rises 41 feet ; it has successfully battled less threatening floods of 1996, 2004, and 2006, and the Army Corps of Engineers has praised the quality of the levees.

The Susquehanna swelled to record levels across the state, and in Wilkes-Barre crested on September 9 at an all-time record of, nearly 2 feet higher than the previously disastrous water levels from 1972's Hurricane Agnes.

While the Susquehanna River has a wide floodplain that has necessitated the construction of floodwalls to protect a large percentage of the city, the areas away from the river increase in elevation approaching Wilkes-Barre Mountain.

Five international airlines fly from the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton International Airport in nearby Pittston Township.

The Wilkes-Barre Traction Company formed a streetcar line from Georgetown to Nanticoke and over the river into Plymouth ceasing operations in the mid 1940s.

It is separated from Wilkes-Barre by the Susquehanna River and the boundary of the latter's Kirby Park.

* Kevin Blaum served as the State Representative for Wilkes-Barre from 1981 to 2006 and currently is an Associate Director of Admission at Wyoming Seminary Upper School in Kingston-where he now lives-and is a weekly columnist for The Times Leader.

Throughout the late 1890s, the city's borders extended from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre, but due to financial and civil differences, the city would soon be divided into the many townships and boroughs that exist throughout the central Wyoming Valley today.

In 1829, a writer from Wilkes-Barre posted a notice in the Connecticut Mirror, writing, " among the curiosities of our county ( and we have a few ) are Smith's Coal Mines, situated in Plymouth township in this county ... it sends a sudden twinge through a fellow, say, to think himself walking under a mountain fifty feet through, with only here and there a pillar to support it ... those who feel desirous of knowing more about this matter, must do as many others have done-go and see for themselves.

In the grand finale, Hayden from Wilkes-Barre fought three rounds against Wilson of Danville, the latter described in the newspapers as the " dark wonder.

William B. Cleary, writing in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, noted that " The new school building is located in the central portion of the town, set back sufficiently from the main street to give it an important position and affords an opportunity to make most attractive grounds.

According to Hendrick B. Wright, in the fall of 1807, Abijah Smith purchased an ark from John P. Arndt, a Wilkes-Barre merchant, which Arndt had used for the transportation of plaster.

Smith floated the ark from Wilkes-Barre to Plymouth, loaded it with about fifty tons of anthracite coal, and shipped it to Columbia, in Lancaster County.

In August 1879, The Engineering and Mining Journal wrote, " the Gaylord Coal Co. is building a new breaker in place of the one burned down last summer, and which is to prepare the coal from the old slope workings, with its tunnel to the seven foot seam, as well as the coal from its new shaft which was sunk by the Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co., when it had it, to the Bennett seam.

The area is also served by local television stations from the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre area.

There are stories of Johnny Appleseed practicing his nurseryman craft in the Wilkes-Barre area and of picking seeds from the pomace at Potomac cider mills in the late 1790s.

It is crossed from northeast to southwest by Interstate 81 / Route 309 and Business Route 309 ( Wilkes-Barre Township Boulevard ).

The Times Tribune reported that through the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre Youth for Christ, two sisters from Scranton, PA took a trip to Africa and stayed 16 days in the summer of 2006.

Category: People from the Scranton – Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area