Oscar Jewell Harvey

author

Oscar Jewell Harvey

Best known as a careful local historian, he wrote vivid accounts of Wilkes-Barre and Luzerne County, preserving the stories of a Pennsylvania community through genealogy, civic history, and eyewitness-era reporting. His work still stands out for its close attention to people, places, and the texture of everyday local life.

1 Audiobook

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 An Account of Its Ravages in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and the Efforts Made to Combat and Subdue It

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 An Account of Its Ravages in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and the Efforts Made to Combat and Subdue It

by Oscar Jewell Harvey

About the author

Born in 1851 and dying in 1922, Oscar Jewell Harvey was an American writer and historian closely associated with Wilkes-Barre and Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

He is best remembered for substantial historical works including The Harvey Book (1899), a large genealogical study; A History of Lodge No. 61, F. and A. M., Wilkesbarré, Pa. (1897); and, with Ernest Gray Smith, the multi-volume A History of Wilkes-Barré, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania (1909). These books suggest a writer deeply interested in family history, local institutions, and the development of northeastern Pennsylvania.

For modern listeners, his appeal lies in the way he turns local history into something personal. Rather than treating the past as distant, his books gather names, events, and community memory into a record of how a region understood itself.