Simpson, Lackawanna County, Pa.

Simpson, a community in Fell Township, was settled in 1818 and organized in 1845, and it took its name from Clarence D. Simpson, one of the large independent coal magnates in the Northern Anthracite Region. Crystal Lake was among the first settlements of the township after Peter F. Ball came from New York state in 1818 and built a log house near the lake, and seven other men established homesteads nearby during the next decade; the lake has served as an ice pond and recreation area since those early years. Around 1840, George Lord Morse, born in Greene County, New York, settled in the area, established tanneries and saw mills, and later made a fortune selling and leasing land to coal and railroad companies; his wife, Lois Austin Tuttle Morss, whom he married in 1841, and their family lived in the Greek Revival Morss Mansion built in 1853 until the last of the Morss children left it, after which it passed to Ignatz Borosky and later the Grattan Singer Hose Co., before being razed in 1996 despite efforts to preserve it. Fell Township itself was named in 1845 for Judge Jesse Fell, whose anthracite-burning grate, demonstrated in 1808, made it possible to burn anthracite effectively in homes and industries and helped shape Northeast Pennsylvania. The region’s growth was closely tied to transportation and coal: the Delaware and Hudson began with a sixteen mile Gravity Railroad from Carbondale to Honesdale that carried coal over Moosic Mountain to the canal system, while the Pennsylvania Coal Company built a similar line from Pittston to Hawley; tourist excursions later ran on these gravity lines before they were replaced by modern steam operations. In 1890, the O&W opened its fifty-four mile Scranton Division linking the Northern Anthracite field with its main line at Cadosia, New York, and coal traffic sustained it until the mines were spent and the railway declined into bankruptcy, abandonment, and eventual closure. Simpson’s early industries were trapping, tanning, and lumbering, but coal mining and railroading later became the dominant occupations, drawing immigrant miners from Russia, Poland, and Slovakia; manufacturers and businesses such as American Welding Co., Carbondale Machine Co., Fell Brewing Co., and the Klotz Throwing Company and Empire Silk Mill, later merged as General Textile Mills or Gentex, added to the local economy, while churches and schools reflected the life of the growing community. In 1946, Fell High School won the state basketball championship, and the school’s final class graduated in 1976 after a merger created the Carbondale Area District.

Simpson, Pennsylvania · United States