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The region around what is now Bangor, Pennsylvania was settled by Scotch-Irish immigrants starting in the 18th century. A later wave of Welsh and Cornish immigrants brought quarrymen into the area to work the abundant slate deposits.
The town of Bangor was founded in 1848 by the Welshman Robert Morris Jones. He brought industrial techniques to slate mining, replacing extensive hand labor with explosives and drills. The slate mines still employed many skilled workers to do the cutting and finishing.
Slate was used extensively as a premium roofing material, as well as for such things as school blackboards. Indeed, a majority of blackboards in schools across America came from slate mined in what came to be known as Pennsylvania's Slate Belt.
When Barbara Crawford was commissioned to paint a mural for the Bangor Post Office, it is therefore not surprising that she was encouraged to paint directly on a slab of slate. This occasioned major logistical challenges, since the slate panels had to be shipped to her studio in Philadelphia and returned in finished condition for installation at the Post Office.
The mural itself presents an abbreviated history of the Slate Belt region. The three groupings, from left to right, show Scotch-Irish, Welsh and Italian immigrants, in the order in which they arrived in the region. Towering above the Welsh immigrants is Robert Morris Jones himself on a large horse.
Barbara Crawford, who composed this work, lived from 1914 to 2003. In the post-war period she worked in Philadelphia, where she painted and taught art at the college level.