This project was funded, from to , as a continuation of research compiled for the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company's Centennial History, published in The audiocassettes consist of interviews conducted by Eileen Mountjoy Cooper. The tapes provide an anecdotal, oral history of the miners themselves, mining disasters, strikes, family lifestyles, the lives of coal miners' wives, the processing of coal, and the trauma for immigrant miners trying to adapt to a new county and culture.
The visual image collection includes images of coal mining machinery, the miners, the processes of coal mining, and mining communities. Also included are photographs of R and P personnel and labs. This collection contains materials from the early s through The taped interviews were placed in the IUP Archives in The 46 cassette recordings date from , with the addition of one interview conducted in August, The tape recorded interviews were compiled from a list of R and P retired miners, their wives, executives, and in several other instances with residents of other Indiana County mining towns.
The topics of the interviews include mining occupations, company town life, mining disasters, mine safety and early technology, strikes and evictions, unionization, the coke making industry if Indiana County, as well as several especially important cassettes recording the importation of immigrant miners and their families at the turn of the century.
The "R and P" Project provided the basis for a series of twelve full-length articles published in the Indiana Gazette and Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine Harrisburg, making the information collected available to a wide audience.
In addition, the interviews formed the basis for 2 Pennsylvania Humanities Grant funded traveling exhibits "Spraggers and Sunshine Lamps," and "I Remember; A Coal Town Childhood" which were placed, over a period of three years, in over elementary and secondary schools in Indiana, Jefferson, and Cambria counties.
